ORLANDO, Fla. — Using AI in everyday classroom lessons can spark conversations with students that help build their AI literacy, says educator Matt Miller, author of “AI Literacy in Any Class,” and a presenter at ISTELive 26.
Miller, a high school Spanish teacher, first used AI tools in the classroom to generate images from vocabulary words and had students describe them as part of lessons. As students described the images, he also asked them to point out any “AI weirdness” they observed. Analyzing and critiquing the images led to broader discussions and messages, he said.
Introducing and discussing these activities with students helped students practice recognizing AI-created images, and also allowed them to see a teacher using AI tools in a professional setting.
“I was an adult using AI in my work in a way that actually supported learning. . . . I modeled identifying my images as AI-generated. I talked about it, and so they started to see that as part of the culture,” he said.
Incorporating the technology in this way also helped to counter the stigma that equates AI use with cheating, Miller said, which may keep some students afraid to experiment with it or use it at all. And it also led to conversations with students about what prompts Miller had used to generate the images.
He soon began to see the value of these short, unplanned lessons. “I was teaching AI literacy without teaching AI literacy.”
To get started embedding AI literacy into lessons, teachers should spend some time learning and building their own foundation with AI so that they can share their experiences with their students, Miller said.
Another thing teachers can do is come up with a few “by the way” AI literacy lessons to share with students when the topic comes up in class, he said. These can be short and conversational – one or two lines that offer facts about AI and that can also relate to what students are studying in class.
Miller emphasized the importance of asking good questions, and analyzing and critiquing everything when it comes to AI.
“It’s like a muscle that we want our students to build,” he said.
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