This AI Literacy Review covers a fun Halloween contest to build a team’s AI literacy, generational divides over AI, free AI courses, AI literacy in Arabic, reusable prompts, AI champions in U.S. government agencies, universal AI literacy module, more frameworks and tools, AI literacy in early childhood education, and an AI learning experience designer tool.
General
Save the date for National AI Literacy Day on March 28, 2025, with discussions and activities in the US for students, educators, parents, and community members about AI and its impact.
In How are you promoting AI literacy among different generations of employees? Irina Soriano writes about generational divides in the perception of AI and acceptance, as well as increasing focus on AI training programs and a prioritization of AI literacy for teams.
The free Elements of AI online course offered by MinnaLearn and the University of Helsinki has had over 1 million students sign up for the course, across 170 countries, with 40% women participating. It is offered in a variety of European languages too.
New Zealand launches free online AI Skills courses at different levels through the Digital Passport program from the Ministry of Social Development and academyEX.
The Choice publishing team holds a fun Halloween contest to help build AI literacy in their office, challenging staff to use an AI chatbot to make a short story, poem, or other written entry on the theme of Halloween. Their winning entry is a story in the style of Edgar Allen Poe with a black cat, a witch, and Dracula.
The UK Government launches the AI Management Essentials (AIME) self-assessment tool for businesses to evaluate processes for responsible development of AI products. It’s targeted at small to medium-sized businesses and start-ups.
Wired reports that Google is rolling out its AI Opportunity funding to the Middle East and North Africa region, with expanded Arabic-language programs, AI literacy in Arabic for children 11-14, and support for university researchers in the AI space.
Ethan Mollick and Lilach Mollick in Stop Writing All Your AI Prompts from Scratch: These Reusable Templates Will Remember How You Like to Draft Lesson Plans, Write Quizzes, and More offer ways to create reusable prompts to help systematize your use of AI and avoid redoing the same thing each time.
Tim Dasey discusses AI language models as conceptual rather than factual, and more in line with how human knowledge is about concepts rather than facts. (see Tim Dasey’s LinkedIn post)
Nicole Leffer emphasizes that there is no such thing as common sense with Generative AI because it’s too new, and that organizations shouldn’t assume their staff know about hallucinations, ethical considerations, and the need for a human in the loop – it’s up to leaders to educate staff. (see Nicole Leffer’s LinkedIn post)
Carlo Iacono muses on the topic of the “Dissolving Self in AI-Enhanced Creation” and what it means to be a creator when you use an AI tool to help you – where do we end and the AI begins? (see Carlo Iacono’s LinkedIn post)
Government
The article Agencies Prioritize Pilots, Literacy to Overcome AI Challenges by Sarah Sybert looks at how the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) are creating community-of-interest forums and working groups and using AI champions to increase education and foster adoption.
The opinion piece What to Learn from State Education Commissioner’s AI Gaffe covers the faux pas of the Alaska state education commissioner in making a presentation to the state board of education with fake citations from an AI chatbot, and sess this as an indication of the need for AI literacy in education.
Education
The journal article The Human-Centred Design of a Universal Module for Artificial Intelligence Literacy in Tertiary Education Institutions by Daswin De Silva, Shalinka Jayatilleke, Mona El-Ayoubi, Zafar Issadeen, Harsha Moraliyage, and Nishan Mills from La Trobe University in Australia offers a universal AI literacy module with core competencies related to the levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy.
A new open access academic book Creative Applications of Artificial Intelligence in Education is aimed at university administrators, faculty, staff and policymakers who are facing the prospect of AI in educational environments and want to be empowered in AI literacy. The book includes AI use cases across elementary, secondary and postsecondary environments as well as vocational education and administration.
Xue Zhou and Lilian Schofield from Queen Mary University of London create an AI in Teaching and Learning framework to guide educators in embedding activities related to AI into teaching and learning. They use the four dimensions from previous frameworks and state the goal is to ensure all students can progressively develop AI skills during their time in higher education.
In Exploring how well Experience AI maps to UNESCO’s AI competency framework for students, Ben Garside explains how the Raspberry Pi Foundation’s Experience AI program aligns with the UNESCO AI competency framework for students.
Phillip Alcock launches a free AI Learning Experience Designer tool that helps educators craft prompts to create learning fit for their students’ needs, whether project-based, game-based, play-based, or another type and set at different grade levels and durations.
Sharon Carlson of Storypark discusses what AI literacy could look like in an early childhood education context, her work on ICT in New Zealand, and a Concerns-Based Approach Model to help teachers assess their approach to incorporating technology, spanning awareness to collaboration and refocusing.
The session Advancing AI Literacy: Preparing Educators and Learners for the Digital Age available on YouTube from Villanova University looks at how educators and students can use AI tools effectively.
4-H partners with Microsoft and Minecraft Education to offer train-the-trainer sessions for educators to enable adults to be prepared to provide support for youth to learn how to use AI tools.
Pat Yongpradit shares his slides from the IATED’s International Conference on Education Research and Innovation covering the role of computer science in building students’ AI literacy and why learning programming is still a useful thing to learn in the age of AI. (see Pat Yongpradit’s LinkedIn post)
The free 2025 AI in Higher Education Symposium Australia & New Zealand hosted at the University of Sydney will be held in a hybrid format on February 7, 2025.
