AI Literacy in the Classroom: My Pro-D Day Takeaways

If you’ve been keeping up with my blog this semester, you’ll know this topic actually ties in perfectly with my second post! Today I signed up for the “Student AI Literacy Lessons K-12” professional development day zoom session hosted by Focused Education Resources. This session dived deeper into how we can actually teach AI literacy to students from K-12.

The speaker, Cari Wilson, spoke about how we have to be honest with our students about artificial intelligence. AI seems like magic sometimes and has some amazing perks, but there are definitely some red flags too. She mentioned that as teachers it is a responsibility we must take on to ensure our students are prepared for the world of AI, but she also talked about how school districts and schools in general need to be creating policies and guidelines on how to support teachers and students during this time of change. She stated that we need to make sure students have access to AI in a way that’s safe and regulated, rather than just leaving them to figure it out on their own.

What We Need to Be Teaching

In the zoom session, Cari mentioned a few things that need to be taught to students about AI:

• The Planet: We don’t always think about it, but AI has a real-world environmental footprint. It’s important for students to see how much energy it uses compared to other things.
• Privacy: Digital safety is huge. Students need to know the risks of giving away personal info and how their data is actually being used by these companies.
• AI Makes Mistakes: We have to teach kids that AI isn’t always right. It can “hallucinate” or just get facts flat-out wrong. If they don’t double-check the work it produces, there can be some pretty big consequences.
• Academic Integrity: This is the big one. We need to have open chats about where the line is between using AI as a tool and using it to cheat.

The best part of the session was that Cari didn’t just give us theory abut how to teach it, she gave us tools! She shared a bunch of K-12 AI lesson plans that we can actually use in our classes. Having a starting point like that makes the idea of teaching AI feel way less intimidating.

Why I Think This Matters

I truly believe that giving our students the lowdown on AI is a must-have. AI isn’t going anywhere. In fact, it’s only going to get bigger and more a part of our daily lives. If we don’t give them the tools to understand it now, we’re doing them a disservice. We need to make sure they have a clear roadmap on how to use it safely and responsibly. By teaching them these guidelines now, we’re helping them become smart, skeptical, and safe users of technology rather than just following it blindly.

I’m excited to keep figuring out how to weave this into my own teaching!