Often, teachers view AI as an enemy of education due to its potential to enable cheating and reduce critical thinking. But while these are legitimate concerns, educating students about how to use technology appropriately is the best solution—and for this, integrating AI into your curriculum is a must.
At Learning.com, we’ve developed a range of resources on the topic and our own curriculum. In this article, we’re sharing what we’ve learned about building an AI curriculum for grades 4-12.
Striking a Balance Between Skills and Ethics
Integrating AI into your curriculum isn’t just about teaching students how to use ChatGPT and similar tools. While these skills are important, it’s just as crucial that learners develop digital literacy and understand the ethics behind the technology.
“Digital citizenship” is all about teaching students to understand the online environment, navigate it safely, and interact with technology safely.
Before the explosion of AI, digital citizenship focused on themes like digital footprints and cyberbullying — but now, there are new topics to consider. These include:
- Awareness of the data AI is collecting about its users
- Responsible use of AI (such as avoiding its use in decision-making)
- Understanding the biases and discrimination AI can perpetuate
- Recognition of deepfakes or misinformation from AI
- The importance of transparency regarding AI
But technical skills are also important. An AI curriculum may teach students:
- Prompt engineering to get the best outputs from AI
- AI for data analysis and visualization (plus basic AI training)
- Basic AI coding
- Evaluation of AI outputs
- Practice with different tools, such as image or video generators
As well as a general awareness of news and developments in the field.
In the rest of this article, we’ll give you some specific examples of how to use AI depending on the grade of your students.
Ideas for 4th and 5th Grade Content
Once children reach fourth grade, they’re typically old enough to engage with AI in a meaningful way.
Online safety is the foundation for all other AI topics and should be covered first, so this will generally form the basis of an elementary school AI curriculum.
We recommend starting by explaining to students what AI is and how it works, which can be achieved with some fun videos or slides that break it down in a basic way. Some topics include:
- Why people use AI
- Examples of AI innovations
- Run-through of AI answering questions
In these early grades, students can also try their hand at prompt engineering with careful guidance once they understand online safety and the ethics behind AI.
Consider encouraging students to work on a project about a case study of AI or to have a discussion where they debate whether AI is ethical.
Ideas for 6th to 12th Grade Content
Older students can learn about more sophisticated topics related to AI. They may be able to grasp some more technical topics behind AI, such as how programmers train AI with data.
They’re also able to engage with more philosophical topics behind AI, such as how it could impact people’s lives, whether it is a force for good or bad, and how it can be biased.
You can also link AI education to the professional world and life after school by discussing how technology will affect jobs and various industries, from healthcare to finance. Which career paths will leverage AI technologies the most, and how can students set themselves up for success?
As far as technical skills go, you can teach students how to help them in their education appropriately. For instance, you could show them how to leverage ChatGPT to enhance their education by providing tailored explanations and to present them with challenging exercises while encouraging them to avoid using it to do their assignments for them.
Some further ideas to supplement the curriculum include:
- Case studies of different businesses using AI
- Guest speakers who are already using AI
- Field trips where students can see AI in use first-hand
Students could give presentations or participate in group projects about the above.
Creating a Dynamic AI Curriculum
With AI changing so fast, teachers have their work cut out to build an AI curriculum that will best prepare their students for the future. But as AI becomes relevant for an increasing number of fields and aspects of life, it’s no longer something you can afford to ignore.
If you’ve recently found yourself in the middle of the process, be sure to check out our resources on Learning.com. We have a dedicated Turnkey AI curriculum for learners in grades 4-12. It’s filled with interactive exercises and focuses on safety, ensuring that students are prepared for the future.