Tools we will build

Students sort living things, ordinary tools, and AI tools, then explain the cases that are hard to sort.

Build. A table of 24 cases. Each case has a place for the student’s reason, and the class can tally the items people disagree about.

Caution it teaches

A tool that sounds like a person is not a person.

Strength it teaches

Students get more precise about what kind of thing they are dealing with.

School · Home · Units 4-1

The class trains a small sorting program on examples they choose, then tests it on purpose with examples it has not seen.

Build. A simple program that runs on the school device and sorts shapes, colors, or words. It includes a way to try an example meant to trick it.

Caution it teaches

It copies the examples it was shown, including the gaps in those examples.

Strength it teaches

Students can see what “training examples” means, instead of treating it as a vague idea.

School · Units 4-2

Students turn a vague request into clear instructions: what to include, what steps to follow, what limits to set, and how to check the result.

Build. A side-by-side editor with weak and strong examples, buttons for limits, and a log of how the results differ.

Caution it teaches

A confident answer still has to be checked.

Strength it teaches

A clear request produces a more useful draft.

School · Home · Units 4-3 · 5-6

Students look for confident guesses in paragraphs about things they already know.

Build. A case file where students highlight a sentence, label it as fact, story, opinion, or guess, and then say how they would check it.

Caution it teaches

A tool can be wrong even when the sentence sounds finished.

Strength it teaches

Students get a repeatable way to check, instead of only a feeling of doubt.

School · Public life · Units 4-4

The tool flags names, places, passwords, photos, and family business before anything is sent.

Build. A checker that runs on the school device and looks for unsafe categories. It does not store the student’s real text.

Caution it teaches

Once information is shared, the student may not be able to get it back.

Strength it teaches

Most useful schoolwork can be done with general details or made-up examples.

School · Home · Units 4-5

Students can draft a story or an image, but they cannot export it until they have changed it themselves.

Build. The student writes the lesson of the story first. Every part that used the tool is labeled. Export stays locked until the student makes their own changes.

Caution it teaches

It is easy to turn in AI's work as your own. If you can't explain it without AI, you don't own the knowledge.

Strength it teaches

A tool can help with a draft. It does not replace the student’s choices.

School · Home · Units 4-6

Students sort a feeling or a problem toward a person, a tool, or both. A chatbot is never treated as a friend.

Build. A set of questions that leads to a choice, plus a printable Help Map the student fills with real names.

Caution it teaches

A kind tone from AI can stop a student from talking to a real person.

Strength it teaches

Explaining an idea to a tool can make it clearer. The student then takes it to a person.

Home · School · Units 4-7

Students make exhibit cards for the past, the present, and the future. Every object needs both a use and a risk.

Build. A label writer, a three-part layout, and cards that can be printed for family night.

Caution it teaches

An exhibit that only says how impressive a tool is works like an advertisement.

Strength it teaches

Putting a tool on a timeline makes the benefit and the cost easier to see.

School · Public life · Units 4-8 · 6-8

Turns an assignment into a path the student is allowed to follow: think, draft, check, and say where a tool helped.

Build. A builder that makes a one-page plan and a written record for a real assignment that is coming up.

Caution it teaches

“It only helped a little” is how students usually start letting AI write the work.

Strength it teaches

When the allowed help is named, students can use help and still be honest.

School · Units 5-1

A research notebook that will not accept a claim unless the student names a source that exists.

Build. A trail from question to source to quotation to check. It includes a practice mode with a made-up citation for students to find.

Caution it teaches

A made-up citation can look real.

Strength it teaches

A tool may help students write questions. It is not a source they can trust for the answer.

School · Public life · Units 5-2

Compares writing the student has already done with an AI draft, and marks where they sound the same.

Build. A side-by-side view that highlights generic wording. It is a writing coach, not a tool for accusing students of cheating.

Caution it teaches

If the whole class sounds like the same AI, the students are not writing in their own words.

Strength it teaches

Students can get comments on structure and clarity without giving up their own wording.

School · Units 5-3

The student gets an explanation, closes it, and teaches it. The tool stays closed until the student’s own explanation is written.

Build. A timer, a hide-and-restate step, and an optional chance for a classmate to listen. Used in math and science.

Caution it teaches

A wrong answer that looks finished will stay wrong if nobody has to teach it.

Strength it teaches

A second explanation helps only if it becomes the student’s own explanation.

School · Units 5-4

A gallery where students cannot treat a picture as proof, and where they must label any picture they make with AI.

Build. A prepared set of images, plus a place to make and label new ones. Students do not make unlabeled fake images of real people.

Caution it teaches

A picture used to be treated as evidence. That is no longer safe.

Strength it teaches

Asking “how was this made?” becomes a habit.

Public life · Home · School · Units 5-5

A personal set of useful, honest instructions for real tasks, checked by an adult.

Build. Cards the student writes. Each card has a purpose, limits, and a line that says what it must not be used for.

Caution it teaches

We do not keep an instruction that helps a student trick someone.

Strength it teaches

Personal use is allowed when it helps a student organize life, not when it hides what they were supposed to do.

Home · School · Units 5-6

Students check what a tool repeats when they ask for “a scientist,” and then ask it to show a wider range of people.

Build. A worksheet for the request and the check, with a required rewrite. The class discusses the results. They are not published as facts about people.

Caution it teaches

Unfair patterns, copied over and over, can start to feel like common sense.

Strength it teaches

Noticing the pattern is the start of correcting it.

School · Public life · Units 5-7

A builder for a 10-minute lesson: a question, a demonstration, and a check. Grade 5 uses it when they teach Grade 4.

Build. A timed lesson template that requires a step where the learner checks the answer.

Caution it teaches

If you teach a shortcut, the younger student learns the shortcut.

Strength it teaches

If a student can teach it, they know it.

School · Units 5-8 · 7-8

A timeline of tools people have used to think and communicate: writing, the printing press, the telegraph, the computer, the internet, and AI. Each card names a benefit and a cost.

Build. An interactive timeline with benefit-and-cost cards written by students, and a way to hold a debate.

Caution it teaches

People often treat a new tool as wonderful at first, and later as ordinary. The cost is still there.

Strength it teaches

History stops students from treating today's AI as magic, or as something nobody can change.

School · Public life · Units 6-1

Students see a ranked list of guesses for the next word. Smooth writing stops looking like knowledge.

Build. A visible list of likely next words, and a control for how random the result is, on short completions that are safe for school.

Caution it teaches

A machine that is guessing can still sound as if it knows the student.

Strength it teaches

Seeing how it picks the next word stops students from treating it as if it understands.

School · Units 6-2

Students mark the tactics in writing that is meant to make them want something, click something, or believe something.

Build. A highlighter for false scarcity, flattery, fake proof that “everyone” likes it, and false urgency. It includes a rewrite into honest wording.

Caution it teaches

Ads and messages that are tailored to one person, at a large scale, are a new kind of pressure.

Strength it teaches

Once a student can name the tactic, it is harder for the ad to work on them.

Work · Public life · Home · Units 6-3

A practice inbox of phishing, fake authority, and copied-voice warnings. There are no real targets.

Build. Practice messages that reveal the warning sign. Students can export a one-page family guide. The tool never uses a student’s voice.

Caution it teaches

AI makes scams cheaper, more polite, and more personal.

Strength it teaches

The same habit of spotting warning signs can protect a household.

Home · Public life · Units 6-4

A private diary of what the student handed to a tool this week, what they kept for themselves, and a memory check later.

Build. A private log and a chart of skills the student handed off, paired with the with-and-without experiment.

Caution it teaches

A skill gets weaker if the student stops using it.

Strength it teaches

Time saved can go to harder work, if the student actually uses it that way.

Home · School · Units 6-5

A signed list of skills the student will keep practicing without AI: memory, math, an argument with no notes, and making something by hand.

Build. The agreement, plus a practice tracker that matches the weekly closing activity.

Caution it teaches

An agreement the student does not practice does nothing.

Strength it teaches

Choosing what to keep practicing without AI is how a student stays in charge of their own learning.

Home · School · Units 6-5

Cases from school, home, public life, and work. Students argue them with the same five questions.

Build. Cards and a class hearing. The five questions are: Who could be harmed? Did people agree? Is it honest? Is it fair? Can it be undone?

Caution it teaches

A nice sentence about doing the right thing fails the first time a shortcut is easier.

Strength it teaches

Students can write a reasoned decision, compare it with others, and revise it.

School · Home · Public life · Work · Units 6-6

Students map what a “free” app might know, in language a twelve-year-old can use to explain it to a parent.

Build. A map of the data trail, and plain-language translations of terms from a prepared set of examples. Students do not open or scrape real accounts.

Caution it teaches

If the product is free, something else is being sold.

Strength it teaches

A short plan to share less is a concrete privacy step, not just a feeling.

Home · Public life · Units 6-7

Students build three versions of the 2040s — hopeful, careless, and careful — and name what would have to be true for each one.

Build. Comic or script boards, a checklist of conditions for the careful future, and an archive of old predictions.

Caution it teaches

A wish or a warning can be written so it looks like a forecast.

Strength it teaches

Imagining futures is one way students choose rules for the present.

Public life · Home · Units 7-1

A very small business with a product, a customer, and a written policy for how AI will be used.

Build. A planning page, an honesty label, and a sentence that says when a tool helped. No real payments are required.

Caution it teaches

A business can compete by being less honest. Students practice refusing that.

Strength it teaches

A small careful team can do more than it could ten years ago.

Work · Units 7-2

Students break a job into tasks a person should do, tasks a person and a tool can share, and tasks a machine can try. They also name the parts they still need to learn.

Build. Occupation cards, a place for interview notes, and three columns: learn, share with a tool, and let a machine try.

Caution it teaches

If students skip the hard parts of learning, they will not know when the machine is wrong later.

Strength it teaches

A tool helps most when the person still knows the work.

Work · Home · Units 7-3

A public-life routine: state the claim, find sources, find a source that disagrees, check whether many comments are really the same message, and give a verdict.

Build. Prepared examples of claims that spread online, not a live social-media feed, plus a briefing students can export.

Caution it teaches

Public conversation can be filled with smooth text and fake pictures.

Strength it teaches

Checking a claim is a skill. It is not a type of person.

Public life · School · Units 7-4

A limited tool that can take a few allowed steps, and that shows what could happen if it were allowed to do more.

Build. A short list of allowed actions, such as searching a page, making a list, or filling a quiz. Students review the permissions before it runs.

Caution it teaches

A tool that takes actions can do things the student did not intend.

Strength it teaches

A tool the student can explain is a skill. A tool the student cannot explain is a risk.

School · Work · Units 7-5

Students draft a school AI policy and a student bill of rights, then hold a hearing.

Build. A set of sample clauses, a timer for the hearing, and a one-page export for staff guests.

Caution it teaches

Someone will write the rules. If students never try, they only receive them.

Strength it teaches

Responsibility includes the school, not only the individual student.

Public life · School · Units 7-6

The record of the year, or of all four years: what the student did, what AI did, the spoken explanations, the agreements, and the main project.

Build. A portfolio with a review of whether the project is allowed, goals for what the student will keep doing themselves, and notes from the spoken explanation.

Caution it teaches

A polished product with no record of how it was made does not count as a course project.

Strength it teaches

The record of what the student decided is the real report of what they learned.

School · Home · Work · Public life · Units 7-7 · 7-8