Teaching AI Literacy Before AI Tools
How might young children begin understanding artificial intelligence before they ever use an AI tool?
Grade 1 · Five Micro-Lessons · Preliminary Findings · Shared as a Lightning Talk at ICER 2026 · Uppsala, Sweden
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AI literacy is increasingly becoming part of conversations about education, but much of that conversation begins with AI tools.
For young children, there may be another starting point.
Before learning how to use AI, children can begin exploring some of the ideas behind it: how instructions work, how patterns influence predictions, how rules shape decisions, why systems can produce unfair outcomes, and where human judgment matters.
This project explores whether these ideas can be introduced through short, developmentally appropriate experiences without requiring children to interact directly with AI systems.
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How might short, unplugged micro-lessons help young children begin developing foundational AI literacy?
Rather than focusing on proficiency with AI tools, this inquiry explores how young learners begin reasoning about the ideas, decisions, and human responsibilities surrounding AI.
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01 · Algorithms
Exploring how computers follow sequences of instructions.
02 · Patterns
Recognizing patterns and considering how patterns can support predictions.
03 · Rules & Decisions
Exploring how rules guide decisions—and what happens when a rule does not work in every situation.
04 · Bias & Fairness
Beginning to consider how rules, examples, and information can lead to different or unfair outcomes.
05 · Humans + AI
Thinking about what computers can help people do and why human judgment and responsibility still matter.
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The learning experience consisted of five short, unplugged micro-lessons implemented across two first-grade classrooms.
Activities used conversation, movement, sorting, drawing, decision-making, and collaborative reasoning rather than student-facing AI tools.
Throughout the lessons, student responses, classroom observations, learning artifacts, and feedback provided an early window into how young children engage with foundational AI ideas.
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These observations are preliminary and come from a small, classroom-based exploratory inquiry. They represent emerging patterns rather than generalizable findings.
Making Abstract Ideas Concrete
Young learners appeared able to engage with some abstract AI concepts when those ideas were connected to familiar experiences and hands-on activities.
Fairness as an Entry Point
Rules and decision-making activities created opportunities for children to begin thinking about fairness and who might be affected by a system's decisions.
From Technology to People
Some student responses suggested movement beyond thinking only about what technology can do toward considering who technology is designed for and whom it should serve.
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These early observations raise new questions.
How does children's understanding of AI concepts develop over time? Which concepts are most appropriate at different ages? How might we better understand and assess early AI literacy? And how might these experiences translate across classrooms, schools, and communities?
These questions will help shape the next stage of the work.
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This early exploration connects to a broader question at Pico Ripple Foundation:
What should AI literacy look like before children become AI users?
We are interested in approaches that prepare young people not only to use emerging technologies, but also to think critically about them.
That means nurturing curiosity, reasoning, creativity, fairness, human judgment, and responsibility alongside technological understanding.
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This work is an early step.
Future directions may include refining the unplugged learning experiences, collaborating with educators in different contexts, developing accessible classroom resources, and conducting more systematic research into how young learners develop AI literacy.
As the work grows, we hope to continue connecting classroom practice, research, and human-centered approaches to learning in an AI-shaped world.