AI literacy activity ideas for educators
By Sarah Horrocks and Michelle Pauli of Connected Learning
There’s currently much discussion about the need for AI literacy in schools and AI literacy frameworks, but there is also debate about what AI literacy covers.
However, with the latest Ofcom media use and attitudes report finding that half of children aged 8-17 have used AI tools and are using AI for learning and/or schoolwork, including drafting documents and helping with writing style, there is certainly a need for a greater understanding of the technology.
AI literacy frameworks abound, such as Rachel Horst’s dimensions of AI literacy, which sees AI as part of an entangled landscape of learning, technology and society, and David Winter’s framework, which shows how AI can support thinking, not just replace it.
However, AI literacy in schools calls for a critical, ethical approach which is genuinely cross-curricular.
As a school, you should be planning how AI literacy can be covered across the curriculum in computing, PSHE, English, maths, science and the humanities. AI literacy shouldn’t only focus on technological perspectives and skills but also on social understanding and critical, ethical engagement with AI technologies.
Navigating AI together
It’s important to help students understand and evaluate AI’s impact on culture and society.
A recent paper exploring international approaches to AI literacy for 9-13 year-olds states that it is emerging “as a new form of civic knowledge.”
Like digital literacy in general, AI education shouldn’t place the responsibility for this complex technological and societal system on individual students and teachers. Rather it’s a collective responsibility.
Explore how AI is relevant to children’s lives and plan activities which use real-life contexts. For example, an AI in Everyday Life Scavenger Hunt. Students identify and document examples of AI around them (eg, in apps, websites, or devices at home and school) and then present their findings to the class. This helps them recognise the pervasiveness of AI and think critically about its uses.
Teaching AI skills
Activities in computing can cover the conceptual understanding of AI including data awareness and the design of machine learning.
Even young children can learn how various AI-based technologies used for generating text, images, and sounds rely on teaching a computer to recognise patterns or make decisions, not by explicitly programming every single rule, but by showing it loads of examples.
Students can collect images and use tools like MIT App Inventor or Google’s Teachable Machine to train an AI model to classify them. They then analyse the model’s accuracy and discuss sources of error or bias.
Data awareness is key to AI literacy and data-driven problems and concepts from AI can also be explored in the context of maths, science and geography. (NB you can teach the skills behind AI literacy without touching AI.)
Above all, teaching about AI needs to be personally relevant to children and young people. Discovery and problem-based learning in a collaborative setting where students learn with and from each other and their teacher empowers students to understand, question and be critical of AI technologies that increasingly affect their lives.
Learn more
Parent Zone has partnered with the Raspberry Pi Foundation to deliver free training to UK educators as part of Experience AI. It includes a wealth of resources here and here to support the teaching of AI literacy.
The DfE has published a set of resources for teachers and school leaders, from early years to FE, on the safe and effective use of AI. The toolkits, with videos and workbooks, can be used as part of group CPD activities or worked through individually by teachers.
Sarah Horrocks and Michelle Pauli are the team behind Connected Learning – offering digital developments for educators, from AI to digital news.