Interacting with AI Lesson Plan

Grades: 7-9

Duration: 1.5 - 2 hours

Author: MediaSmarts and TELUS

Learning goals

Key concepts/big ideas:

Students will understand that Interactions through digital media can have a real impact:

• Conversations with chatbots can have emotional effects and affect what we think and believe

Digital media experiences are shaped by the tools we use:

• The nature and limitations of large language models affect how we interact with chatbots
• We can affect how chatbots work through conscious prompt design

Digital media have unanticipated audiences:

• AI companies collect information when we use their tools and that data may be sold, shared or used to
  make decisions about us in the future

Essential questions:

• Can a chatbot be a friend?
• How can we use chatbots in a safe and ethical way?

Misconceptions to correct:

• Chatbots are intelligent in the way people are; conversations with chatbots are private and confidential.

Essential knowledge:

• Reading media: How large language models work
• Ethics and empathy: Concerns about interactions with large language models and steps to
  mitigate them
• Making and remixing: Steps for making an effective chatbot prompt

Performance tasks:

Students will...

• Use: Make a prompt that will make a chatbot interact safely and ethically in a given role
• Understand: Analyze how large language models work and the implications of that
• Engage: Evaluate the possible impacts of interacting with chatbots on human relationships and society

This lesson and all associated documents (handouts, overheads, backgrounders) are available in an easy-print, pdf kit version.

Sponsored by

Disclaimer: TELUS Wise provides financial support to MediaSmarts. This lesson plan has been developed in collaboration between TELUS Wise and MediaSmarts. MediaSmarts does not endorse any commercial entity, product or service. No endorsement is implied.