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ARKAI Readiness Kollective
AI Fluent · Grades 9-12Module 1

Facilitator guide: The AI Landscape Today

75 minutesReview status: Being checked
Open the lessonsSlide deck (Google Drive)

Materials

  • Projector.
  • Printed claim cards for Step 1.
  • Devices with an AI tool your school allows, or printed copies of the Step 4 no-AI version.
  • Four corner signs for the AGI vote.
  • A five-question "guessing quiz" for Step 2.

Lesson steps

  1. 1. Real, stretched, or a forecast? (Explainer, 5 min)
  2. 2. How a chatbot is made, and why it guesses (Explainer, 7 min)
  3. 3. Brilliant and unreliable at once (Explainer, 7 min)
  4. 4. Can anyone build an app? (Activity, 12 min)
  5. 5. The pitch (Scenario, 6 min)
  6. 6. Quick check (Quick check, 4 min)
  7. 7. Where do you stand? (Reflect, 5 min)
  8. 8. Recap (Recap, 3 min)

Timing for a 75-minute class

For 60 minutes, shorten Step 3 and do Step 4 as a demo. For 90 minutes, extend the pitch role-play.

Minutes What happens Format
0-3 Pre-check Individual
3-8 Step 1 claim sort Whole class
8-20 Step 2 and the guessing quiz Whole class
20-30 Step 3: each pair lists one task AI aced and one it flubbed Pairs
30-48 Step 4 Try it Pairs
48-58 Step 5 pitch role-play: teacher, student, parent, district Groups of four
58-62 Step 6 quick check Individual
62-70 Step 7: ARK’s view, reflect, then the AGI corner vote Individual, then whole class
70-75 Step 8 recap and post-check Whole class

Before you start

  • Check your school’s rules on AI tools, student accounts, and age limits before Step 4.
  • Remind everyone not to type personal information into any AI tool.
  • The Hugging Face incident can alarm some students. Stick to what happened, what the companies changed, and what is still unknown. Module 5 covers it in depth.
  • Some students worry about AGI or about jobs. Stay with evidence, say plainly what is unknown, and avoid both doom and hype. Module 4 covers work in depth.
  • ARK’s view is an opinion, labeled as one. Invite students to argue with it. No grade depends on agreeing.
  • The guessing quiz: ask five questions nobody in the room can know, such as made-up trivia. Score blanks as zero and let guesses earn points by luck. Ask who scored higher, the guessers or the honest blanks, then connect it to the 2025 paper in Step 2.

Discussion prompts (from the deck’s AI tutor debate)

  • Teachers: helpful assistant, or a step toward replacement?
  • Students: is personalized help worth handing over your data?
  • Parents: who gets to see what students type late at night?
  • District: cheap tutoring, but who is accountable when it is wrong?

Answer notes

Quick check: 1 B, 2 C, 3 A, 4 D, 5 B. Pre/post: 1 B, 2 C, 3 D. If learners miss question 2, point back to the consultant study and the GPT-5.6 scorecard: the same tool can ace one task and fail the one next to it.

Words to know

generative AI
AI that produces new text, images, audio, or code from a prompt.
large language model (LLM)
A model trained on a very large body of text to predict what comes next.
hallucination
A confident answer from a model that is false or made up.
benchmark
A standard test used to compare AI systems.
artificial general intelligence (AGI)
A hypothetical AI that could match people across most intellectual tasks. There is no agreed definition.
vibe coding
Building software by telling an AI tool what you want in plain language and letting it write the code.

Workshop quick checks

Learners can answer these on their own phones with no account. Answers count toward ARK's anonymous totals.