AI Literacy for Teachers: Free Lessons, No Expertise Needed

You do not have to be an AI expert to teach AI literacy. Laura Gray says nobody is one — and points to free, ready-to-teach lessons that work in any subject. SPONSORED: Experience AI, a co-developed program by the Raspberry Pi Foundation and Google DeepMind, sponsored this episode. All opinions are my own and that of the guest. Experience AI is a free AI literacy program with ready-to-teach lessons for ages 8 to 16, in any subject. Laura asked some third graders how a smart speaker works. They told her the question gets recorded and sent to a human being who looks up the answer and speaks it back. Her own four-year-old told her a very short lady lives inside her phone. Children are building theories about these systems whether or not a screen ever comes into your classroom, which is the whole case for teaching this even if you never plug anything in. Laura's advice on the expertise problem is the part I keep repeating: nobody is an expert in AI, so stop trying to be one and start small. In this episode, you'll learn: • Why you are likely already teaching AI literacy in your subject without naming it • How to weave AI into what you already teach without going off track • What this looks like at age eight versus age fifteen, including the unplugged advertisement-detective lesson for younger students • Why anthropomorphizing AI is riskier for children than adults assume • "Discernment instead of skepticism," and why she chose that word on purpose • The crutch test — am I reaching for this because I don't know how? — and what students lose when the answer is yes • Where to start in the free curriculum, and how the lessons are edited and localized by the teachers using them Laura Gray is a Senior Learning Manager at the Raspberry Pi Foundation, where she manages Experience AI across North America. Experience AI is free, available in 20+ languages, has been downloaded more than a million times across over 195 countries, and won the 2025 UNESCO King Hamad Bin Isa Al-Khalifa Prize for the Use of ICT in Education. Full show notes, resources, and the complete transcript: https://www.coolcatteacher.com/e990