🤖 The case for embedded AI literacy

🧠 An intelligent co-teacher in your class

What if there was a way to elevate instruction with AI while keeping great teaching front and center? What if teachers had an effortless way to lead engaging lessons and push students to think deeper?

Now there is. Let me introduce myself. I’m M2: the intelligent co-teacher. 

I can help your school enhance learning without gluing students to screens. I sit on the sideline, following along silently. Then, when needed, I can be called in with a tap and a voice command. 

How do I help?

• 💡 Live Teaching Tips: I provide instant AI suggestions tailored to any objective—no coach, no time-consuming video reviews. No gotchas.
  

• 🧑‍🏫 Real-Time Classroom Support: Ask me (“ask M2”) for help anytime during class. You can ask me to “Explain that,” “Translate that”, “Ask me a question,” “Tell me a joke” and more to keep learners engaged.
  

• 💬 Personalized Feedback: At the end of each session, I’ll give you insights on your engagement, questioning, and pacing—along with pre-built MirrorTalk reflections to talk out the feedback! 

Get a free annual subscription with your first purchase of M2 with this referral code: M2DT2025

🗳 Poll: Teacher AI literacy

This week’s question: What would you add to the 10 student AI maxims?

Some of your responses:

• We don't know what we don't know about AI and how it might impact our future. Feed it with virtue and good will.

• The AI has not sat in your class. It doesn't know your instructor's specific instructions and nuances from your classroom community.

• Something move overt about if you find yourself struggling, that's a good thing!

• You touched on this but I think I would go harder on the fact that creative work was scraped to train these models. No one asked for permission - they just took. I think the copyright and intellectual property implications are huge and need to be talked about more. Two things you didn't touch on but are concerning are the environmental impact of gen AI and human labor used to train the models. I love the work done by Dr. Torrey Trust. She has a great slide deck on AI and Ethics.

🗳 This week’s poll

This poll about AI literacy is yet another flawed poll that lacks nuance! :)

I wanted to get your feedback about TEACHER AI literacy — because, as I write below, I think it’s the starting point for real student AI literacy.

Where would you start? What’s most important?

I’d love it if you’d at least pick one — and describe your answer (or suggest a completely different answer) in a comment.

I love to hear what you think and have to say.

Instructions:

1. Please vote on this week’s poll. It just takes a click!

2. Optional: Explain your vote / provide context / add details in a comment afterward.

3. Note: I’ll try to pull your first/last name from your email address. Feel free to tell me not to — or tell me your name so I get it right.

📚 New AI resources this week

1️⃣ 5 new ways Google is helping students and young people learn and grow using AI: These efforts, including a new responsible AI curriculum and a $1 million grant to MIT RAISE, all aim to help students and educators use AI safely and effectively.

2️⃣ Classrooms are adapting to the use of artificial intelligence: Psychologists can help maximize the smart adoption of these tools to enhance learning.

3️⃣ The future is already here: AI and education in 2025: The third Stanford AI+Education Summit brought together researchers, K-12 leaders, educators, and technologists to explore how AI is shaping teaching and learning.

4️⃣ New Research Finds Schools of Education Fail to Prepare Teachers to Use AI: Not one superintendent we spoke with considered higher education a resource for artificial intelligence-related professional learning.

5️⃣ Does Your School Have an AI Policy? 3 Steps to Get You Started: Does your school have any policies in place for the use of AI? Has your district offered any professional development around AI use in the classroom? Do students know when, where, and how they are allowed to use AI when doing school work?

🤖 The case for embedded AI literacy

When I went back into the classroom last spring to take on a full load of high school Spanish classes, I wanted to use AI to assist me.

Not to do my job for me … but as my assistant, to lighten my load so I could focus on the things that matter.

As I generated AI images and tried to create stories in Spanish with AI, I started to realize something …

• I was disclosing my AI use to my students.

• I was talking about how I would and wouldn’t use it.

• I told them a bit about the nature of AI so they’d be aware, too.

I never set out to teach AI literacy in my high school Spanish classes. But it happened. Naturally.

And the more that I did it, the more I felt like I was equipping my students for an AI future — one little, tiny, minute-long conversation at a time.

As I’ve started talking about my experience, I’ve been calling it “embedded AI literacy.” The more I describe it, the more I like the idea of it.

The case for embedded AI literacy

It’s hard for we educators sometimes — teachers in the classroom, principals in the office, district office leaders — to know how to incorporate new ideas into the curriculum.

• Sometimes, we add a new course that students can take.

• Sometimes, we mandate that a certain class or grade teach a unit on the topic.

• Sometimes, we bring in speakers to do convocations.

• Sometimes, the state gets involved and mandates a new course in graduation requirements.

I can seriously see schools and districts doing ALLLLLL of these things to address AI literacy.

And I can see all of them being ineffective.

Why? Because they’re being taught in a silo. They’re disconnected from real world connection and how we’d use them in our work lives and personal lives.

It’s hard for students to make those connections to other parts of their lives (transfer, as we say in pedagogical terms).

(By the way, in adult professional development, it’s the same thing. Human teachers often struggle to take big ideas and understand how they’re applied in practical ways in the classroom. That’s why I put such a huge emphasis on it when I do workshops and presentations.)

So, how do we avoid teaching AI literacy in a silo where it becomes ineffective?

Teach it throughout the day. All day. Every day. In tiny morsels whenever it fits in.

Think about it …

• Give everyone on the teaching staff a basic understanding of what AI is and how it works.

• Give them some time to think about it and discuss how it impacts classwork and real world work.

• Empower them to talk about it in small snippets whenever it comes up in class.

What does this do for students?

• It shows them that they have teachers who have at least a basic understanding of AI.

• It shows them how a trusted adult is handling the challenges that come with navigating a world with AI.

• It gives them in-the-moment guidance on how to use AI — or how to think responsibly about its use.

Here’s the best part. Teachers don’t need an advanced degree in computer science to do this. They just need some basic knowledge. They need to be users of the technology themselves. And they need to be willing to talk about it — what they suggest and don’t suggest.

That’s it.

Embedded AI literacy examples from my class

Even when I didn’t know that I was using “embedded AI literacy” in class, here’s how I was doing it …

• EXAMPLE 1: I told them my AI-generated images were … well … generated by AI.

  • How that’s AI literacy: It’s an adult showing the importance of clarifying human-generated vs. AI-generated — so that we don’t promote misinformation or disinformation.

• EXAMPLE 2: We looked for “AI weirdness” … artifacts the AI inserted into the image that aren’t normally found in real life. (Extra fingers, strange lines on the highway, etc.)

  • How that’s AI literacy: It builds the discipline of “critique everything” when it comes to AI. If they get used to sniffing out AI in images, they’re more likely to do that in other areas, too.

• EXAMPLE 3: I mentioned cautions about using AI whenever it came up in conversation, like looking out for AI hallucinations or inaccuracies.

  • How that’s AI literacy: It talks about important aspects of navigating life with AI in the context of what students are learning.

Now that I’ve had time to process these small actions in class, I realize how big of a deal they were — and would be looking out for more ways to include them.

None of them took any more than a minute or two. (Sometimes, we had fun pointing out the AI weirdness and it took a little longer than intended.)

But I believe these equipped my students for real life navigation of an AI world more than a canned unit on machine learning.

How to roll out embedded AI literacy in your school/district

Total transparency here. I have never worked as a principal, a tech integration specialist, or a district office leader as my full-time job.

I have been a teacher for 11.5 years. And I have worked with districts for more than a decade to provide meaningful PD to their teachers.

That said, if I were leading a school or district, here’s how I would want to roll this out …

1. Teach teachers fundamental basics about AI. But I would be very intentional about it. I wouldn’t ask ChatGPT for the 10 fundamental basics of AI and run an hour PD session on each one. (Well, maybe I would just as a reference.) I would identify a truth that’s crucial for understanding AI and its outputs and its tendencies. Then I would give teachers the basics they need to know about it — and show it in practice with demos and real-life examples.

2. Teach teachers how it impacts classwork and real-world work. I would go lighter on all the details about how AI works and heavier on the implementation. The practice. How it shows up in a classroom (or real-world work). I would guide discussions about the implications of using (and not using) AI in certain circumstances. I would ask how these ways of using (or not using) AI would prepare students for their future or stunt their opportunities.

3. (Optional) Role play conversations in class. If I could come up with a good example — and it felt right with the group — I would give an example of how it could go in class and encourage teachers (role playing students) to ask questions. (Yes, I know, there’s risk of this conversation getting out of hand. But I think it could be powerful — in the right circumstances.) Instead of this, you could always talk through a classroom example and how it could be handled.

4. Provide some structured ChatGPT time. (Or Gemini, or Copilot, or Claude … whatever your AI assistant.) I’d let them ask an AI assistant how this concept might show up in content they teach — or how it might impact real-world work that applies to what they teach. (Especially if they struggle to see connections to their class.) I provide some pre-written copy/paste prompts that they could edit with their own personal classroom details. (Here’s how I used the same copy/paste prompts idea with templates.)

5. Provide time for discussion. Think (independently). Pair (discuss in partners, small groups, departments). Share (as a whole group discussion, as a digital activity for later, etc.).
   — What do you think of the implications of the AI concepts you heard?
   — On their impact on classwork and real-world work?
   — On their impact on classwork and real-world work?
   — How might you have handled the classroom conversation example you saw?
   — What do you think of the implications you saw from your ChatGPT time?
   — What do you like? Dislike? Why?
   — How would what you saw prepare students for the future — or disadvantage them for the future?
   — What’s your action plan? What do you want to do — or not do — now in your own classroom based on what you have seen?

6. Encourage teachers to look for opportunities — and use them whenever they arise. Encourage them to be ready to insert conversations about this, from whole-group instruction to quick conversations with individual students, and anywhere in between.

7. Follow up in future meetings. As time passes, encourage teachers to reflect again on new AI information and ideas. Have teachers share conversations and interactions they’ve had — even if they didn’t go well. Reflect on it all together — with an emphasis on preparing students for the future they will experience.

Why embedded AI literacy might be hard

There are lots of reasons why you might struggle with this … why it might go very slowly at first … why teachers might push back.

• Teachers might not think AI literacy is important. They might think that they have their curriculum and standards to teach and that this doesn’t fall under their purview.

  • Response: The more that AI rolls out, it’ll impact classwork more and more — and become increasingly relevant to students’ future.

• Teachers might not feel equipped to talk about AI literacy. They might not think they know about AI enough to feel comfortable discussing it with students.

  • Response: They don’t need advanced knowledge. Basic understanding — and some practical experience using the tools — gives them enough to advise students. We don’t need extensive knowledge of transmissions and alternators to drive a car.

• They might think that there’s no place for AI in education. They might think it’s only used to cheat — or provide misinformation — or for evil things.

  • Response: Like lots of technological innovations in education over time, it can be used well or used poorly. With some examples of uses for good, hopefully those teachers could start to change their beliefs.

It’s up to all of us

With technology in the past, at times there’s been a belief of “that’s the computer teacher’s job” or “this doesn’t impact [insert subject/grade level]”.

Much like the advent of computers and the internet, artificial intelligence is going to change everything. In fact, it’s already changing things.

If we leave it to the poor computer teacher, we’re forsaking all of the opportunities to show students how AI applies in all walks of life — so we know whether we want to use it or not (and how we should navigate).

If everyone has a grasp on the technology — and the implications of using it — then everyone can serve as a trusted adult to guide students.

And it doesn’t mean we push our curriculum or standards to the side.

Instead, it means that students see how to navigate an AI-integrated world right now — so they know how to act as students …

… and they’re prepared to survive and thrive in the real future they’ll enter one day.

Thanks for coming to my TED Talk. 🙂 

📚 New AI resources this week

1️⃣ 5 new ways Google is helping students and young people learn and grow using AI: These efforts, including a new responsible AI curriculum and a $1 million grant to MIT RAISE, all aim to help students and educators use AI safely and effectively.

2️⃣ Classrooms are adapting to the use of artificial intelligence: Psychologists can help maximize the smart adoption of these tools to enhance learning.

3️⃣ The future is already here: AI and education in 2025: The third Stanford AI+Education Summit brought together researchers, K-12 leaders, educators, and technologists to explore how AI is shaping teaching and learning.