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We’re two emails into a new series: How to Keep Students Thinking in the AI Age.

Today is email #3.

Imagine this …

Students in small groups. They’re buzzing with discussion about a topic they’re learning in your class.

But better than that: These discussions are deep. They’re not just trying to recall facts. They’re ranking. They’re justifying. They’re critiquing.

The part that really has you smiling? You took maybe a minute to prepare this activity before class. (Shh … they don’t need to know that. 😉😉)

And the icing on the cake: They’re improving their AI literacy as a secondary benefit.

Right now, you might be thinking … “What in the world is this activity?!?!”

It’s called “Be the Bot” … and it illustrates what we’ve been talking about in this series.

So many students see AI as a way to shortcut their learning — and get their homework done without thinking about it.

So teachers (and parents and lots of adults, too) push back by trying to block or ban … using ineffective AI detectors … or just trying to eyeball student work for AI overreach.

And it’s just not working.

So let’s look at a completely different approach, something that isn’t a cure-all by itself, but can be an important piece to figuring this out …

Let’s have students critique AI-generated work related to our class content.

In the last email, I shared a few examples — students analyzing AI-generated poems, historical explanations, meal plans, or alternate endings to stories.

This “students critique AI-generated work” concept? It’s just ONE PIECE in the bigger concept of helping students develop AI literacy through what we do in the day-to-day classroom.

(And that bigger concept is the topic of this email series!)

Now, let’s move from the idea to something you can actually try in class …

Let’s imagine that your students are learning something new in class — and they have some fundamental knowledge about it.

Example: Let’s say they’re studying the Franco-Prussian War.

Let’s try a “Be the Bot” activity that reinforces the main content they’re learning — the Franco-Prussian War — but they also learn some AI literacy alongside it.

Here’s what I would say as the teacher …

“I’m going to ask my AI assistant a question about the Franco-Prussian War. But before I do, I want you to predict what it’s going to say.”

Then we pose the question: “Who were the 3 most pivotal people in the Franco-Prussian War?”

The best kinds of questions for “Be the Bot”: the type with complex, ambiguous answers with no obvious answer. They might include these phrases: “The most important …”, “The most influential …” “Rank these items …”, “What’s the most/least …”, “Predict the outcome of …”.

This is where students get to work. They predict the AI response by brainstorming together in pairs and small groups.

🗄️ TEMPLATE: Give students this “Be the Bot” template in Google Slides/PowerPoint. It has a box for the prompt you’ll give AI — and a box for their brainstorming.

There’s all sorts of pedagogy and solid learning in this activity, like …

This is where it gets interesting. You give the AI assistant the same prompt you showed the students earlier. And you display the results on the big screen in class.

Many times, the room will start buzzing with student voices during this part! It feels like a game, and this is the big reveal to see if they predicted correctly.

First, I would ask students: How much did you predict correctly? Is there anything on the AI response that you wish you would have included? OR … did the AI leave something out that you think is important?

This is just simple compare/contrast based on what they said.

Then, you start to critique the judgment that AI used.

The critical thinking in this activity starts with — and focuses most on — the content students are studying in your class. You might ask questions like:

In our Franco-Prussian War example, all of these questiosn encourage students to think about the material they’re studying in your class. But it also gets them thinking about how AI handles its responses … AND they might notice inaccuracies, missing voices, or slanted perspectives.

This activity does several useful things …

First: It’s low-prep / no-prep. All you need to prepare ahead of time is the question that students will discuss.

Second: It encourages deep, critical thinking about the content your students are studying.

Third: It teaches students how AI handles its business — and what they should be aware of when they use it.

If students are going to live in a world filled with AI, they need some basic understanding of how it works — and how to question it.

Big picture: when we include small AI literacy moments like this from time to time, students begin developing habits of questioning and evaluating AI.

Students learn very practical lessons about how to be responsible in an AI-filled world — and no one needs to teach “a unit on AI” (or have an advanced degree in computer science).

We have two more emails in this series about keeping students thinking in the AI age.

In our next email, we’ll talk about one of the biggest concerns teachers have right now when it comes to AI in schools …

Academic integrity.

If students can generate answers instantly, how do we prevent AI from doing the thinking for them?

And how do we guide students toward using it responsibly instead?

That’s what we’ll dig into next.

See you then!

Matt