Day of AI K–12 Curriculum Freely Available Online Anytime
- By Kate Lucariello
- 06/06/23
Each year in May, a "Day of AI" celebration is held for
participating classes to share projects, posters, photos, and videos,
host a discussion, and more.
Although
the second annual Day of AI K–12 event was held at numerous schools
on May 18, 2023, the organization has now made all of its curricula,
lesson plans, and teacher guides available for free to teachers,
students, parents, and others to use at any time of the year.
Day
of AI is an initiative MIT
RAISE (Responsible AI for Social Empowerment and Education)
developed and teamed up with i2Learning
to teach K–12 students at every level what AI is, what it can do,
how to use it responsibly, and what career options are available.
Each grade-level appropriate curriculum contains about four hours of
30- to 60-minute lessons and activities.
The
program is geared toward a general audience. Informational rather
than technical, it can be taught by all K–12 educators, including
those in language arts, social studies, arts and humanities, STEM,
and more. In 2023, new curricula were added, and ISTE
(International Society for Technology in Education)
was invited to provide early elementary materials.
Day
of AI suggests starting with the grade-appropriate versions of "What
is AI?" and "ChatGPT in School," followed by teacher-chosen
curricula and finishing with "Careers in AI."
Specific
curricula for each level include:
-
Early elementary (K–2): What AI Can Do;
-
Upper elementary (3-5): Teachable Machines, AI Blueprint Bill of
Rights;
-
Middle school (6-8): Can Machines Be Creative?, Game AI;
-
High school (9-12): AI in Social Media, Data Science and Me (no
coding version), Intro to Voice AI;
-
High school computer science (9-12): Personal Image Classifier, Data
Science and Decision Making, Data Science and Me (coding version).
Ideally,
every student should have their own laptop or Chromebook, but two can
share comfortably.
Visit
the Program
page to learn more about approaches to teaching it,
the Curriculum
page for more specifics about lessons, and the FAQ
for general questions.
To
sign up for free access, visit the registration
page. The organization says plans for the 2024 event
will be announced soon.
About the Author
Kate Lucariello is a former newspaper editor, EAST Lab high school teacher and college English teacher.