6 creative ways to build awareness of Artificial Intelligence in education 

9 April 2026

Artificial intelligence is now part of everyday life for young people — from the apps they use to tools they encounter in school. To mark AI Awareness Day, happening on 4th June 2026, we wanted to share some suggestions for how to build awareness of AI with your pupils to support them to approach it discerningly and use it safely, and explore whether they want to use it all. Engaging with AI literacy isn’t about teaching coding or technical skills — it’s about helping pupils develop confidence, curiosity and critical thinking.

1. Explore AI yourself

You might already be using AI in your school to help with lesson planning and administrative work or even using it with your students. No matter your engagement with AI already, the best way to try and understand it before embarking on conversations with pupils is to explore yourself! This includes understanding what we mean by AI, for example a lot of the discourse around AI at the moment is specifically about Generative AI (such as ChatGPT).

Here are some free training modules developed by the Chiltern Learning Trust and Chartered College of Teaching to support the safe and effective use of generative AI in education. Module 1 includes an overview of what AI is, and further modules include safety and examples for using AI, such as creating learning quizzes or adapting materials for specific learners.

We also need to understand how children and young people are engaging with AI, and this was a topic of our Masterclass session with cultural practitioners which you can read about here.

2. Keep safe

AI is developing at an astonishingly fast rate, and it is paramount we ensure that the safeguarding of children is kept at the forefront of our minds even if you are not currently intentionally engaging with AI.

A New Direction has developed a document with suggestions for Safeguarding and Gen AI: Photography of Children after a series of roundtable discussions with creative and arts organisations working with children and young people. This is relevant to anyone who might produce digital images of children whether you use AI or not.

AI Youth work with young people, and the adults they trust, to develop the knowledge and understanding they need to navigate AI more safely, through translating emerging risks into practical training, creative tools, and space for honest reflection. They run training for adults and workshops for children.

SWGfl have an online hub where they break down everything you need to know about how to continue to stay safe online, including considerations for schools and policy templates, and even a podcast!

3. Kick off a discussion about what AI is

With your pupils, you could simply start a curious conversation about what they know about AI. Our Teaching for Creativity Taster Cards have activities that can help as they are short and could be done as an assembly, short PSHE lesson or a starter before a longer lesson.

For example, Only Connect from our Primary Pack, can be used to explore the capabilities of AI and pupils’ misconceptions about it by your choice of words (e.g. privacy, robot, face, data, create, copy, mistake, learning, online) with pupils finding any connection between two words of their choice. This could be used as a starter to a literacy lesson.

Another option is to create a visual of AI using the Connection Maps card from the Sparking Creativity pack. Instead of asking “What connects you to someone else?” ask: “Where does AI connect to parts of our lives?” Pupils could write down where AI appears in their lives e.g. homework, phones, photos, social media, creativity, gaming, safety etc. This could be used to generate some artwork.

A really quick and simple activity is using Machines of Learning to ask pupils to act out ‘Artificial Intelligence?’ or ‘Chatbot’.

4. Address misconceptions

We and AI make the point that ‘news stories and marketing material about Artificial Intelligence are typically illustrated with clichéd and misleading images’ such as ‘humanoid robots, glowing brains, outstretched robot hands, blue backgrounds, and the Terminator.’ These unhelpful images ‘hinder understanding’, ‘mask accountability’, ‘potentially sow fear’ and ‘can be laden with historical assumptions about gender, ethnicity and religion.’ To provide alternatives, they are curating a library of Better Images of AI (which can be downloaded for free and used by anyone under a Creative Commons BY 4.0 license). You could explore these images with your students, and use activities such as See, Think, Wonder or Predicting with Pictures from our Primary Taster Cards.

Another creative way to gauge what children know about the technology is to ask them to create some artwork themselves of what they think it might look like. For example, Tania Duarte, Founder of We and AI spoke about asking children to make a ‘junk model’ (using recycling to make a sculpture) of a ‘chatbot’ in our masterclass event.

Tania also shared some tips about debunking unhelpful metaphors:

Be cautious of metaphors that:

• Anthropomorphise (“AI thinks,” “AI knows”)

• Overstate inevitability (“AI revolution,” “new electricity”)

• Obscure responsibility (“the algorithm decided”)

• Mystify systems (“black box” without explanation)

And some key principles to remember about AI:

• AI isn’t artificial

• AI isn’t like a human

• AI isn’t always right

• AI isn’t neutral

• AI is not the answer to everything

• AI is not inevitable

With older students, you could play Traffic Light Truth from our Secondary Taster Cards Pack (which would also work with Upper Key Stage 2 pupils). Ask children to sort AI statements into true/maybe/false to build digital literacy

e.g. False: “AI always tells the truth”; “AI thinks like a human”; “AI learns by itself”; “AI is new”; “AI can solve any problem”; “AI is neutral”; “AI is artificial”; “AI can feel”; “Everyone wants to use AI”.

True/Maybe: “AI can create realistic fake photos”; “Anyone can use AI”; AI uses a lot of energy”; “AI is harmful to the environment”; “AI can be used in creating music”; “Artists use AI”; “We need to be safe when using AI”; “AI can ‘hallucinate’”.

This could be used to develop oracy and debating skills within a literacy lesson, a PSHE or assembly or even as part of Design or Digital Technology lesson.

5. Explore the capabilities of AI

If your learners already have a good understanding of what AI is, you might want to start to discuss how AI technology is being used and imagine the potentials for the various tools. The Alternative Uses Taster Card from the Secondary Pack sets out how to do this - start them off with prompts such as: “Voice ‘assistants’ could also be used to…” or “Image generators could help with…”. Encourage pupils to think about any risks and ethical challenges. This could then be expanded into a DT lesson or used as inspiration for a piece of written or artwork.

AI Awareness Day is a new nationwide campaign designed to build AI literacy across UK schools: ‘Know it, Question it, Use it Wisely’. They have some suggested lesson starter activities that only take 5 minutes, such as How Does AI Actually ‘Think’? and AI as Your Creative Partner.

6. Explore AI generated media

We and AI are a a non-profit organisation working to encourage, enable, and empower critical thinking about AI, aiming to help more people make informed decisions about how they live with AI. They run Deepfakes and Synthetic Media Workshops for 14- to 19-year-olds, designed to support informed, safe, and ethical interactions with AI-generated media.

You could start to explore the topic of AI generated media with your pupils at Primary age using See, Think, Wonder (from the Sparking Creativity Pack) using two images: one real, one AI generated, to lead naturally into discussions about misinformation, fake content, AI art, or AI in the news.

Step Inside from our Primary Pack can be used to explore the perspective of someone impacted by AI such as a developer, student or parent with in a PSHE lesson. For example: “Step inside the perspective of a student whose image was misused / a parent worried about AI safety.” Ask questions such as: What do you see/feel/worry about? This activity works well as a drama or oracy prompt.

Why not bring discussions around AI into art lessons? For example, if pupils create some portraits of themselves (e.g. using Freestyle portraits or Group Photographs from the Sparking Creativity pack) they could then explore identity by discussing how AI manipulation changes meaning in portraits. You can ask: What parts express your identity? How would it feel if an AI changed your photo/artwork? What rights do people have over their identity/artwork?

If you are considering bringing AI into the classroom as a tool, BBC Bitesize has an article with a video and ethical tips to consider for using AI to help in creating artwork.

We are always keeping the discussion going around topics such as AI and the impact on children and young people’s creativity. If you want to get involved, subscribe to our newsletter.