AI Literacy for the Rest of Us

Track lifecycle
Draft
Learner availability
Drafting
Owner
Mike

Understand what generative AI can do, choose where it fits, use it with care, and check the results so you can decide what to trust, change, or decline.

Track Promise

Understand what generative AI can do, choose where it fits, use it with care, and check the results so you can decide what to trust, change, or decline.

Start with an ordinary need: organize something, understand an unfamiliar idea, compare possibilities, or evaluate a claim. Learn how to choose a useful task, protect information, work with a chatbot, and inspect what comes back. People remain responsible for the result and for what happens next.

This Track also welcomes people who need to take part in decisions about AI in a workplace, service, family, or community without operating a tool themselves. Curiosity, skepticism, and uncertainty are all welcome. No technical background is required.

Start Here

Begin with AI Without the Hype — Draft / Drafting. It is this Track’s signature module: a calm first look at useful capabilities, limits, and human judgment.

Inside the module, use its signature lab A Safe First Try — Beta. Work through a fictional task with a tool, a partner, a facilitator, or the supplied example. Notice what is useful, what needs checking, and which decisions remain yours.

The standalone Lab Notebook contains the complete activity and places for your notes. You can use it without keeping the module or Activity page open beside it. Notes are private to the browser session; export anything you want to keep.

The AI Literacy Loop

Understand → Choose → Steer → Check → Decide

  • Understand what the tool is being asked to do and where its limits matter.
  • Choose a task and tool that fit. Set boundaries for information, safety, and what the tool may do before you begin.
  • Steer with a clear request, relevant context, follow-up questions, comparison, or a fresh start.
  • Check the result against sources, standards, and the needs of the task. Notice what worked and what you need to learn next.
  • Decide whether to use, revise, verify further, seek help, or decline the result. Carry what you learned into the next attempt.

You can practice these choices through live use or by inspecting a supplied AI interaction. Reading another confident answer is not a substitute for checking a claim that matters.

The Five-Module Core

Follow this recommended sequence when you want a longer path. You can pause after a useful experience or choose a depth route without finishing all five modules. Only prerequisites stated by an individual module are required.

Each module teaches a part of the loop, with one featured lab for practice. Core describes its role in the Track; the status beside each source describes its current stage. This is a curriculum under review, not a completed course.

  1. AI Without the Hype Draft / Drafting
    Understand useful capabilities and limits; choose a safe first task.

    Featured lab: A Safe First Try Beta — inspect a fictional task and decide what remains human-owned.

  2. Safety: Share Less, Notice More Draft / Drafting
    Choose what to share, sanitize, substitute, or keep out of the interaction.

    Featured lab: What Else Came Along? Beta — inspect a supplied file pair for information beyond what first meets the eye.

  3. Prompting Is the Door, Not the Destination Sketch / Planned
    Make a useful first request, inspect the response, and repair what needs work.

    Featured lab: One Task, Three Conversations Beta — compare different conversation moves on one task.

  4. Conversation Engineering Sketch / Planned
    Keep direction across turns; notice when to continue, steer, restart, or stop.

    Featured lab: Stay, Steer, or Start Over Beta — choose the next move in a conversation and explain why it fits.

  5. Reality Check for AI Draft / Drafting
    Test your expectations about AI and revise them from what you observe and check.

    Featured lab: Reality Check for AI: Six Experiments Beta — predict, compare, inspect sources, and revise a working mental model.

Safety and checking begin in the signature experience and recur throughout the core. The later modules give those habits more depth. All five featured labs have their own standalone Notebooks, linked from the Activity pages.

Choose Where to Go Deeper

Choose a route when it serves something you want to understand or do. Draft and Planned links remain visible for feedback. A complete route is not implied by the presence of a source page. Each module links to its own related labs and practice choices.

Optional depth

Understand and steer

Look more closely at what AI is, then learn to select and maintain the context around a task.

Optional depth

Learning and making

Explore creative choices and ways AI might support explanation, practice, and learning.

The AI-for-learning source is a planning input. Dedicated AI-as-instructor modules and labs have not been created.

Optional depth

Communication

Use speaking and listening practice when explaining an idea would serve your next goal.

  • Public Speaking Draft / Drafting — choose practice from the module’s related labs.

A public presentation or recording is not required.

Next-build candidates

  • Sounds Right—Check It — proposed lab for When the Bot Sounds Right but Is Not. Practice spotting claims, choosing a check, and deciding what to use, revise, reject, or investigate. No canonical lab exists yet.
  • What’s Possible Beyond Text — proposed module about image, audio, and video capabilities, including provenance and disclosure. No canonical module exists yet.

Developing and deferred directions

These draft links invite feedback about future composition; they add no requirements to the core.

Chatbot Roles and Modes, Problem Definition, and Human-AI Collaboration remain planning ideas. Their place in this Track needs definition; no source page is implied by naming them.

Participation and Access

Live use and supplied-example routes are both complete ways to participate. You may operate an approved tool, direct a partner, observe and guide a facilitator, or inspect supplied scenarios and saved AI responses. In each mode, practice the same decisions: choose a task, protect information, inspect a response, and explain what should happen next.

No learner account, paid subscription, personal disclosure, recording, or public presentation is required. Learners may speak, listen, point, draw, dictate, or take notes. Adjust depth, vocabulary, pacing, and written load to the learner rather than assuming ability or comfort from age.

Use the fictional or low-risk materials supplied by each lab. A learner who uses a saved example can assess that example and plan a next move; they should not claim to have tested a current tool. An informed decision not to use AI is a valid outcome.

For Facilitators

Begin the first pilot with AI Without the Hype and A Safe First Try. Use the existing package’s facilitation and timing guidance as a starting point, then record actual time and any interventions needed. Do not attempt all five modules in one sitting.

Offer live and supplied-example participation from the outset. Ask learners to identify what was useful, what needs checking, and which decision remains theirs. Notes may be spoken or kept privately; a submission is not required.

Gather Track-level feedback: could learners find a starting point, understand the promise, distinguish status labels, and choose a next route? Note missing or misplaced modules and labs. Send comments about instructions inside a module or lab through that artifact’s own feedback surface.

Use what learners encountered to choose the next core module or depth route. Actual learner evidence remains necessary before changing readiness or status.

Keep Learning

Return to the loop when tools, tasks, and claims change. Use the glossary when a term helps you make a decision:

Follow a question through Invitation To Be Curious Again, explore Creative AI Makerspace or Study Time, or consider the planning routes in AI Readiness, Zero-to-Hero Agentic Literacy, and Systems Thinking and AI Engineering. Each Track keeps its own scope and status.

Additional Reading

These optional readings are hosted outside the Learning Lab. Medium access may vary.

  1. AI Is Only Magic When We Close Our Eyes — Grounds the reader by removing the mystique around AI, establishing it as a tool rather than magic.
  2. The First Tool That Can Speak Before It Knows Why — Explains the fundamental nature of Large Language Models and how they generate text.
  3. How LLMs Answer Questions They Were Never Taught — Breaks down inference, helping readers understand how models extrapolate information.
  4. Why Giving AI More Context Works — A practical look at the underlying mechanics of effective prompting.
  5. From Zero to Hero in Prompting — A straightforward, accessible guide to communicating with AI.
  6. Choosing the Right AI Assistant — Provides actionable advice on selecting the appropriate tool for specific needs.

Status and Feedback

This Track is Draft / Drafting, owned by Mike. The five featured labs are Beta. Modules retain their own Draft, Sketch, or Seed lifecycle and Drafting, Planned, or Deferred availability. Inclusion in the core or a depth route does not promote a source or make the assembled route ready.

Use Track feedback for the promise, starting point, status language, and whether the right modules and labs appear in the right roles. Tell us what is missing, misplaced, or inappropriate.

The Track Review Hub provides the fixed Guide and Map reviews, followed by independent final QC. The shared Track Map holds composition decisions, gaps, and the link to historical audit evidence.

Track composition, beginner-language, accessibility, and pilot review remain open. Reviews of teaching content and materials continue on the separate module and lab surfaces.

Team review information. You are viewing the team review site. The contributor review tools below are separate from the learner activity and learner feedback.

Review status

  • Package lifecycle: Draft
  • Learner availability: Drafting
  • Review needs: Needs track-level composition, beginner-language, accessibility, and pilot review.

Review this TrackShare Track feedbackIndependent final QC