Tudor Lapp

Tudor Lapp

Pedagogy-first technology

I design training programmes, courses and mentoring for teachers, universities and institutions who want to use AI well in education, not just adopt it for show. Not because I have all the answers, but because I get to see what is working across thousands of classrooms, in Moldova and abroad, and I bring it back.

10,300+ teachers have been through the DigiProf courses at Clasa Viitorului, the national programme where I coordinate training and methodology12 schools · 4 countries · 1 principle

Member of SCIA, Moldova’s interministerial sub-council for artificial intelligence and applied research

Associate Expert
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Sound familiar?

Schools invest in technology. Governments launch digital strategies. Yet classrooms don't change. Here's why.

Technology without pedagogy fails

AI gets handed to a classroom with no pedagogical thinking behind it. Teachers get the tool, and nobody sits down with them to work out how it fits into a lesson.

One-shot training doesn't stick

A workshop happens. Teachers take notes. Monday comes and nothing changes. Without mentoring, portfolios, and sustained support, skills don't transfer to practice.

Buying devices ≠ transformation

Schools get tablets, smartboards, robots, and the institutional culture and teacher readiness are not there to meet them. Digital maturity is a human process. You cannot buy it.

This is what I work on, at national scale.

What I do

Three ways I can help

Three areas: programme design, hands-on training and research. Most projects I take on end up needing all three.

Learning Design & AI Consulting

I design programmes and AI strategies aligned with DigCompEdu: the structure, the learning materials, the portfolio tasks, the mentoring system underneath. All the way from national policy down to what happens in a lesson.

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Teacher Training at Scale

I build continuing professional development programmes designed to survive Monday morning: mentoring, portfolio-based assessment, follow-up that doesn't stop when the workshop ends. DigiProf Moldova, where I coordinate training and methodology and train the trainers, has taken over 10,300 teachers through its courses at Clasa Viitorului, against a national target of 19,000 by the end of the year.

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Speaking & Research

Conference papers, keynotes and workshops built on what I have implemented myself: AI in education, teacher digital competence, school digital transformation, instructional design at scale.

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Teachers through the DigiProf courses
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Trained directly in AI
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Workshop participants
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School leaders trained
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Schools transformed
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DigiEduHack editions
Proof

Flagship projects

Real programmes. Real scale. Real outcomes. Click to expand.

National Programme

DigiProf Moldova

Ministry of Education and Research & UNICEF · 2023 – Present

10,300+ teachers · 3 levels · national

Challenge
Moldova needed a national system for developing teacher digital competence, something structured enough to reach 19,000 teachers, the national target for the programme, with consistent quality, aligned to DigCompEdu, not just a series of one-off workshops.
Approach
I co-designed the three-level programme (DigiProf A, B, C) with the Tallinn University team and piloted it, then supervised and coordinated the training of trainers, the methodology, and the development of the programme and its course materials: the learning materials, the portfolio tasks, the digital pedagogical scenarios, the feedback mechanisms, the mentoring structures underneath all of it.
Result
Over 10,300 teachers went through the DigiProf courses at Clasa Viitorului between December 2025 and May 2026, per the Ministry of Education and Research, against a national target of 19,000 by the end of the year. Certification itself is issued by CTICE, not by the programme. The programme is now the national standard for teacher digital competence development.
School Transformation

Digital Accelerator

CNIDE Clasa Viitorului · 2025 – Present

12 schools · 60 mentors · 12 meta-mentors

Challenge
Schools had the digital tools. What they didn't have was the institutional capacity to actually use them: the hardware arrived, the human development didn't.
Approach
A 12-school programme combining Digital Mirror self-assessment, school-level planning, mentoring structures and meta-mentoring for the local people who carry the change.
Result
12 schools building their own digital maturity roadmaps. A mentoring ecosystem that ties individual teacher development to institutional change, instead of treating them as separate problems.
Evidence
Platform

DigiPuls

Own product · 2026 – Present

19 indicators · 4 domains · 3 languages

Challenge
A school’s digital maturity was whatever the person filling in the form said it was. There was no way to see where the leadership and the teaching team disagreed, no evidence attached to a rating, and no record of who judged what.
Approach
I built the instrument as software: 19 indicators across four domains, six levels each, the administration and the team assessing separately so the gap between them is the finding. Evidence attaches to a rating, a confirmed cycle cannot be edited afterwards, and every action is in an audit log. The whole instrument exists in Romanian, Russian and English, not just the buttons around it.
Result
Running at digipuls.lappsus.com, the software implementation of the Moldova Digital School Framework, replacing the earlier Oglinda Digitală. Real schools are being onboarded. Public pages show a school only when it opts in, and then only a domain-level band, never a person’s name.
Evidence
EU Programme

DigiEduHack Moldova

European Commission · CNIDE · 2023 – 2026

4 editions · since November 2023

Challenge
A hackathon is easy to run once and hard to make mean anything. Moldova had no standing route from a room full of students and teachers with an idea about learning to a European audience for it.
Approach
I organised and hosted four consecutive editions, starting with a 24-hour hackathon in November 2023, and wrote the challenges myself so they came from real classroom problems rather than from what sponsors wanted to see. I am the named contact for Moldova on the European platform and I go to the organiser meetings, which is how the winners get looked at outside the country.
Result
Four editions, each with its challenge published on the European platform under Moldova’s name, and a cohort of teachers who have now run this format themselves.
International

Platforma EDUCAȚIE

UNDP Moldova with PRO DIDACTICA · EU confidence-building measures · 2024

Both banks of the Nistru · trainer of trainers

Challenge
Teaching and management staff on both banks of the Nistru needed the same training on AI in the classroom, in a programme where the two sides are deliberately brought into the same room. Anything that read as coming from one bank would have failed on the other.
Approach
I trained the trainers rather than the teachers, so the programme could carry on without me, and built the sessions around classroom tasks that are the same on either bank.
Result
Trainers on both banks running AI-in-the-classroom sessions, inside the EU confidence-building measures programme run by UNDP Moldova with PRO DIDACTICA.
University AI Training

AI for Higher Education

ASEM & USM · 2024 – 2025

160+ university teaching staff · 2 institutions

Challenge
University professors didn't need another tool demo. They needed a real framework for using generative AI in teaching and research, including the uncomfortable part: what it does to academic integrity.
Approach
I designed training covering AI in teaching, AI in research, and academic integrity in the context of large language models: the pedagogy and the ethics together, not as an afterthought.
Result
Over 160 university professors trained across two institutions. The model is now being reused for ongoing faculty development.
International

Pedagogy-First AI — Euneos

Euneos, Tallinn, Estonia · 2025

Multi-country cohort · Erasmus+

Challenge
International educators needed an AI integration framework that started from learning outcomes, not from whatever the tool happened to be good at.
Approach
I delivered the Pedagogy-First AI course: practical workshops on responsible, critical, pedagogically grounded AI use in teaching.
Result
A multi-country cohort worked through the framework together. The approach held up outside the Moldovan context I originally built it for. That is the real test.
Evidence
Courses

What I teach

Four courses of my own that can be booked, then the programmes that still run, and the ones delivered inside projects that have since closed. Each is designed for a single group and a single problem, then run: none is an off-the-shelf course with the client’s name changed.

Curriculum

„AI, de fapt” · AI, Actually

Adults with no technical background · Romanian

Evenings of sixty minutes, four to a block, and you take the blocks you need. The structure follows UNESCO’s AI competency framework adapted for adults, and it aims at practised rather than independent: someone who has used the thing with their own work in front of them, not someone who has heard it explained.

Team programme

AI in writing funding proposals

Teams who already write proposals · Romanian · in person

Three consecutive days of two hours, six contact hours in all. Each day starts from the artefact the last one produced. This is not proposal writing with AI added on top; it is AI for people who already write proposals, which decides everything else about how the three days are built.

Single session

Generative AI safely, inside a public institution

Public bodies · Romanian · 90 minutes

Ninety minutes is not enough for data protection law, account configuration, data hygiene and document checking, so the session does not pretend otherwise. It picks the few things that change what someone does on Monday and leaves the rest documented for later.

Guest lecture

Your notes, as a system

First-year students, non-programmers · Romanian · 90 minutes

Built for a first-year electronics cohort at the Technical University of Moldova, where almost nobody codes. That constraint decides everything: no part of it asks them to write code, and no technical term appears before something concrete has earned it. The AI half only starts once the folder exists, because an assistant reading an empty folder is a demo, not a method.

Courses available now

These I still run. Some are accredited in the national continuing-education catalogue, so a school can enrol its staff through the ordinary route. The rest are part of my regular teaching work.

Delivered in projects that have closed

Programmes I designed and delivered inside projects that have finished. The courses above took their shape from them. A new run would mean a new agreement.

Explore the journey

From software engineering in London to national education policy in Moldova. The timeline runs four parallel directions on one time axis; the capability map answers what I can do rather than when I did it.

Eight areas of work. Open one to see what it covers, how deep it goes, and what backs it up.

On stage

Speaking & events

I speak and run workshops from what I have implemented myself. Recent and upcoming:

June 2026

Tekwill Expo Day — EdTech Forum

Chișinău, panellist on „AI în educație: de la buzzword la instrument esențial în clasă”, with UNICEF and the executive director of UiPath Romania, inside Moldova Digital Summit

May 2026

Săptămâna Educației 2026

Ministry of Education and Research: AI and the future of pedagogy, co-presented with Prof. Mart Laanpere of Tallinn University, plus the Digital Accelerator and an applied-physics workshop with Arduino

January 2025

Bett UK 2025, London

8th International TeachMeet: „Enhancing student engagement via integrating generative AI & human values”

2025

Euneos — Tallinn and PRORA

Named co-trainer on the Pedagogy-First AI course with Prof. Mart Laanpere, and expert consultation at PRORA, Berlin and Rügen

2023 – 2026

DigiEduHack Moldova

Organiser and host, four editions: challenge host on the European platform and a participant in the European organiser meetings

2025 – 2026

America House Chișinău

Nine dated programmes: AI for teachers of English, Teach Freedom 250, the America250 Youth Innovation Labs, and online presence for school directors

November 2024

V International Pedagogical Forum, Comrat

Plenary keynote on IT as a driver of the modern educational environment, to participants from eleven countries

Where I have been

I have delivered in four countries: Moldova, Estonia, Germany and the United Kingdom. To the others I mostly go to listen.

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Writing & research

What I have written

Training ends when the session ends. Writing is how the thinking survives it.

I am working on thirty-five more pieces, on AI in education, digital safety, assessment and parenting online.

Feedback

From people I've worked with

What programme participants, partners and collaborators said.

Tudor’s approach is consistently pedagogical rather than merely technical — he focuses on how digital tools support teaching, learning, assessment, and learner agency. His capacity to think systemically, understanding digital transformation as leadership, mentoring, and institutional culture rather than isolated training, is one of his strongest qualities.

Victoria Belous
Director, National Centre for Digital Innovations in Education “Clasa Viitorului”

Tudor has distinguished himself through his ability to connect academic knowledge with applied educational practice. He understands that digital technologies shouldn’t be treated as isolated tools, but as part of a broader pedagogical, institutional, and cultural transformation — and he has helped build a more dynamic, future-oriented academic culture here.

Alexandra Barbăneagră
Rector, State Pedagogical University “Ion Creangă” of Chișinău

Tudor has consistently promoted a pedagogically meaningful approach to digitalisation — not the technical use of tools, but how they improve teaching, learning, and inclusion. He understands classroom realities, but also sees the broader systemic conditions that determine whether innovation actually becomes sustainable.

Irina Gîncu
Education Programme Officer, UNICEF Moldova

If something here fits what you are working on

I work on programme design, consulting, training and speaking. Tell me what you need solved and I will tell you honestly whether I am the right person. If I am not, I will tell you who is.

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For programme design, AI integration strategy, digital competence frameworks, or institutional transformation.

Get in touch

Invite me to speak

Keynotes, workshops, panel discussions, or training sessions on AI in education, digital transformation, and pedagogy-first technology.

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