How to Approach Artificial Intelligence in the Classroom?

Artificial intelligence (AI) has become part of our everyday lives — from voice assistants and video recommendations to self-driving cars. Talking about AI in class, even in a simple and playful way, helps students develop critical thinking, stimulate scientific curiosity, and build awareness of ethical issues.

Agnès Viry, an educational advisor specializing in digital technologies, believes that the key is first and foremost to “demystify the topic of AI, both for students and teachers, and to explain how it works in simple terms.”

Demystifying Artificial Intelligence from an Early Age

She often finds that clarification is needed: “Some students thought ChatGPT was a social network. This shows there’s real confusion between the tools they hear about and what those tools actually do.”
Before introducing AI in class, Viry encourages teachers “to experiment with AI themselves — to observe its benefits, biases, and limitations, and to compare the results of different tools.”Without going into complex technical explanations, teachers can explain that AI is a technology that learns from data — but it has no consciousness, emotions, or free will.
A useful analogy is that AI is like a very fast apprentice who imitates what it’s shown but can make mistakes if the examples are wrong. This helps students understand that models like ChatGPT don’t think — they predict the most likely word, image, or sound based on the data they’ve been trained on.

Developing Students’ Critical Thinking and Sense of Responsibility Toward AI

This approach also helps highlight the limitations of the technology. Unlike a calculator that gives an exact result, AI can make mistakes, reproduce bias, or spread misinformation. AI learns the same way students do — if it only sees black dogs, it will assume all dogs are black.

Concrete examples are an effective way to make this clear. As Viry explains, “I showed students AI-generated images to encourage discussion about verifying sources and understanding that a computer can generate pictures or texts.” Students respond positively: “They’re curious and open-minded,” she observes.

Educating responsible citizens also means addressing the environmental impact of AI — its high water and energy consumption — and encouraging students to question whether a simple online search might be sufficient.

Classroom Activity Ideas for Teaching AI

• Use voice dictation in the ONE platform: This activity in the Library helps students discover, in a hasty manner, that AI is not a mystery and learn how machines recognize speech.
  
• AI Scavenger Hunt: Identify where AI appears in daily life (voice assistants, YouTube Kids recommendations, spell checkers) → create a poster “Where I Encounter AI.”
  
• Game – “AI or Not AI?”: Show examples (smart traffic light, calculator, chatbot, Google search) and vote in class → discuss the difference between a program and AI.
  

“Who Created It?” Game: Show two artistic creations — one by a human, one by AI — and ask students to guess which is which.