Campfire Session
Explore Flint’s September 2026 updates, including join codes, custom moderation categories, and a new homepage.
Teddy Lane, Customer Success Engineer at Flint
In this September Updates Campfire Session, the Flint team showcased a collection of product updates focused on making Sparky more capable as a teaching assistant, giving administrators greater control over how Flint is configured across a school, and improving the everyday experience for teachers using the platform. The session introduced larger document support, AI-powered feedback on uploaded student work, downloadable AI-generated resources, new school administration controls, an enhanced teacher homepage, an expanded AI Tool Library, join codes for classroom activities, and improvements to classes, curriculum, and analytics. Throughout the session, the team demonstrated practical classroom workflows for lesson planning, curriculum organization, project-based learning, differentiation, grading, and classroom management while answering educator questions about moderation, AI safety, and student access.
Content covered in this session includes:
Uploading significantly larger curriculum documents, slide decks, and instructional materials for Sparky to analyze and use as instructional context.
Generating comprehensive unit plans from an uploaded course syllabus, including vocabulary, weekly pacing, homework, assessments, and instructional sequencing.
Creating an entire year's worth of unit plans from a single prompt using Sparky's expanded document processing capabilities.
Downloading AI-generated documents with one click for further editing or reuse outside of Flint.
Uploading AI-generated planning documents back into the Curriculum section so Sparky can reference them when creating future activities.
Organizing existing teaching materials—including presentations, worksheets, and lesson plans—into structured curriculum resources with AI assistance.
Generating unit plans directly from large PowerPoint slide decks that contain complete instructional units.
Creating presentation slide decks inside Flint and exporting them as PowerPoint or Google Slides for further editing.
Using Flint as the starting point for instructional materials before continuing work in external presentation tools.
Understanding that curriculum documents uploaded to a class become available as instructional context for both teacher and student conversations with Sparky.
Creating student-facing curriculum resources when portions of teacher planning documents should remain hidden from students.
Using the new File Upload activity type to allow students to submit essays, presentations, projects, and other learning artifacts for AI analysis.
Reviewing AI-generated analyses of uploaded student work alongside teacher-created rubrics.
Identifying class-wide strengths, misconceptions, and instructional gaps from uploaded student submissions.
Opening individual student submissions directly within grading mode to review uploaded work and AI feedback simultaneously.
Providing rubric-based feedback on uploaded assignments before sharing comments with students.
Using speech-to-text while grading to quickly dictate personalized student feedback instead of typing every response.
Sending completed feedback directly to selected students through Flint with email notifications.
Reviewing uploaded writing assignments alongside rubric performance and AI-generated instructional analysis.
Giving administrators greater control over which grade levels have access to personal AI chats while preserving access to teacher-created classroom activities.
Restricting personal chat access for younger students while still allowing them to participate in guided classroom experiences.
Creating custom moderation categories that reflect school-specific language, behaviors, or policies beyond Flint's default moderation system.
Assigning moderators to specific grade levels and moderation categories within a school.
Applying school-wide curriculum documents and policies directly to selected classes or every class in the school.
Automatically distributing documents such as school AI policies to teachers through curriculum management.
Tagging curriculum resources by department or subject to simplify organization and deployment.
Exploring Flint's redesigned homepage with personalized recommendations based on teacher or administrator workflows.
Returning quickly to recently edited chats, activities, and projects through the new "Pick up where you left off" experience.
Receiving personalized homepage recommendations based on a user's role, teaching responsibilities, and previous Flint usage.
Discovering AI tools relevant to individual subjects and teaching workflows through the Tool Library.
Using Flint's growing AI Tool Library to accelerate common instructional planning tasks.
Creating project-based learning experiences with Sparky by providing instructional goals, standards, and classroom context.
Iterating collaboratively with Sparky to refine project ideas, assessment criteria, learning goals, and instructional design.
Building lesson hooks that generate student curiosity before introducing a new unit or text.
Selecting between multiple AI-generated lesson hook options based on the needs of a specific class.
Using speech-to-text while brainstorming with Sparky to refine instructional ideas more naturally.
Converting planning conversations directly into Flint activities without rebuilding lessons from scratch.
Transforming AI planning conversations into interactive student activities using the Activity Builder.
Designing printable classroom resources as well as interactive AI-powered classroom experiences from the same planning workflow.
Creating classroom seating charts that account for friendships, behavior considerations, and instructional needs.
Generating interactive seating charts that teachers can continue editing through drag-and-drop interactions.
Applying Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles to existing lessons with AI assistance.
Designing multiple pathways for student engagement, representation, and expression when planning instruction.
Using AI to adapt instructional materials for students with different learning needs and accessibility requirements.
Searching and filtering the Tool Library by instructional purpose, including differentiation, scaffolding, rewriting, and text leveling.
Using Flint's new join codes to let students access classroom activities more quickly during instruction.
Displaying join codes on classroom screens or whiteboards so students can immediately launch an activity.
Reducing instructional transition time by allowing students to enter activities without navigating through multiple menus.
Exploring the new walkthrough experience that introduces teachers to Flint Classes and their core functionality.
Organizing activities, chats, curriculum, students, analytics, and grading within a shared class workspace.
Searching conversations within a class to better understand how students are using AI over time.
Managing gradebook categories, grading weights, and assessment buckets directly within a class.
Adding students manually, importing class rosters, or inviting co-teachers into a class.
Importing curriculum documents from both school-wide libraries and teacher-uploaded resources.
Using class analytics to identify active students, engagement trends, Bloom's Taxonomy alignment, and standards mastery.
Asking Sparky questions about standards coverage and receiving recommendations for instructional activities that address learning gaps.
Viewing classes from the student's perspective to verify what information and resources are visible to learners.
Confirming that curriculum documents remain hidden from students while still informing Sparky's responses during class chats.
Discussing future improvements to moderation controls, including adjustable sensitivity thresholds and more flexible notification routing for administrators and teachers.
Reviewing how teacher and administrator moderation notifications currently work within Flint.
Confirming that classroom chats remain available even when personal student chats are disabled for selected grade levels.
Explaining how Sparky's built-in tutoring guardrails encourage student thinking rather than providing direct answers during classroom conversations.
Answering educator questions about AI safety, moderation workflows, curriculum visibility, and classroom implementation throughout the session.
Find the presentation slides here.
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Here's a version that matches the tone, structure, and level of detail from your previous Campfire summaries.
00:00 Introduction
Teddy Lane welcomes educators to Flint’s September Updates Campfire and introduces the session’s focus on making Sparky more powerful, giving administrators greater control, and improving everyday teaching workflows.
He previews updates including larger document support, AI feedback on uploaded student work, new administrator controls, an enhanced homepage, and new classroom management features.
Teddy also encourages attendees to ask questions throughout the session and share feedback about how they are using Flint in their classrooms.
00:18 Icebreaking discussion
Teddy invites educators to introduce themselves, share what they teach, and describe how they are using Flint in their classrooms.
He also asks attendees what part of their teaching or daily routine they would most like to automate, reflecting on his own experience managing office hours as a math teacher.
The discussion introduces one of the session's broader themes: using AI to reduce repetitive administrative work so teachers can spend more time supporting students.
03:56 Sparky reads larger documents
Teddy demonstrates Sparky's expanded ability to process significantly larger files and curriculum resources.
Using examples from computer science, mathematics, and English classrooms, he shows how teachers can upload entire syllabi, large slide decks, and instructional materials to generate detailed unit plans, organize curriculum, and create downloadable teaching resources.
He then introduces Flint's new File Upload activity type, allowing students to submit essays, presentations, and other work for AI analysis alongside teacher-created rubrics.
The walkthrough concludes with speech-to-text feedback, downloadable classroom resources, and discussions about how curriculum documents provide additional context for both teachers and students when working with Sparky.
15:56 More controls for admins
Teddy shifts to Flint's administrator experience, highlighting several new tools for managing AI across an entire school.
He demonstrates restricting personal AI chats by grade level while still allowing students to participate in teacher-created classroom activities, creating custom moderation categories tailored to school policies, and assigning moderators to different grade levels.
The session also explores managing school-wide curriculum resources, including automatically distributing documents such as AI policies and curriculum guides to selected classes or across an entire school.
23:17 Personalized homepage
Teddy introduces Flint's redesigned homepage, which now surfaces recently used chats, activities, personalized recommendations, and suggested tools based on a teacher's role and previous work.
He explains how these improvements help educators quickly resume unfinished work while making it easier to discover new ways to use Sparky throughout the school day.
The walkthrough also covers improved speech-to-text, faster navigation, and a more personalized experience for both teachers and administrators.
28:17 Using teacher tools
Teddy explores Flint's growing AI Tool Library and demonstrates how educators can accelerate lesson planning and classroom preparation.
He showcases tools for project-based learning, lesson hooks, Universal Design for Learning (UDL), seating chart creation, differentiation, and other common instructional workflows.
Throughout the demonstrations, Teddy explains how teachers can collaborate with Sparky to refine ideas, iterate on instructional plans, and transform conversations directly into interactive Flint activities or printable classroom resources.
37:44 Join codes
Teddy introduces Flint's new join code workflow for launching classroom activities.
Instead of navigating through multiple menus, students can simply enter a short join code to immediately access an activity, making classroom transitions faster and reducing time spent getting everyone into the correct lesson.
He highlights how this workflow is especially useful for bell ringers, exit tickets, and other activities that need to begin quickly.
40:13 Setting up classes
Teddy walks through Flint's updated class experience, showing how teachers can organize activities, chats, curriculum, students, and analytics within a single workspace.
He demonstrates adding students and co-teachers, importing curriculum, managing grading categories, reviewing standards alignment, and using class analytics to monitor engagement and learning outcomes.
The session concludes the walkthrough by showing how teachers can ask Sparky questions about standards coverage, identify instructional gaps, and receive recommendations for future classroom activities based on their existing curriculum.
52:59 Q&A
The Q&A focuses on moderation workflows, curriculum visibility, and student access to AI.
Educators ask about moderation sensitivity, notification settings for teachers and administrators, restricting personal chats while preserving classroom conversations, and how curriculum documents are used within class chats.
Teddy explains Flint's current moderation behavior, demonstrates the student view of a class, confirms that curriculum documents remain hidden from students while informing Sparky's responses, and discusses future improvements based on educator feedback.
The session concludes with an invitation for educators to continue sharing ideas and feature requests as Flint evolves throughout the school year.
