🗑 5 "by the way" lessons to use

😊 Prepare students for an AI future

The future is changing rapidly. AI is going to be a big part of it.

How do we prepare students for that future?

My book, AI for Educators, has a whole chapter about preparing students for an AI-integrated world — steps we can take now to start preparing students for their future.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Chock full of ideas, it is a great resource for educators at all levels who are curious about AI and it’s potential impact on teaching and learning. Highly recommend! — Dr. Todd Schmidt via Amazon

Get AI for Educators in paperback or Kindle ebook on Amazon.

💡 THE BIG IDEA 💡

🤖 Teaching students AI (without teaching AI)

AI is becoming more and more capable. It’s becoming a bigger part of work — in the workforce and in schools.

It’s a reality that we’re going to have to confront — and a part of our students’ future we’ll have to help them prepare for.

Here’s the issue, though …

Many of us don’t teach computer science. AI isn’t part of our standards.

What can we do — especially if we believe that students need guidance on AI but we don’t have a degree in it?

A great place to start is “by the way” lessons.

This is something that ANY teacher can use — and it doesn’t take much prep work at all to be ready for them.

💭 What is a “by the way” lesson?

It refers to small, impromptu insights that educators share with students during teaching moments.

• These lessons are not planned as full instructional sessions but are inserted naturally into conversations or teaching interactions.

• “By the way” lessons are like little nuggets of wisdom that educators sprinkle into their teaching to enhance students’ understanding and engagement.

If a topic comes up and you want to make a quick point about AI to students, just say, “oh, by the way, did you know that …”.

👨🏼‍🏫 How I used “by the way” lessons in my own class

In my high school Spanish classes, I used AI-generated images to get my students talking and describing things in Spanish.

But I wanted to make sure they knew those images were AI-generated.

Why?

• So they weren’t deceived into thinking they were real images.

• So they were better equipped to pick out what’s real and what’s not.

• So they saw an adult modeling full disclosure of AI-generated content in a responsible way.

So, I said …

“Did you know that AI can make images? You can usually spot little odd things in them that tell you that they’re not real. And if you use them, it’s good to let people know that they’re AI-generated.”

(In that instance, I didn’t say “by the way” because it was a central part of my message that day — and not just a passing idea.)

Then, I showed them my AI-generated images … and each time, before we started describing them in Spanish, I had them pick out the “AI weirdness” so they were better equipped to identify AI-generated images in the future.

Quick, short little interactions. Only took a minute or two.

But it gave them a practical lesson on how real people were using AI in real, responsible ways.

💡 5 “by the way” lessons

• By the way, did you know that AI makes mistakes? They’re called “hallucinations.” Sometimes, if you tell an AI model it’s wrong, even if it’s wrong, it says it’s right, so be careful.

• By the way, did you know that you can use AI assistants as your own personal tutor? If you have questions or need explanations, it can help.

• By the way, did you know that when you prompt an AI assistant, you don’t have to get the prompt right the first time? You can ask it follow-up questions to get more information.

• By the way, did you know that it’s still good to practice to write (and other subjects) even though AI is good at it? You might not always use AI, and it helps you know if the AI response is any good.

• By the way, did you know that sometimes it’s hard to find the line between “just enough AI” and “too much AI”? Reflect on how you think it went afterward and try to do better next time.

☝🏼 Why is this important?

If you’re like me, you want students to better understand this technology. You want to prepare them for a world where it’s being used.

But you probably have lots to cover in class and can’t stop for a whole day or a whole unit on AI.

These “by the way” lessons help students understand how AI works in little chunks of 30-seconds, 1-minute, etc.

You can come up with your own “by the way” lessons, too.

If you learn something that surprises you — or changes how you view your use of AI in your own life — remember it … and be ready to insert it into instruction in a short line or two.

💼 More AI teacher resources

Our AI Teacher Toolkit is full of teaching ideas and resources to support your work as an educator. It’s a free resource we provide for subscribers to the newsletter.

It includes …

• 40 AI tools for teachers

• AI prompt examples

• “By the way” lessons

• 5 ways parents can use AI at home

• AI lesson plans and units

🛠 Get the AI Teacher Toolkit here

🎁 BONUS: Even more resources

The toolkit is just one of several free ebooks you get when you subscribe to the email newsletter.

These ebooks are packed full of practical teaching ideas you can use in class tomorrow.

📚 Get the whole set of free ebooks here

🗄 TEMPLATE 🗄

✍️ Empower writers with the Frankenbot template

Want to empower your struggling writers to improve?

Want them to make decisions as a writer to level up their skills — without the burden of writing a full essay?

The “Frankenbot” template can help them!

Use an AI assistant (ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, Anthropic Claude) to generate three example essays or writings about a topic. Ask it to make the examples different in some way.

Paste those examples into the Frankenbot template (above). Leave the final page blank.

Assign it to students. Have them read the examples. Then, they choose parts of the examples that they like and use them to create their final version.

Ask students to reflect on the process, talking about how they made their decisions, what they liked, how they would do it differently.

It’ll get your reluctant writers going — and get them some practice — without having to write the whole thing themselves.

✍️ Make a copy of the Frankenbot template (Google Slides / PowerPoint)

👋 How we can help

There are even more ways I can support you in the important work you do in education:

1. Read one of my six books about meaningful teaching with tech.

2. Take one of our online courses about practical and popular topics in education.

3. Bring me to your school, district or event to speak. I love working with educators!