Day of AI: Innovating Pedagogical Practices to Bring AI Literacy to Classrooms at Scale

We present the Day of AI, an innovative program for K-12 educators around the world to bring AI literacy curricula to their local classrooms and communities, all for free. Our open teacher-facing materials, student-facing materials, and supporting technologies were developed to address key challenges in empowering teachers to bring multi-disciplinary, hands-on AI literacy learning opportunities to their students in the face of limited pedagogical practices, curriculum, and resources in their community. We designed a modular, 4-hour format for multiple grade bands, spanning upper elementary through high school, to bring AI literacy to K-12 classrooms at scale. Student learning objectives included: demystifying how AI works, analyzing AI applications, and thinking critically about the ethical use of AI and its societal implications. Our research study utilized a sequential mixed methods approach to design and evaluate the effectiveness of our curriculum and professional development resources to support teachers in bringing the curricula to their classrooms. A total of 108 teachers from over twenty countries participated in our study, who collectively taught the curricula to over 7,000 students. Quantitative and qualitative findings suggest that teachers were well supported by our teacher-facing materials and professional development training. Teachers also positively rated students’ engagement and AI literacy knowledge gains with the curricula.