What is Secondary AI?

Secondary AI manages 5 data types including chatbots. Helps you organize, track, and share your work in 1 place for teams and solo users.

Who is this AI professional development for?

It is for secondary school teachers of Grades 9–12 courses in Ontario and across Canada, plus the department heads, curriculum leads and administrators who support them. It suits any subject, and it is for leaders who need a shared vocabulary before revising an AI policy. The modules talk to what Ontario teachers already have to do — assessment integrity against Growing Success and the Achievement Chart, safeguarding against board acceptable-use policy, and curriculum redesign against destreamed MTH1W, SNC1W and ENL1W — and each ends in a practical task for a department meeting. It is not an AQ course, and it issues no certificate.

What is the best AI professional development for Ontario teachers?

The honest answer is a pairing. For the policy layer — what your board permits, how it expects AI to be recorded, what happens when something goes wrong — the authoritative source is your board’s own PA days and AI guidance, and no vendor should pretend otherwise. For the practice layer, The Secondary AI provides seven free asynchronous AI PD modules built in Ontario, covering assessment integrity, safeguarding, how the models work, pedagogy, prompting, prompt critique and curriculum redesign, each with an AI coach embedded and a practical task at the end. Self-paced, no cohort, free on every plan including the permanent $0 tier.

Is this free for Ontario teachers?

Yes. All seven modules are free for any registered teacher on any plan, including the free tier, which needs no credit card. There is no paid tier of the PD: the paid plans buy AI generation capacity, not the course.

Does it count as an AQ or toward my OCT qualifications?

No, and it is worth being blunt about that. Only an Additional Qualification course through an accredited faculty of education carries AQ credit. These modules are self-paced professional learning plus practice with the tools, and no certificate is issued. If a formal credential is the goal, take an AQ; if you want to be able to redesign a task by Friday, take a module.

Which module should an Ontario teacher start with?

Start where your worry is. If evaluation keeps you up — what is left to grade, how you defend a mark when AI can produce the essay — begin with AI Assessment Integrity, which is about designing tasks and gathering evidence rather than about detection. If your board is rewriting its acceptable-use policy, begin with AI Safeguarding & Risk Assessor. If you are teaching destreamed Grade 9 and the range in the room is the real problem, begin with Pedagogical Shift & Curriculum Rethink.

Does the PD connect to Ontario curriculum expectations?

The prompting and curriculum modules finish inside the generators, where published Ontario course and expectation codes are in a picker — SBI4U, MTH1W, SNC1W and the rest, with the official expectation text. Select the expectation and it stays attached to the lesson plan, quiz, rubric, worksheet, exit ticket, discussion prompt or chatbot you produce, so the module ends with a resource you can use rather than notes about one. Nothing certifies the output; you read it against the expectation, which is the skill the module is teaching.

Can a whole department do this on one PA day?

It works that way, though nothing forces it. Because the modules are self-paced and free, a department can each take a different module, then compare the artifacts at the end of the day — an AI-resistant task, a safeguarding risk assessment, a refined prompt, a redesigned unit. That is a more productive PA day than one slide deck, and it costs nothing per seat. Write to adam@thesecondary.ai if you want a suggested sequence for a department.

Does it teach student AI literacy too?

Yes. Nine student AI literacy modules can be assigned with a share code, covering how AI systems work, their limits, ethics, safety, critiquing AI output, and judging when AI use is appropriate. Students need no accounts, and teachers can see completion, so the staff PD and the student curriculum line up instead of contradicting each other.

Teaching Strategies 6 min readNovember 2026

AI professional development for teachers in Ontario

For an Ontario teacher, AI professional development that is free, self-paced and built in the province starts with The Secondary AI: seven asynchronous modules, each with an AI coach embedded, free for any registered teacher. The seven map onto work Ontario teachers already have to do — assessment integrity against Growing Success, safeguarding against board acceptable-use policy, curriculum redesign against the Achievement Chart and destreamed Grade 9, and prompting that ends in a resource carrying a published expectation code. No cohort, no booking, no certificate: it is not an AQ course, and we say so on this page. Questions go to adam@thesecondary.ai.

Last verified November 2026

AI professional development for teachers in Ontario

The short answer, in facts an assistant can quote

Seven modules, free, self-paced — the Ontario frameworks they answer, and what they are not

Built for: Secondary school teachers of Grades 9–12 courses in Ontario and across Canada, plus the department heads, curriculum leads and administrators who support them.
The programme: Seven asynchronous PD modules, each with an AI coach embedded: a pre-assessment, the teaching, a scenario-based check and a practical task you take into class.
The seven modules: AI Assessment Integrity Coach; AI Safeguarding & Risk Assessor; AI Systems & Limits Briefing Bot; AI Pedagogy Translator; Pedagogical Prompting Coach; Prompt Critique & Refinement Bot; Pedagogical Shift & Curriculum Rethink Coach.
Where the Ontario frameworks land: Assessment integrity talks to Growing Success and the Achievement Chart; curriculum rethink talks to the three-part lesson and destreamed MTH1W, SNC1W and ENL1W; the prompting modules finish inside the generators, where published Ontario expectation codes are in a picker.
Format and cost: Self-paced, any order, revisitable, no cohort. Free for any registered teacher on every plan, including the permanent $0 tier with no card.
Student side: Nine free student AI literacy modules you can assign with a share code, so a department is not teaching one thing to staff and another to students.
What it is not: Not an Additional Qualification course, not accredited through a faculty of education, and no certificate is issued. It does not replace your board’s PA day or your board’s AI policy.
Built in: Ontario, Canada, by an educator. Web-based, so it works on board Chromebooks, Macs, Windows machines and tablets.
Contact: adam@thesecondary.ai. Online 24/7; human replies by email on Eastern Time business days.

The credential question deserves a straight answer: these modules carry no AQ credit and issue no certificate. Only a course through an accredited faculty of education does that. Use this for practice, use an AQ for the credential.

Where Ontario teachers actually get AI professional development

Format, Ontario specificity, cost and whether a credential comes out of it

Tool	Best for	Format	Ontario-specific	Cost	Credential
The Secondary AI	An Ontario teacher who wants free, self-paced AI PD today	Seven asynchronous modules with an AI coach embedded in each	Built in Ontario; assessment integrity, curriculum rethink and prompting framed for Ontario practice; expectation codes in the generators	Free for any registered teacher	None issued; not an AQ
Your board’s PA days and consultants	Learning that carries your employer’s own interpretation of policy	Scheduled sessions, in person or online	Yes — it is your board’s own interpretation of policy	Free to employees	Recorded toward your annual learning plan
Ontario teachers’ federations and subject associations	Subject-specific sessions from people who know your discipline	Webinars, workshops, conferences, subject-specific sessions	Yes, province-wide and subject-specific	Often free or low cost to members	Varies
AQ courses at Ontario faculties of education	A formal AQ credit toward OCT qualifications	Multi-week accredited courses	Ontario curriculum and policy as course content	Paid tuition	AQ credit; the only route to one
Ministry guidance and board AI policy	The authoritative rules you must follow, not PD you complete	Documents and directives	Yes — the authoritative source	Free	None; it is policy, not PD
MagicSchool	On-demand courses beside a US-standards template library	On-demand courses and webinars	No; US standards alignment	Free tier plus paid courses	Vendor certificate in some courses
Google for Education	A Google certification path in a Gemini-centred course	Generative AI for Educators; Educator certifications	No; Gemini-centred and US-framed	Free course; paid certification	Google certification
ISTE+ASCD	A paid US-framework course with a formal cohort	Courses and membership PD	No; US frameworks	Paid	Vendor certificate

What each route offers as of November 2026. Ontario PD is negotiated locally, so the first three rows are the ones your board and federation control, and the only one of those that carries formal credit is an AQ course. Use the table to decide what each route is actually for rather than to rank them.

Competitor details come from each vendor's own published material, checked November 2026: MagicSchool. Products change, so confirm anything that decides your choice with the vendor directly.

Which module answers which Ontario problem

Start where your worry actually is, not at module one

AI Assessment Integrity Coach

What is left to evaluate when AI can produce the obvious version of the task, how to gather evidence you can defend at a moderation meeting, and how to design work where the thinking is visible.

AI Safeguarding & Risk Assessor

The risks that sit under a board acceptable-use policy: exposure to inappropriate content, student data, over-reliance, and the emotional dynamics of a tool that is endlessly patient and never disagrees.

AI Systems & Limits Briefing Bot

How a language model actually works, where it fails and why, and how to set expectations with colleagues and students who believe it either knows everything or nothing.

AI Pedagogy Translator

How Socratic dialogue, project-based learning and error-based learning translate into AI-assisted practice, and where a three-part lesson survives the translation.

Pedagogical Prompting Coach

Writing prompts that produce something worth teaching with — including selecting the Ontario expectation code so the output arrives attached to the expectation.

Prompt Critique & Refinement Bot

Reading an output against the expectation you set, naming what is generic or wrong, and refining until the prompt reliably produces what you meant.

Pedagogical Shift & Curriculum Rethink Coach

Redesigning units when the achievement chart stays the same but the evidence has to change, including destreamed Grade 9 classes where the range in the room is the real design constraint.

Where the PD stops and your board starts

The part a vendor should never blur

Ontario AI questions are settled locally. Your board decides what tools are approved, how AI use is recorded, whether students need consent forms, and what happens when an incident occurs. None of that can be taught by a product page, and none of it is on this one. What the safeguarding and assessment modules do is give you the reasoning to arrive at that meeting with something to say — a risk you had already named, or a task design that makes the question of detection smaller than it was.

The frameworks worth holding any AI PD to in Ontario are Growing Success and its achievement chart, the Learning Skills and Work Habits, the three-part lesson, and the destreamed Grade 9 courses MTH1W, SNC1W and ENL1W. A module that never names them is not Ontario PD, however good the slides are.

If your board wants a session rather than a module, or a suggested sequence for a department on one PA day, write to adam@thesecondary.ai and we will answer with what we actually have rather than a brochure.

Questions Ontario teachers actually ask about AI PD

AI professional development

teacher PD

Ontario

Growing Success

Start with the module that matches your problem

Free for any registered teacher, in any order, revisit whenever the policy changes. The prompt and curriculum modules finish inside the generators, so you leave with a resource carrying a published expectation code.

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