Claude and ChatGPT are the two most reliable AI tools for live teaching assistance during Zoom workshops — Claude for longer reasoning and drafting, ChatGPT for quick answers and real-time lookups. Both work in a browser tab alongside your Zoom session and respond in seconds.
Your AI Co-Pilot Sits in a Second Tab
Think of your AI tool the same way a pilot thinks about a co-pilot — it doesn’t fly the plane, but it handles the tasks that would distract you from flying. During a live Zoom session, that means your AI tool lives in a browser tab on your second screen (or minimized beside your slide deck) while you teach. When a student asks something you want to answer well, you type a quick prompt, scan the response, and share what’s useful.
Claude handles this well because it can hold a lot of context — you can paste your lesson outline at the start of your session and ask it to generate examples, summaries, or follow-up questions that are specific to what you’re teaching. ChatGPT is a close second and has the advantage of the browsing tool if you need current information mid-session.
What to Use Each Tool For
Claude is strongest for generating on-the-fly examples tailored to your niche, reframing complex ideas in simpler language, and drafting recap summaries at the end of breakout rooms. Ask it something like: “A student asked me why X is important. Give me a simple analogy that works for a 55-year-old consultant.” You’ll get something usable in under 10 seconds.
ChatGPT’s strength in live sessions is its speed and its ability to handle short factual questions. If a student asks for a tool recommendation or a statistic you don’t have memorized, ChatGPT retrieves it fast. Gemini is a reasonable alternative if you’re already in Google Workspace and want to keep things inside one ecosystem.
What This Means for Educators
As a coach or trainer running live sessions, you’re already managing a lot: watching the chat, reading body language on camera, staying on time, and responding to questions that don’t always come in the order you planned. Having an AI tool open doesn’t add to that load — it reduces it. Instead of struggling to come up with a perfect analogy under pressure, you have one in 10 seconds. Instead of fumbling through a tricky technical question, you can give a considered answer.
The key is setting up your AI prompt before the session starts, not during. A simple context brief — who your students are, what today’s lesson covers, and what tone you’re going for — primes the tool so every response it gives you fits your class.
The Simple Rule
Open Claude or ChatGPT in a tab before your Zoom session starts, paste your lesson outline as context, and let it sit ready. You won’t use it for every question — but when you need it, it will be there in seconds and you’ll look like you thought of it yourself. Once you build this habit, live sessions feel a lot less like improvisation and a lot more like facilitated conversation.