Skip to content

AI transparency

AI transparency & user guide

Understand how TeachPie's AI works and make the most of it in your teaching.

Classification under the EU AI Act

The learning area with a learning companion and learning progress is a high-risk AI system under Annex III, point 3(b); the related obligations apply from 2 December 2027, and human oversight, logging and transparency are already in place. Planning and material creation for teachers are not a high-risk AI system. This handbook shows you the current technical and organizational status of our AI features, their limitations and the associated data processing.

Overview

TeachPie Teacher Handbook

With AI transparency documentation for schools and school authorities
Version: 3.5 · As of: 07.10.2026

This handbook has two parts. Part A is the guide to working with TeachPie, from your first sign-in to giving feedback to your students. Part B explains what happens behind the scenes: which AI is used, what is stored, who makes decisions, and what your school needs to regulate. Part B also serves as the transparency documentation that you can show to your school management or data protection officer.

Your students have their own age-appropriate version of this handbook. It appears in their learning area when they first log in and remains available in their account settings. You can review the published course version in the student view.

Part A — How to use TeachPie

A1 Ready to go in three steps

If this is your first time signing in, there are three steps before your class can work with TeachPie:

  • Create course. A course is your work unit, for example, “Biology · 5a”. Without a course, you only have standalone content.
  • Create lesson. Plan a topic or create materials right away. TeachPie AI works with you.
  • Add, assign and approve students. Share the join code, assign a topic to the class, and publish at least one unit or lesson. Students can only start the learning path once it has been assigned and published.

You can learn everything else later. If you’d prefer a guided start: in Settings, you’ll find under Tutorials the “TeachPie for Teachers” introduction, which guides you through the key areas directly in the interface.

A2 Your teaching area

The teaching area is your home screen. There you’ll find:

  • The sidebar brings together your courses, your content, and the most important links.
  • TeachPie at the top Takes you back to the lesson overview at any time.
  • The menu takes you to settings and the student view. Use the student view to check the published course as your students see it; preview data is kept separate from real student data.
  • TeachPie AI is your teaching conversation partner for questions and lesson planning.
  • Last created shows you new and recently edited content for quick access.
  • The library open via “All”. That's where you'll find your own content and the school-wide resource library.

A3 courses: private or school-provided

A course is always one class plus one subject. The course label shows both, for example, “Biology · 5a”. There are two types:

  • Private courses Create your own via “+” or “New course.” Choose a subject and grade level; everything else is generated automatically. Private courses belong to you, even if you’re a member of a school.
  • School courses is set up centrally by a school administrator under Settings > School > Administration and assigns them to teachers. You won't automatically see every course at your school, only the ones you're enrolled in.

If someone gave you a join code, select “Join course” instead when creating your account, then enter the code.

A4 Plan lessons and create materials

TeachPie thinks about teaching on four levels: Topic → unit → lesson → phase. You don't have to fill in every level, but they help because publishing, materials, learning paths, and progress depend on them.

Describe your project in a conversation with TeachPie AI, and TeachPie will suggest a structure, learning objectives, phases and materials. You decide what to use. You can refine, differentiate, rephrase or discard suggestions at any time.

Materials are created from your description, your planning context, or a photo or PDF. You can edit them in the editor, use AI to modify individual components, add exercises, fill-in-the-blanks, tables, images, and interactive elements, then print, export, or use the result digitally.

Important for solutions: TeachPie derives a student version without solutions from your author version. Solutions, rubrics, and internal diagnostics are not delivered to the student context.

A4b About me, learning group and memory suggestions

About me: Under Settings → Account → About me describe in a few bullet points how you teach and what matters to you, up to 750 characters. TeachPie uses this to tailor suggestions in conversations, lessons, units, course plans and materials. Only you can see the text. Don’t include names or contact details; if the text looks like it contains any, TeachPie will ask before saving. Saving it blank deletes it. TeachPie also offers you this step at the end of sign-up; you can skip it.

Learning group: For each course, you describe your learning group in the course overview, in the course menu or before the first course plan. TeachPie shortens longer descriptions to keywords; only the summary you confirm is saved. It shapes the course plan, units, lessons, materials and chat for the course. It is visible to teachers of that course, never to pupils. Describe the group, not individual people.

Suggestions to save information: If you explicitly say something about yourself or your learning group in the chat, such as “my 7b gets restless after break,” TeachPie first only keeps a short note of it. If you say it again, TeachPie suggests saving it in a small card below the reply. Only what you confirm with Save confirm; No thanks or continuing to type dismisses the suggestion. If you keep saying it after that, TeachPie asks one last time at most. The suggestion is added to About me or to the course’s learning group; if that would exceed 750 characters, you shorten it yourself. You can turn suggestions off under Settings → Account → About me.

Invite Year 5 pupils to your course

There are two actions for this in the course header: Add student opens the course members directly, Course settings leads, among other things, to Manage members. In the members dialog, you’ll find:

  • the Join code and the Invitation link for this course only,
  • one QR code to the same link,
  • open join requests that you can approve or reject,
  • active members you can remove from this course only.

For a lesson with children who don’t (yet) have an account, there is Learn with your class. You’ll find the button on every lesson, unit, resource and worksheet from the Marketplace; it requires TeachPie Pro. It opens a Round with a code and QR code. It stays open for 90 minutes, can be extended and can be ended at any time. Children without an account enter only their first name and start learning this specific lesson straight away, without waiting for approval. Children with an account sign in and learn in their own account. In the overview, you can see who has joined, how far everyone has progressed and who has finished; you can remove individual children from the session. All children’s AI use in the session counts towards your allowance. Work by children without an account is automatically deleted 14 days after the session ends; only the statutory AI Act supervision logs remain without names for six months (184 days). The former guest access through the course is no longer available.

A6 Assign and publish lesson

This is the step that’s easiest to overlook at first: A planned or merely assigned topic isn’t ready for students to start yet. Visibility happens in two stages.

  • Assign: Use “Assign topic” to assign a topic to your class. You can also assign it to specific individual learners or groups, for example, to differentiate instruction.
  • Publish: You can also publish, pause, or withdraw individual units and lessons. Publishing a unit also makes its existing and subsequently materialized lessons available; publishing an individual lesson applies only to that lesson.

Before publishing, it's worth taking a look at the Student view. There, you can check what can actually be started without generating real student progress or class diagnostics.

A7 See how things are going and respond

Once work gets underway, learning progress shows you how your class is doing: by topic, unit, lesson, and phase, with patterns across the group. To view individual pupils, open the School trip. The level of detail shown depends on your school's privacy policy.

Depending on the policy, you’ll see only the phase and approximate position, additional task and phase context, or the current work in progress. Drafts are directly viewable only if the school allows it; otherwise, a submission must have been recorded. These reports are observation aids, not grades or automated decisions.

You can set how much guidance the learning area gives your students for each course: from closely guided to open-ended.

A8 Exams and grading

You can provide tests, collect digital submissions, and have photographed or scanned pages uploaded. TeachPie supports you with transcription, rubrics, and a structured preliminary assessment that flags, for example, spelling, grammar, punctuation, expression, and calculation errors.

This explicitly remains a Pre-correction. It is a draft for you to review. You decide the grade; results only become visible to learners when you explicitly publish them.

A9 Find and share content

  • Library: your topics, units, lessons and materials, which you can organize in folders.
  • Resource collection: Content your staff has shared school-wide. You can open it and create private copies.
  • Marketplace: Worksheets created by our teachers in TeachPie, ready to search, download and add to your library. Only TeachPie can publish there; share with your colleagues through the Fundus.

A10 If you get stuck

  • Tutorials in the settings, the guides take you through the main areas right in the interface; you can restart them at any time.
  • What’s new? shows you product changes that affect your day-to-day work.
  • Feedback in the application or support@teachpie.de goes directly to our support team. Please also report incorrect or inappropriate AI outputs, especially if they affect pupils.

Part B — What happens behind the scenes

AI transparency

B1 What TeachPie is for

TeachPie is an assistant system. It generates suggestions, structures, drafts, guidance, and technically supported analyses. It is not designed to make autonomous decisions and is intended to make professional work easier, not shift responsibility. The final pedagogical, organizational, and assessment-related decisions rest with you, your school, and the other responsible parties.

Alongside you, pupils use TeachPie in the learning area, children without accounts take part in a “Learn with your class” round, school administrators manage school members and the school structure, and subject administrators manage individual courses expressly assigned to them. Membership in a class never automatically grants access to every course.

B2 Which AI is used

  • Central text and multimodal processing in the teaching and learning area: Microsoft Azure AI Foundry in Germany with the deployment gpt-6-luna. This includes, in particular, planning, material generation, tutoring support, analysis, and preliminary grading.
  • All other text and analysis processing also run through Microsoft Azure AI Foundry in Germany.
  • Speech recognition For voice input: Azure Speech in the EU. The transcript is then processed like a text input.
  • Text-to-speech for spoken explanations: Azure OpenAI Realtime by default, with Azure Speech as an explicitly configurable fallback, both in the EU.
  • Image generation for materials: Microsoft Azure AI Foundry in the EU.
  • Embeds for searching materials, documents, and curricula: Google Gemini Embedding in the EU.
  • Optical Character Recognition (OCR) in uploaded documents: on TeachPie’s own infrastructure.

Providers, models and model versions continue to evolve. We update this handbook to reflect material changes. AI-powered features are identified as such in the interface. When pupils first open the learning area, they are told that their learning companion uses artificial intelligence, and before their first voice input, they confirm that they want to talk to it (Art. 50(1) of the AI Act).

B3 What AI can't do well

  • Hallucinations and factual errors: Outputs may be inaccurate, incomplete, or inappropriately generalized, even when they sound convincing.
  • Recognition error: Handwriting, image quality, cropping, perspective, background noise, or foreign languages can impair text, image, and speech recognition.
  • Context dependence: The quality depends heavily on what you enter and the context you provide.
  • Bias and oversimplification: Models may contain unintended biases as well as subject-related and cultural oversimplifications.
  • Diagnostic uncertainty: Progress and competency indicators are based on observable activity signals and provide only an approximate picture of learning progress.
  • Availability: External model providers may occasionally become unavailable or behave differently after model updates.

Therefore, the following uses are not intended: autonomous, unsupervised decisions about learners' performance or behavior; final grades or disciplinary measures based solely on an AI result; use as a medical, psychological or legal expert system; entering unnecessary sensitive personal data in free-text fields; or use as the sole means of supervision during exams or care situations.

B4 Who decides

TeachPie prepares decisions; it doesn’t make them. Specifically:

  • You can edit, discard, regenerate, or overwrite AI-generated content.
  • You explicitly control assignment, publication, pausing and withdrawal; creating planned content alone does not make it visible to learners.
  • In the learning area, TeachPie monitors only the success criteria that you review, change and approve before the lesson, and records for each criterion, with supporting evidence, whether it was demonstrated. It adapts the learning path only within the scope you set (Narrow, Guided, Open). Each deviation states its reason; you can reverse it, override evidence and pause TeachPie for a person using “Only with me”.
  • TeachPie does not act externally on its own. It does not submit grades or communicate with parents or guardians.
  • Transcription, analysis and preliminary marking are support tools, no automatic final assessment. You or the responsible organization remain accountable for reviewing, assessing and providing feedback on the subject matter and legal compliance.

B5 What is stored and logged

Depending on the feature, inputs, chat histories, task submissions, learning space and notebook content, document and image excerpts, voice recordings for transcription, technical context data and model responses are processed. TeachPie follows the principle of data minimization, but cannot prevent someone from entering or uploading personal data.

  • Work in progress: Chats, progress, task attempts, learning-space pages, and notebook content are saved so work can continue after a reload or when switching devices. Images cropped from the learning space may be included to provide context for a learning step and may be sent to the model.
  • Compliance logging: A separate log is written asynchronously for completed AI interactions. The teaching area logs operational metadata only; input and output content remain empty there. The learning area also logs the triggering contribution and the tutor’s response in a technically length-limited form. Current asynchronous delivery does not yet have a complete end-to-end delivery guarantee.
  • Internal operational and quality logs: AI calls are also recorded internally for monitoring, error analysis, abuse detection, quality assurance and cost control. These logs may contain request and response content, image context provided, model and version details, token and cost values, and technical identifiers. Access is through internal, access-restricted tools and is limited to these purposes.
  • Language features: A voice recording is sent for transcription; the result is treated like a written message and saved with the chat history. The recording itself is not stored in the product as a permanent audio file. Text-to-speech generates audio for immediate playback.
  • Learn with class: A child without an account receives a placeholder account for the round, with no real email address, no name and no password; the first name is used only for participation. Their work is automatically and completely deleted 14 days after the round ends, rather than through the account-related deletion request. Only the AI Act supervisory logs remain without names for six months (184 days). All AI calls and worksheets for the round count toward your quota. Children with an account keep their learning path.
  • Learning group and memory suggestions: The learning group description is stored separately from course data and is deleted with the course; it is not included when copying or sharing. For a memory suggestion, your current message is sent together with About me and the learning group for comparison in a short, separate AI request, never the rest of the chat. The short form of a suggestion stays with the reply in the conversation so that TeachPie can recognize a repetition; it is deleted with the conversation, as well as when you save it or turn memory suggestions off.
  • About me: The text is kept separate from the rest of your profile and is deleted with the account. It is used only in the changing part of an AI request, never in saved planning preferences or materials, and is recorded in internal logs like other inputs. For pupils, it applies only once TeachPie and the school have enabled the feature; without a school, pupils must first confirm that they are at least 16 years old or that their parents agree. Information about pupils’ health, religion or origin cannot be saved.
  • Environments: Localhost and the shared dev system use the same dev data. Production and isolated tests are separate and must not mix dev and production data.

Model training: TeachPie does not use customer data to train its own base models. According to the published provider information and the enterprise-oriented configuration in use, submitted content is not used to train the general foundation models of these services. This does not categorically rule out technical processing, security filtering or, where applicable, temporary storage by the provider for misuse or quality control.

B6 What you see and what stays private

TeachPie distinguishes between learning paths assigned by you and private learning paths that pupils start themselves.

  • At assigned course content you can always see the learning progress that has been shared with you. Whether you can also open task and phase context, submitted work, the latest draft or the current work in progress depends on the school’s privacy policy.
  • Private learning paths are not included in teacher views. They do not appear in class overviews, student journeys or diagnostics, and are not assigned to a class later.
  • You can’t see your pupils’ “About me” text. TeachPie uses the text only for the learning companion, not for processes, overviews or diagnoses that you see.
  • Only teachers on the course can see the learning group. Pupils never see it.
  • Memory suggestions do not evaluate anyone. They only reflect what you said yourself. Students do not get memory suggestions.

The learning area tells pupils that their teacher may be able to view course assignments. Still, discuss openly which visibility level your school has chosen and when work in progress and feedback will become visible.

B7 What your school should regulate

  • Which subjects and grade levels TeachPie is used in.
  • Consent, information obligations and age-appropriate explanations.
  • Which teacher visibility settings apply to progress, assignments, drafts, and ongoing work.
  • Rules for exams and assessment situations, as well as for aids used when doing homework.
  • Current school and department administration roles; revoke access for departing people.
  • Whether a data protection impact assessment is required, and, from 2 December 2027, the fundamental rights impact assessment under Art. 27 of the AI Act.
  • Training teachers to use AI (Art. 4 of the AI Act) and informing pupils and parents about its use.

Classification under the AI Act (EU AI Act): TeachPie is the provider; the school is the deployer. The learning area with a learning companion and learning progress is a high-risk AI system under Annex III, point 3(b), because it determines whether success criteria have been demonstrated and thereby guides the learning path. Planning and material creation for teachers are not a high-risk AI system. Under Regulation (EU) 2026/1744, the obligations for high-risk AI systems apply from 2 December 2027; TeachPie already implements human oversight, logging and transparency. The classification, deployer information and schedule for the evidence are set out in the statement “AI Act: Classification, Deployer Information and Evidence”, which school administrators can download under Settings, School, Security. This handbook does not replace an independent legal review by the school or school authority.

Good everyday practice: check subject-relevant statements before use; use clear, factual prompts; limit documents and images to what is necessary; always review manually for assessments, support decisions and sensitive feedback; document how AI outputs were checked and approved in sensitive processes.

B8 Accounts, permissions and reporting channels

You can sign in using your email and password, Google, Microsoft, Eduplaces or a school-managed account. For extra security, multi-factor authentication is available; schools can make it mandatory for certain roles.

The Deleting your account you request this in your account settings. Access to your account will be blocked; for 30 days, you can withdraw the request using the link in the confirmation email or through datenschutz@teachpie.de withdraw it. An automated process then deletes the data in accordance with the deletion policy and confirms when deletion is actually complete. Any unresolved effects with providers or payments must be clarified beforehand. A personal subscription is cancelled at the end of its term; withdrawing the deletion request does not automatically reverse that cancellation. The authorized school handles school-administered accounts and pupil accounts belonging to a school through school administration. Statutory and school retention obligations remain in force.

Your data copy you can request under Settings, Account and download once it has been compiled: no more than one new package within 24 hours, available for seven days. For a school’s pupil accounts and school-managed accounts, the authorised school requests it. The team separately supplements Customer Support data from the internal OS within the statutory access time limit, generally one month. Your package does not include secrets or other people’s data.

Contracts and declarations: A new personal subscription receives an immutable confirmation containing your offer, service start date and complete Terms and Conditions. A cancellation or withdrawal submitted publicly is confirmed as an original and then reviewed; an email address provided on its own does not prove that it is linked to an account or that a refund has already been processed. Business originals and limited records of completed transactions are retained for their own specific purposes.

Your rights to access, rectification, erasure, restriction, data portability and objection exist independently of this handbook. Details about processing, responsibilities and legal bases are set out in the privacy policy. Send requests to kontakt@teachpie.de.

B9 What has changed

Version 3.5 of 07.10.2026

  • Classification under the AI Act added: learning area classified as a high-risk AI system under Annex III, point 3(b); obligations apply from 2 December 2027; reference to the statement on classification and evidence (as of 07.10.2026).
  • Human oversight in the learning area described: success criteria before activation, scope, reversing deviations, overriding evidence, “Only with me” (as of 07.10.2026).
  • Notice to pupils under Art. 50(1) of the AI Act and rounds without accounts instead of guest access in B1 added (as of 07.10.2026).

Version 3.4 dated 04.10.2026

  • Account deletion with a 30-day withdrawal period, data copy and school responsibility; supervision logs for six months (184 days), original confirmations and reviewed public declarations (as of 04.10.2026).

Version 3.3 dated 29.09.2026

  • Learning group: description for each course, shortened by TeachPie to key points and confirmed by you, visible only to teachers on the course (as of 29.09.2026).
  • Memory suggestions: You can accept explicit statements about you or your learning group in the chat with one tap; turn them off under About me (as of 29.09.2026).
  • You can now turn off brief first-time tips in Settings (as of 29.09.2026).

Version 3.2 dated 29.09.2026

  • About me: optional self-description for teachers and, once enabled by TeachPie and the school, for pupils; a prompt appears if names or contact details are included; delete it by clearing the field (as of 29.09.2026).

Version 3.1 dated 26.09.2026

  • AI providers updated: all text processing via Azure in Germany, image generation via Azure and speech via Azure in the EU, embeddings via Google Gemini Embedding in the EU, text recognition on our own infrastructure (as of 26.09.2026).
  • “Learn with your class” replaces guest access via the course: join a round with a code, learn without an account or individual approval, billing handled by the teacher, and deletion 14 days after it ends (as of 26.09.2026).
  • New structure: first, guidance for everyday work, followed by transparency documentation. The version previously made publicly available was primarily compliance documentation and did little to help people get started.
  • A tailored, age-appropriate version for pupils, accessible in the learning area and account settings.
  • Product wording corrected: The visible unit of work is called Course (class plus subject).
  • Clarified two-stage visibility based on assignment and publication, including inheritance of published units.
  • AI providers and active model paths checked against the current runtime state.
  • Compliance logging is kept separate from internal operational and quality logs, and today's delivery limit is disclosed.
  • Correction to information about voice recordings: Recordings are transcribed and are not stored in the product as permanent audio files.
  • Teacher access is differentiated according to the school’s data protection policy; private learning paths remain completely separate from teacher views.
  • Guest access, retention periods, environment boundaries, accounts, data subject rights and reporting channels added.
  • Consistent use of “you”, in keeping with the rest of the interface.

Version 2.0 dated 20.03.2026: first publicly released version with AI transparency documentation.