🗑️ 10 ways get students AI ready

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💡 THE BIG IDEA 💡

🤖 10 ways to incorporate AI literacy into any classroom

The predictions about the impact of AI on the future workforce and world are huge.

Goldman Sachs predicts that AI will both create and replace millions of jobs by 2030.

Bill Gates calls AI the “biggest technical advance of my lifetime.”

It already feels like it’s moving so fast — and it won’t be slowing down any time soon.

So … what does this mean for us in the classroom?

You might want to help prepare students to thrive in this AI future …

… but if you don’t teach computer science, you might think it’s outside of your control.

You believe this is important to prepare students for the future, but what can you do?

There’s still so many ways to promote AI literacy in any regular classroom.

Today, I’m going to share with you the ACE Framework — an AI literacy framework I’ve co-created with Holly Clark to help schools and teachers.

I’ll share 10 practical ways that any classroom teacher can promote AI literacy.

📚 MY AI BOOK: I wrote about the impact of AI in the classroom — with practical applications and real talk about academic integrity — in my book, AI for Educators. 

👀 BONUS: I’ve been unpacking the ACE Framework section-by-section in AI for Admins, a weekly email newsletter for anyone guiding AI decisions in schools. I’ll share a link to read to those previous newsletters below.

ACE Framework Part 1: Awareness

“Awareness” is all about showing students the nature of AI and what it’s capable of. When you know a handful of things about how AI works, you better understand its outputs and how it behaves.

Here are some simple ways you can bring AI awareness to any classroom:

1. Google and ChatGPT aren’t the same. A Google search helps you find pages on the web with keywords. ChatGPT (and other similar AI assistants) make their best statistical guesses using data and training.

• Classroom application: When students say “I looked it up online,” help them know the difference — and use the right tool.

2. ChatGPT isn’t made to do everything. ChatGPT (and other AI assistants like it) are bad at math … but that’s because they aren’t made to do math. They’re made to predict the next word in a sentence over and over again, letting them do impressive things with text. (It’s incredible that large language models like ChatGPT have learned to do math at all!) It’s the same reason that AI image generators don’t reproduce text in images well.

• Classroom application: Encourage students not to use AI tools to do things they’re not made to do — or be prepared to fact check them.

3. AI models are all different. Plug the same prompt / question into several AI assistants (i.e. ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, Anthropic Claude) and you’ll get different responses. Then, give it the same prompt a second time and its answer will be different again. AI models do the work uniquely every single time — and their responses vary.

• Classroom application: If students are using AI models, encourage them to use multiple AI tools and see how their responses are different — and then use the one that suits them best.

ACE Framework Part 2: Critique

“Critique” is something we should all be doing with AI all the time. We need to stay vigilant. We should be asking questions about everything, from the tiniest prompt to the big picture ways AI fits in society.

Here are some ways you (and your students) can grow into more savvy, responsible, ethical users of AI.

4. Watch out for “hallucinations.” This is when AI gives you information it calls accurate — but it’s actually inaccurate. Many times, it happens when the AI model doesn’t have much information in its dataset about your topic — but it makes its best guess anyway.

• Classroom application: Encourage students to double-check anything they’re unsure of or that looks incorrect.

• Classroom application: If students interact with AI, be sure they’ve learned foundational understandings from a vetted, respected source first. That way, if hallucinations happen, they’re more likely to notice.

5. Help students understand AI bias. AI isn’t neutral. It has biases, tendencies, and places where it is imbalanced. It has to make judgment calls, and it often relies on statistical percentages to make its best guess. Sometimes, those statistical majorities leave minorities underrepresented. Most people talk about racial and gender bias in AI most, but it shows up in anything where there are multiple options (i.e. coffee roasts, vacation destinations, etc.). Here’s a clear example of gender and racial bias in an AI image generator.

• Classroom application: When students see AI-generated material (text, images, video, etc.), ask them what assumptions the AI made — or biases it exhibits.

6. Keep your personal data secure. AI models thrive on data. The more quality data they get, the better they perform. Certain AI models can learn from and train on any information we share with them (especially free commercial AI models). And if they do, what they learn from our information could be passed on to others.

• Classroom application: Encourage students not to share personally identifying information with AI models.

7. Protect energy and other resources. AI models are resource intensive. For them to run effectively, they need energy to run and water to cool down the systems. Just like water and electricity, we shouldn’t be wasteful with our AI use. I think of it this way. I won’t turn on the water faucet and just let it run … so I shouldn’t just run AI prompts over and over again that are unnecessary.

• Classroom application: Encourage students not to use AI wastefully to protect resources.

ACE Framework Part 3: Exploration

“Exploration” is all about creating and using AI to help us be more productive and creative. We can use AI as our co-creator, our collaborator, and our thought partner. Understanding balance — how much AI use is OK, how much is too much — is a life skill students will wrestle with for the rest of their lives.

8. Put human thought first. Sure, AI can write a first draft for you, but should it? If we do our own thinking first — and then augment it with artificial intelligence — we’re developing our cognitive, reasoning, and creative skills.

• Classroom application: If students are going to use AI, encourage them to use it to augment their own thinking (instead of replacing it).

9. Use AI to challenge your thinking. There’s a ton of talk about how AI can eliminate thinking. Let’s use it to level up our thinking. We can use it to come alongside us to push our human thinking and abilities to new levels.

• Classroom applications: Use an AI model to poke holes in your argument … to help you improve your writing … to challenge your existing ideas and debate you. But you have to have the human thinking and work there first to make it happen!

10. Use AI to explore curiosity. In the moment that we’re curious about something, AI can help us satisfy that curiosity.

• Classroom application: Have an AI model handy to ask questions, to explore curiosities. Then analyze the responses to see if they’re factual and helpful.

🗄 TEMPLATE 🗄️

🎨 Pre-made templates for visual learning in FigJam

Are you using FigJam yet? It’s a fantastic digital whiteboard tool with tons of pre-made templates to get you started.

At the TCEA Conference in Austin, Texas, I shared some of my favorite pre-made templates, including:

• Getting to Know Me with Emojis

• Historical Figure Hero Card

• Pause, Play, Refresh (Brain Breaks)

• Scroll Through Time (Instagram Posts)

• Croc Charm Factory

• Emoji Kitchen

👋 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!