Learning About AI (AI Literacy)

Foundational Knowledge: Leading with Literacy

Media and AI literacy serve as the foundation for making the instructional practice vision reality. Our students cannot begin to transform their learning with emerging technologies without being literate in those technologies. Our students cannot develop an informed opinion for or against AI without being AI literate. Both are equally true for adult stakeholders. To make progress, we have to begin with building shared understandings and expanding our foundational knowledge of emerging technologies like generative Artificial Intelligence and their impact on our lives.

Practical Applications: Training vs Learning

Literacy is the stepping stone to responsible and effective use. When you are presented with a task, integrating AI shouldn’t require exhaustive trial and error. Before you can successfully use generative AI tools, you should be able to intuit spaces in which AI could be valuable by having a clear understanding of different tools’ possible uses. What can you do with a given tool? What are you expected to be able to do with it? A central theme of this section is to differentiate training and learning. Training, typically in the form of professional development, strives to provide stakeholders with the AI literacy described in the previous section. Learning is the process of acquiring the intended knowledge, skills, attitude, confidence through hands-on use and experimentation. Training in 'how to use a tool' is temporary while building knowledge and skills is iterative and transferable. The location of the button changes, the need for critical thinking doesn't go away.

Often, the best way to gauge how well one has internalized core knowledge or practical skills is to attempt to externalize it. In your own words, can you describe the core knowledge of what a foundational model is or the difference between generative and predictive AI? Can you walk someone through the process of creating a Gemini Gem? Once you feel comfortable and confident explaining, the next step is to build an action plan for taking advantage of your literacy. How can you use Gemini, for example, in your classroom or workflow? What’s one strategy or tool you could use to improve your communications with students, teachers, or colleagues? What's one next step you will take to move forward in streamlining your more time consuming practices? If you have clear answers to these questions, get experimenting! If you don’t, you have the blueprint to seek further advice or training and you’re one step closer to putting what you’ve learned into practice.

For an in-depth discussion on practical applications of AI for educator-facing and student-facing instructional practices, see the next section: Instructional Practice with AI.

Ethical Awareness

A core competency of AI literacy is not just knowing when or why an AI tool may be used, but to also understand the societal and ethical implications of utilizing it. From personal impact to data privacy responsibilities to broader societal implications, students and teachers alike need to be cognizant of the ethical conversations surrounding AI. When using AI within their instructional practices, teachers need to be particularly ethically aware of data privacy risks. To ensure a product meets data privacy standards, CPS vets potential tools in part using questions included in the 1EdTech and EDSAFE rubrics. Teachers can review these public rubrics themselves, and consider how they apply to their AI use with their students. Student data should never be input into Gemini or other approved AI tools while not logged in to your CPS account, nor should it ever be entered into any blocked or unapproved AI tools, as they may train on this data.

Not only are instructors responsible for their own engagement with generative AI tools, they are also uniquely capable of supporting students by modeling ethical considerations in real time. This may look like engaging an individual student or colleague in a conversation about their AI usage. Are they fairly using the tool, or are there concerns of plagiarism and creative infringement? Educators can also hold larger group discussions to offer students and peers better awareness of their immediate communities.

Critical Thinking

The pillars of critical thinking and ethical awareness go hand in hand, often in the form of media and AI literacy. Alongside understanding the societal and ethical impacts AI usage may have within their communities, students and teachers alike need to cultivate the skills necessary to think critically about their own usage of AI and when they see it used by others. Teachers share a higher burden when it comes to employing critical thinking in the context of AI literacy. Not only do educators need to be aware of their ability to protect themselves and find reputable sources of information for their students, but they are also responsible for protecting the data privacy of their students when using products and tools and modeling the behaviors of critical thinking and AI literacy for their students so as to be an exemplar within their own classrooms.

One example of AI-related critical thinking in everyday life today is at the top of most Google searches is an AI-generated summary that directly answers the Google search. While it can be tempting to take these summaries at face value, it is important to know that these summaries are sourced from other articles and materials that, themselves, may have biases, outdated, incorrect, or malicious information within them. When you encounter any material that is clearly AI-generated or edited, ask:

• Does the information presented seem to be complete?
• Does the information presented seem to be correct?
• Does the information presented seem to be relevant and contextual?
• Does the information presented contain any clear or unspoken biases?
• Can I tell what the sources that it pulled from are? Are they reliable and does the content accurately reflect them?

Future-Oriented Perspective

As emerging technologies like generative AI continue to rapidly change and advance, it is important to recognize that instructional, social, and ethical practices concerning the technology will change as well. Having a future-oriented perspective concerning instructional practices with Artificial Intelligence is necessary to not only provide students with the ability to engage with the AI tools they already know and understand, but to also critically think about the ways they engage with new technologies, understand the ethical implications of their usage, know how to apply these tools in practical ways, and to update key foundational knowledge as technological capabilities grow. Currently, K-12 Media and AI Literacy curriculum is available in Skyline.

For more information on AI literacy in the District and key literacy points, visit the AI Literacy and section of the CPS AI Guidebook.