Invitation To Be Curious Again
- Track lifecycle
- Draft
- Learner availability
- Drafting
- Owner
- Mike
Revisit a question you set aside and use generative AI to see where it leads.
What Did You Stop Wondering About?
What did you once want to understand or make, before something else took its place? It might be a question about the night sky, a story you wanted to tell, or an idea you never had the tools to try.
Bring that curiosity here. The question does not have to impress anyone. It only has to interest you.
Generative AI might help you find a way in: explain an unfamiliar idea, explore a possibility, or make something small to try. You choose the question, check what the tool gives you, and decide where to go next.
Required: access to a chatbot for the live AI activity. Every core experience includes one purposeful encounter with live generative AI. You may operate the tool, direct a partner, or take part in a facilitator-controlled demonstration. No learner account is required.
Start Here
Begin with Becoming Curious Again — Draft / Drafting — to choose your question and find a way into it.
Then use It Starts With a Question — Beta — for the complete six-step activity. Its self-contained Lab Notebook carries the same path with optional space for your notes; you do not need to use both.
The Curiosity Loop
Notice → Shape → Choose one AI job → Explore → Sort → Decide
The learner keeps curiosity in front. AI has a named job, not open-ended authority. Other methods—observation, books, trusted sources, experiments, people, drawing, modeling, and conversation—can enter wherever they strengthen the exploration.
Follow Your Question Farther
Choose a direction that fits your question. These routes are still developing; the labels show the current status of each linked resource.
Developing route
Create Something
What could you make to explore your question? Ask AI for possibilities for a scene, image, or model. Choose one, revise it, and notice what that reveals. You decide what to keep.
For further making:
- Make Something Weird Sketch / Planned — begin with One Small Idea, Two Versions Alpha, playful making and learner-chosen revision. Use its optional Notebook and two written demonstrations. For a more involved project: Build a Tiny Virtual Museum Alpha, an intermediate Blender project. Download and install Blender (free) before starting.
- Creative Latitude Draft / Drafting — develop your own direction from an inspiration. Related lab: From Inspiration to Invention Beta, for a creative brief that leaves recognizable source details behind.
These continuations are optional. A small creative exploration can stay in the signature lab.
Developing route
Explore Through Simulation
What might change if one condition were different? Choose a small scenario, predict what will happen, then explore one change. AI can help describe possibilities or write a working model; you choose the rules and inspect the result.
A conversation explores a possible story. A working simulation runs rules you can inspect and test. Ask what each leaves out and what evidence would connect its result to the world.
- AI for Learning: Tutor, Quizmaker, Simulator Seed / Planned — an outline for future practice.
Continue with Change One Thing Alpha: choose visible rules, predict, run a baseline, then reset and change one condition. These small models run by hand with a table or counters. A chatbot helps you inspect the rules; you check the calculations and decide what the result means. Use the optional Notebook or inspect the mountain and ice-store demonstrations.
This prepared simulation continuation still needs human and learner-pilot review. Its invented rules and numbers are teaching models, not evidence about real mountains or refrigeration.
Developing route
Learn With Generative AI
What would you like to understand well enough to explain or try yourself? Start with what you know and where you are stuck. Ask AI for a different example, a hint, or one practice question. Make your own attempt before asking for more.
Check the explanation and feedback against a trusted reference, then explain or apply the idea in your own words. Notice what you can now do and what still needs work.
- Study Time Draft / Drafting — the developing track for deeper explanation and practice.
- Its signature module, AI for Learning: Tutor, Quizmaker, Simulator Seed / Planned, is an outline, not a finished tutoring lesson.
Continue with Try, Check, Explain Alpha: make your own attempt, ask for one useful hint, check it, and try again. Use the optional Notebook or inspect the mountain and refrigeration teaching walkthroughs.
This prepared learning continuation still needs human and learner-pilot review.
Each of the three continuation routes has two prepared written demonstrations. They show worked choices and results; they are not recorded learner sessions.
Strengthen Your Practice
The signature experience embeds two minimum habits: protect what should not enter the conversation, and treat generated material as something to inspect rather than proof.
Use these shared modules when you need help with a decision in your exploration:
- Unsure what to share or let a tool do? Use Safety: Share Less, Notice More — Draft / Drafting — before sharing a file, including someone else’s information, or granting tool access. Decide what to share, remove, replace with a fictional example, or keep out.
- Related lab: What Else Came Along? — Beta. Inspect the supplied fictional document pair for content beyond the visible page; no upload is required.
- Answers conflict, change with the wording, or lack evidence? Use Reality Check for AI — Draft / Drafting — to examine what changed, what the claim means, and what supports it.
- Related lab: Reality Check for AI: Six Experiments — Beta. Compare responses and check claims against outside sources. The module supports working through one experiment at a time.
Choose the practice that fits, then return to your question with a decision: what you will share, how you will state a claim, what you will check next, or why you will stop. Completing both modules is not required. They remain shared resources from AI Literacy.
Optional: Share What You Found
Public Speaking and its related labs form an optional branch. Use them when explaining or demonstrating a discovery would help the learner’s project. A presentation is not required to complete the core Track.
Participation and Access
You may speak, listen, draw, annotate, research, time, point, or take another useful role. No recording or personal disclosure is required.
If live generative AI is unavailable, learners may prepare their question and planned AI job, but the core Track experience is not yet complete. A refusal, limitation, or unhelpful response still counts as generated material that can be inspected.
For Facilitators
Use the signature lab’s facilitator guide for preparation, participation options, the short pilot, and evidence to look for.
Additional Reading
These optional readings are hosted outside the Learning Lab. Medium access may vary.
- What Did You Stop Wondering About? — A direct challenge to reignite dormant curiosity and question the mundane.
- The Invitation — Perfectly sets the tone for an open-ended exploration of ideas.
- Asking for a Query vs. Asking for Help Designing a Query — Illustrates how curiosity can be used to formulate better questions and drive collaborative inquiry.
- Learning From the Illusion of Knowing — Encourages readers to challenge their assumptions and remain open to discovery.
- Estimating the Speed of Light with Chocolate — A brilliant example of taking a curious thought and applying a hands-on, scientific approach to satisfy it.
- A Bespoke Way to Learn — Highlights how to chart a personalized path of inquiry based on individual interests.
Status and Feedback
This Track remains Draft / Drafting. Share Track feedback: tell us what helped you start, where you got stuck, or what you could not find. Contributor inventory, gaps, and open review needs live in the Track Map.
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 learning-design, mixed-age, accessibility, privacy/security, applicable-rights, and pilot review.