AI Literacy
AI Literacy Is Becoming a Core Skill.
Students don't just need to know how to use AI. They need to understand how it works, recognize its limitations, question its outputs, protect their information, and use it to create and learn responsibly.
AI literacy is not a chatbot tutorial and not a coding elective. It is the knowledge and practice students and teachers need as AI shows up in schoolwork, clubs, and everyday tools.
Advisor visibility
Practice with oversight
Real-Time Alerts
Ages 8–18
What is AI literacy? AI literacy is the knowledge and skills people need to understand, evaluate, use, and create with artificial intelligence. It is not the same as prompt engineering, knowing ChatGPT, or coding.
- Literacy is broader than prompting or coding
- Six student habits
- Different questions by grade band
- Teachers need a parallel skill set
- Practice belongs in clubs and projects
What is AI literacy?
AI literacy is the knowledge and skills people need to understand, evaluate, use, and create with artificial intelligence. It is broader than prompt engineering, knowing ChatGPT, or learning to code.
What Is AI Literacy?
AI literacy is the knowledge and skills people need to understand, evaluate, use, and create with artificial intelligence. AI literacy is not the same as prompt engineering, knowing ChatGPT, or coding. It can include all three — and is much broader. UNESCO’s student and teacher AI competency frameworks are a useful public reference: they treat AI skill as something people progressively understand, apply, and create, including ethics and judgment, not only how to operate a product.
Student framework
What Should Students Know About AI?
A HeyOtto framing for K–12. It maps to the broader public idea of AI competency — understand, apply, create, judge — without copying any one framework.
Understand AI
What AI is, how it works, and where it already appears in a student’s day.
Question AI
AI can be wrong, biased, incomplete, or misleading — and still sound sure.
Use AI
How to prompt, collaborate, research, brainstorm, and learn with AI.
Evaluate AI
How to check sources, outputs, accuracy, and hidden assumptions.
Create With AI
Build projects, stories, games, apps, media, and ideas.
Use AI Responsibly
Privacy, attribution, academic integrity, safety, and human responsibility.
AI Literacy Across Grade Levels
Elementary — What is AI?
Recognize AI, basic concepts, asking questions, safe use, and limitations.
Keep it concrete. Students should be able to point to AI in tools they already see and know that it can be wrong.
Middle School — How does AI affect what I learn and create?
Generative AI, fact-checking, bias, privacy, prompting, academic integrity, and creative projects.
This is when personal tools show up. Literacy has to include integrity and “check it” habits, not only how to prompt.
High School — How should I use AI responsibly?
Research, evaluation, ethics, data, bias, copyright, AI-assisted work, building with AI, and career readiness.
Students should be able to choose when AI helps, disclose it, and build with it — without treating it as an author of record.
Teachers
AI Literacy for Teachers
UNESCO’s teacher guidance treats AI competency as broader than tool operation — including ethics, foundations, pedagogy, and professional development. Teachers need that same breadth.
Foundations
Understanding and evaluating AIWhat it is, where it fails, and which tools belong in a school.Teachers cannot set bounds they cannot explain. Evaluation comes before classroom use.
Practice
Planning and teaching with AIUse AI for planning when it helps. Teach with it when students should see it.The skill is judgment — when AI saves time, and when it hides the thinking students still need to do.
Bounds
Integrity, safety, and policyAcademic integrity, student safety, responsible AI, and the school policy.Literacy for teachers includes holding the line, not only finding new prompts.
Next step
AI literacy should be practiced, not just taught
Students learn AI differently when they can actually build with it. An AI club is the practice room.
FAQ
Questions about AI literacy
Next step
Give students a place to practice AI literacy
Request a demo to see supervised student AI — or start with how an AI club runs the practice.