AI Curriculum for K-12
Hannah Hauser
Mrs. Z. Pinto
Hello friends,Our district passed a policy for AI where we are expected to teach students appropriate/safe use of AI in all grades K-12, at age-appropriate levels. Does anyone know of any vendors selling K-12 district curriculum products about AI usage for students? I am obviously hoping to get something ultimately for free or very low cost, but am open to anything at this point. If you've tried anything, or have heard good things about anything, I'd very much appreciate the input. Thanks!
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General George A. McCall Elementary School | The School District of Philadelphia.
325 South 7th Street, Philadelphia, PA,19106.
Jackie Polakovsky
Hi everyone,
That is a great question dealing with finding K–12 curriculum resources for teaching responsible and age-appropriate AI use in the classroom. Here are some helpful recommendations I’ve gathered that balance accessibility, affordability, and educational alignment:
Free or Low-Cost AI Curriculum Options
1. AI4K12 (Free)
Developed by AAAI and CSTA, this initiative outlines 5 Big Ideas in AI and provides grade-banded examples and teaching resources. It's especially helpful for building foundational understanding from K–12.
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K–12 aligned
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Curriculum examples, lesson plans, and tools
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Focus on ethics, safety, and transparency
2. Day of AI by MIT RAISE (Free)
Offers plug-and-play AI ethics and literacy lessons for grades 3–12. Modules include understanding bias, data privacy, and generative AI (like ChatGPT), and are designed to fit into regular class periods.
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Developed by MIT
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Full units with teacher guides and videos
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Multilingual and equity-minded resources
3. Common Sense Media – AI Literacy (Free)
Includes AI-specific digital citizenship lessons for K–12 that align well with tech use policies and responsible online behavior.
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Simple, age-appropriate language for younger grades
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Focus on safety, bias, privacy, and digital agency
4. Teachable Machine by Google (Free)
A fun and visual way for students to explore how machine learning works—appropriate for grades 5–12 with teacher guidance.
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Hands-on exploration of training models
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Connects well with concepts of data bias and feedback loops
Hello friends,Our district passed a policy for AI where we are expected to teach students appropriate/safe use of AI in all grades K-12, at age-appropriate levels. Does anyone know of any vendors selling K-12 district curriculum products about AI usage for students? I am obviously hoping to get something ultimately for free or very low cost, but am open to anything at this point. If you've tried anything, or have heard good things about anything, I'd very much appreciate the input. Thanks!
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― Plato
Judy Keller
Jackie Polakovsky
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Jackie Polakovsky
Michelle Bruno
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Jackie Polakovsky
Just because Google, Microsoft, TikTok, and other corporations make these platforms available to children doesn’t mean we should roll over and accept it as inevitable. Access may be real; abdication is optional. If we don’t intentionally protect student agency, we will lose it—quickly and quietly—because these tools are fast, persuasive, and frictionless.
AI is remarkably proficient. That’s exactly why it must be handled with care. When systems are optimized for engagement and scale, they inevitably shape behavior—not always through malicious intent, but through design: what they reward, what they frame as “normal,” what they place in front of us next. If we can acknowledge how social media has influenced attention and identity, we should be honest that conversational AI can influence reasoning even more directly.
And yes, we should ask the hard question: if corporations can nudge behavior, what could a corrupt government do with the same tools? The answer isn’t panic—the answer is boundaries.
We are responsible for how we bring this into schools. We cannot outsource childhood development to corporate defaults. Schools can’t replace parents, and teachers can’t carry this alone, but we can insist on an agency-preserving approach: district-approved education tools (not personal accounts), strict privacy/no personal data in prompts, teacher-mediated use in middle school, explicit instruction in bias and persuasion, and assessments that require students to show their own thinking and verification.
We should teach AI literacy. But we should not normalize unsupervised, direct AI access as “just the way it is.” That’s not realism—that’s surrender.
As to the material shared:
This guide is a good classroom literacy primer, but it’s not a district risk-control plan.
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It doesn’t address corporate incentives, data capture, or “nudging.” It teaches “be careful,” but not how platforms monetize attention, shape behavior, or how recommendation/personalization systems can steer beliefs and choices (your Pied Piper worry).
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“Use with a trusted grown-up” is not an enforcement mechanism. It’s a norm statement, not a system design. In practice, kids can still create accounts, bypass age gates, and roam.
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It doesn’t specify school-safe implementation models (e.g., no student accounts, teacher-mediated use only, district-managed tools, audit logs, data minimization).
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It underdevelops the “discernment muscle” beyond “fact-check.” It doesn’t train students to:
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seek counterevidence,
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test multiple framings,
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detect emotional manipulation,
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notice when an answer is overconfident or “too clean.”
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So: as a literacy curriculum, it’s fine. As a proposal to put AI directly in kids’ hands, it’s incomplete.
The guide tries to prevent cognitive offloading by saying “use your own brain” and practice checking reliability, and by making students examine bias/mistakes and compare outputs . But if a school rolls AI out as “always-available answers” with constant warnings and minimal productive struggle, then students can atrophy in perseverance, error-detection, argument-building,and the discomfort tolerance that fuels real discernment.
If you must then:
Teach AI literacy early (yes) — because kids already encounter it.
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Do not default to direct, unsupervised student tool access (not yet) — especially under 13 and without district controls.
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Require an “agency-preserving” implementation:
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Teacher-mediated use (students don’t make accounts; teacher posts outputs or uses a classroom-controlled interface)
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No personal data in prompts (names, addresses, IEP details, etc.)
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Verification routines (every AI claim needs a source or a check)
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“Friction by design”: students must attempt first, then compare with AI, then explain differences (discernment workout)
Get Parents Involved.