How can I support students' AI literacy?
AI literacy means knowing about AI and how it works. It starts with:
- The ability to engage with AI by leveraging AI tools, systems, and frameworks
- Thinking critically, using guiding questions, checking AI responses.
- Learning to navigate privacy risks and ethical considerations
AI Literacy starts with discussions about AI, such as:
- How can AI help solve real-world problems? What are the limitations?
- Should AI create art, music, or fiction? What are the pros and cons?
- If AI makes a mistake, who is responsible? How can we prevent harmful errors?
You may want to follow a similar path to your own learning journey: first, teach students how AI systems work and then explore the legal and ethical considerations together. This approach prepares students for life beyond school and helps protect them from future plagiarism accusations.
Note: Only use Generative AI tools with students if they are approved by your School Board. Students do not need to use AI platforms directly to learn about AI systems.
Teaching students how AI systems work
Resources and strategies for the classroom:
- Train Machine Learning models using Micro:Bit Create AI
- Explore Experience AI’s lessons, presentations, and more
- Explore Common Sense Media’s AI Literacy Lessons
- Explore tools for machine learning (English and French)
- New robots like Matatalab’s Vincibot can be used to explore the basics of AI through IoT and provide a Tiny Machine Learning (ML) Experience
- Tinker with Minecraft EDU AI Literacy lessons
Teaching about the ethical usage of AI
Resources and strategies for the classroom:
- AI discussion cards
- brainstorm and design a hypothetical AI tool(s), considering ethical guidelines like privacy, fairness, and accessibility
- Research different careers and how AI might impact those fields and reflect on ethical considerations
- Create a presentation on copyright laws and discuss how copyright terms may change due to generative AI systems
- Conduct a research project on AI’s environmental impacts and take a stance on what AI should and shouldn’t be used for
- Explore extracts of AI ethics policies, security and privacy measures
- Divide students into groups and have them debate a current event related to AI (e.g., the use of AI in autonomous vehicles or facial recognition technology).
Teaching about prompt writing
Resources and strategies for the classroom:
- Try our games for primary and secondary school students.
- Provide scenarios or example prompts that raise ethical concerns and have students brainstorm potential “guardrails” or ethical guidelines for prompt writing
- Have students pretend to be AI systems and give each other increasingly complex prompts, then discuss the importance of specific terms and prompt revisions
Teaching about assessing AI output
Resources and strategies for the classroom:
- Check out this Student infographic on spotting AI online (PDF by Government of Canada)
- Analyze different AI outputs that have been previously generated
- Have students create tools and guidelines to assess AI for accuracy and bias
- Practice cross-referencing and fact-checking teacher-generated materials
- Practice identifying subtle discriminatory language and biases (and excluding perspectives) in AI outputs
- Generate fake content related to a specific scientific concept or historical event, then have the students try to establish gaps or misinformation