KS2 Computing – Introduction to Responsible and Creative Use of AI
Introduction
Recent advances in machine learning have catapulted artificial intelligence into the news headlines with breathless hyperbole abound. AI is already changing business, culture, and learning, but it is a tool like any other in that users need to learn how to use it well, practice and experiment with the guidance of a teacher. Equally importantly, users should understand the limitations of the current generation of AI platforms to best hone its abilities to augment one’s own work. The following six lessons will provide an overview of how to introduce AI to a KS2 class, explore what it is and is not, some practical classroom applications, and how to ensure that collaborations with AI remain accurate.
Week 1 – AI. What it is, what it isn’t and how it is made.
LO: Be able to explain what AI and machine learning are, how it has been developed, and know some of the most common AI platforms.
Lesson:
Begin by assessing what your class know about AI. Ask the following questions as a starting point:
-Where have you encountered AI?
-What is AI?
-How can AI be used?
Try not to confirm or deny what your learners say at this stage. Just listen and make note of good explanations and misconceptions which you can circle back to later.
Listen to the Magnaphone Podcast about AI (Spotify: bit.ly/magnaphoneai, or search your Podcast platform of choice), stopping at key points to discuss and ensure your learners have understood.
Some suggested prompt points to pause and discuss:
0:55: How might AI change the world in the future?
1:15 How might an AI show its creativity?
1:49 Have you seen and used AI-powered recommendations on video platforms?
2:05 What is machine learning?
2:35 How are AI tools different from traditionally coded tools?
5:35 How might AI training data be problematic?
6:22 What are Deepfakes?
Return to the original three questions and seen how your learners’ answers have changed and now correct any misunderstandings.
Watch the BBC video at bit.ly/5thingsai
It is important for your learners to understand that, despite the name, artificial intelligence is not intelligent and there is no understanding in the responses that generative AI platforms give. Indeed, a more accurate name would be ‘applied statistics’ (Yay maths!) and text is generated by crunching a lot of data and then predicting the most likely next word, which is repeated, just like an advanced predictive text on a smart phone keyboard. Emulate this by asking a pair of learners to try taking turns at building a sentence one word at a time. Listeners of I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue’ will know this game as ‘Cheddar Gorge’.
Your learners should now have the information they need to complete the cut and stick worksheet (Download Week 1). View and download a Slideshow of all the images used in all worksheets at bit.ly/aislideimages
Assessment
Assess learners from verbal responses during the discussion, as well as their accuracy completely the worksheet.
Week 2 – Using AI Text Generation
LO: Be able to identify the main features of a Generative AI platform and understand how to use it to generate text using accurate and thoughtful prompts.
Lesson:
Writing the right prompt to yield the right result within an AI platform is something which takes practice and refinement. Sometimes it seems like the platform is wilfully misunderstanding prompts like the trickster Jinn or cursed wish granting monkey paw.
To explore this point, use a Generative AI platform like ChatGPT, Microsoft’s Copilot within the Bing search engine, or Google’s Gemini to create an example of the trickster Jinn legend. Relate the basic story line to your learners (they may be familiar with the Simpsons monkey paw parody) and ask them what prompts you can use to generate this story. Read out some or all the story that is generated. Refine the prompt to create a story which contains any important missing elements. Continue until the story meets your requirements and expectations.
Note that the prompts and answers in the timeline can link back to previously generated text. Ask the AI to comment on some element of the story it generated, such as “What do you think the Jinn was thinking?” or “Why did the Jinn act this way”? Being able to refer to previous content is a powerful tool which the learners will practice later.
Ask the learners to complete the worksheet (Download Week 2) by thinking about suitable prompts to get the example text. Discuss how these might be improved or refined.
Ask your learners to use a generative AI platform in pairs or small groups. Ask them to generate a story which includes an element from each member of the group, such as “Write an adventure story about (1) a cute guinea pig, (2) Ant-man, and (3) a pony called Daisy.” Ask your learners to repeatedly tweak the prompt to refine the story into the narrative they want. They can add ‘way-points’ in the story, such as “They must visit a castle at the end of the story”.
Ask your learners to have a “small talk” conversation with the AI, for example, asking how it is, where it is from, how it is feeling. Ask your learners to discuss how human-like the responses are.
Next, they should experiment with some prompts based on what they have been learning about recently, such as:
“Write a Shakespeare play in the style of a comic book.”
“Write a rap about place value.”
“Write about states of matter as a song.”
Ask the groups to discuss how the outputs can be improved.
Assessment
Assess learners by their ability to form and refine relate prompts to create a desired AI generated outcome.
Week 3 – Collaborative with AI
LO: Be able to use AI to improve creative writing, and know how to collaborate with AI to generate ideas.
Lesson:
Ask your learners to play a game of Consequences in pairs, where they must continue a story based on only seeing the last sentence by folding over the paper so the rest of the story cannot be seen. Explain that they will be collaborating with AI in a similar way.
Ask your learners to write a story opening. You may wish to ask them to do this as homework on a text document so they can copy/paste quickly in the lesson. Prompt the platform to “Continue the following story:” and then input the opening into the prompt box. Once the learners have read the output, ask them to write the next paragraph and then repeat the process until a lengthy story has been created. Ensure you save these creations (copy/paste into a text doc), as these will be used in the following lesson.
Flip the activity, by next asking the AI to create a story opening based on something that the children have been studying in class. This time, ask the learners to continue using their knowledge of the subject matter in the next paragraph and then repeat.
Try the same method with different types of text, such as instructional writing, poems, descriptive writing, a play with dialogue etc.
Once the learners and AI have generated an impressive body of work. Copy and paste a piece of writing into the prompt, asking the AI to improve the writing, highlight potential errors, create a short summary, to create a paragraph that links two stories together, and to convert one type of writing into another.
Discuss how they might use AI to augment and improve their own written work in the future, and how it could be used to enhance learning. As a teacher, you may wish to consider this question yourself, and how to enable your learners to use AI more widely when appropriate.
Now that your learners have experienced AI, complete the worksheet (Download Week 3) and see if they can identify which texts were created by a human, and which were generated by AI.
Assessment
Assess the learners by their ability to use prompts to generate a continuing piece of writing, and whether they can successfully adapt text to other types of text and uses.
Week 4 – Creating Media with AI
LO: Understand how to create images and audio with AI, adapting text prompts to achieve a desired outcome.
Lesson:
Before the lesson generate some pieces of art using an AI platform, such as Adobe’s Firefly, as well as Microsoft’s Copilot and Google’s Gemini which we met in Week Two. Tell your learners that you want them to critique the images. Ask what they like about them, what they don’t, and ask what the artist was trying to convey when they created each piece of art.
Reveal that these images have been created using AI. Ask whether they still think the AI artist still has intentions and something they wish to convey.
Ask the learners to complete the worksheet (Download Week 4) by thinking about what prompts they would use to generate the images.
Using an AI platform above, select a theme that the learners have been looking at in the wider curriculum, ask them to generate images from a range of prompt, honing descriptions in a similar way to Week 2 when generating text. Use some of the saved text from Week 3 to generate illustrations for their stories and other pieces of writing. Use the images to add additional details into the writing based on what can be seen.
Create some atmospheric music to accompany the stories. Ask your learners to use the ‘Text to Music’ tool at loudly.com, beatoven.ai, musicgenerate.com or MusicGen at bit.ly/aimusicgen by crafting a text prompt which describes the music they wish to create. The music can be downloaded or played while the story is being read.
Assessment
Assess the learners by their ability to use prompts to generate images and music based on desired traits, uses and audience.
Week 5 – When AI gets it Wrong
LO: Understand that AI has limitations and makes mistakes. Also to understand that AI can be used to create media which is untrue and made to deceive and confuse.
Lesson: Before putting everything we have learnt together in Week 6, it is important to learn about the limitations of AI, and how it can be used intentional for misinformation. We are quickly reaching a point where we cannot take any information at face value online, and the role of trusted gatekeepers, such as the BBC, will take on greater importance.
Before the lesson, go to moondisaster.org, start and then pause the video so to hide the warming that is video has been manipulated. Ask your class if they remember seeing the video of the failed attempt of walking on the moon. In every class, some will confirm wholeheartedly that they have! Play at least the first four and a half minutes of the video to get a sense of the fictious disaster. Briefly discuss how the disaster made you feel when you were your learners’ age, and ask them how they feel. Ask whether they notice anything unusual about the video.
Come clean and let your class know the video is a ‘DeepFake’. AI and clever editing has been used to show an alternative history. Discuss about ways in which they can use trusted sources and try to verify material from multiple sources to attempt to check whether media is real or fake. Discuss what possible motives someone might have for creating and sharing fake media.
AI also makes mistakes. Until recently, if you wrote the prompt “what is the world record for walking across the English Channel?” it would reply in around 4 hours, failing to notice that walking on water isn’t that common these days. Ask your learners to use prompts to see if they can fool an AI platform in a similar way.
As mentioned in the BBC video from Week 1, AI can simply make things up sometimes, and this is known as an AI hallucination. Ask your learners to prompt the AI platform for information about a local place and using traditional research methods, see if they can spot incorrect information from the AI. Many platforms give sources of information that it has sources to create the output. Ask your class to view these and see where the facts came from.
It is important to note that AI is only as good as its training data, and if bias and discrimination is in the historical data the AI may continue to show bias in its output, which can have real world impacts on people lives, such as their ability to get a loan, or court sentences.
Complete the worksheet (Download Week 5) to research incorrect information, and to create some misinformation of their own.
Finally, check out some of the fun and bizarre AI mistakes on aiweirdness.com and discuss how these may have come about with your learners.
Assessment
Assess by your learners’ ability to articulate the limitations, concerns and potential dangers of AI and demonstrate robust methods to check sources and conduct independent fact checking research with trusted gatekeepers.
Week 6 – Creating Videos and Putting it All Together
LO: Combine prior knowledge and skills at using generative AI to create a video on a given topic and audience.
Lesson:
AI has had a long history in popular culture. This has also feedback into the computer labs shaped the directly of research. Ask your learners to complete the worksheet (Download Week 6) about AI in books, movies and fiction.
Starting where we left off in Week 5 by showing the class a range of age-appropriate AI videos which have mistakes and bizarreness, such as the cartoon at bit.ly/aibapple, the children’s song at bit.ly/aiskiplou, and the AI version of the Wizard of Oz at bit.ly/aiwizardofoz (note that the melting witch at 3:15 may haunt the dreams of some younger children. You may want to stop before then). Ask your class to observe and point out moments of weirdness. Because AI video is created only by reproducing patterns in the visual data it has accessed in the past, rather than making physical sense, you will observe surfaces bubbling and rippling as things move, objects moving through other objects, and princesses missing fingers. These are things your learners need to look out for when creating their own AI videos.
Bringing everything together, ask your class to create a short film in small groups using text generation to create a story and script, image generation to create a storyboard about the film, and then use a platform like app.pixverse.ai or app.runwayml.com to create a few seconds of AI generated video for free. Stitch these together with video editing tools, such as express.adobe.com. Add AI generated music, and your human produced voices and foley artist sound effects, or from pixabay.com/sound-effects. Ideally the video should have some purpose, such as showing what the learners have learned about a topic they have covered, or to create a video to teach something to their peers in KS1. Ask the class to critique the videos and make adjustments based on this feedback.
Assessment
Assess on the learners’ ability to use prior skills in combination to create a video based on topic and audience requirements, and whether they can adapt their production based on feedback.
Bio
Martin Burrett is a primary teacher, EdTech specialist, editor at UKEdChat, and author. See ictmagic.co/books to view his books on computing and coding. Find him on social media @ICTmagic.
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