Beyond AI Literacy: Teaching Kids How AI Works with guests Dave Touretzky, Christina Gardner-McCune & Christi Scarborough
Some middle school students today can explain how self-driving cars see the world and how ChatGPT knows the meanings of words. We’ll talk with the people behind AI4K12.org and the AI4MiddleSchools.org curriculum that teaches students how AI works.
David Touretzky and Christina Gardner-McCune are among the researchers first formalizing K-12 AI Education as a field of research and practice. What began in 2018 as a question about what K-12 students should know about AI led to organizing the AI4K12 Working Group, composed of K-12 computing teachers, university researchers, industry representatives, and tool developers. AI4K12.org is shaping the fabric of AI Education nationally and internationally. Dave and Christina are now leading a mutli-institutional partnership, AI4MiddleSchools.org, spanning 8 states and counting, to teach middle school teachers and students how AI works. They are joined by Christi Scarborough, a middle school CTAE (Career, Technical, & Agricultural Education) teacher from Georgia, who began her AI journey as a science teacher in the AI4GA.org research practitioner partnership project, the forerunner of AI4MiddleSchools, funded by NSF. Christi is now leading her school district’s effort to infuse AI across the curriculum, developing AI curriculum, and coaching and teaching new middle school teacher leaders and teachers in the AI4MiddleSchools.org project.
Why should middle school kids learn about AI? AI is the new electricity. It powers much of modern technology, so educated adults need to understand how it works. In 2018, the AI4K12 Working Group formulated the Five Big Ideas in AI to make AI understandable to K-12 teachers and students. The Five Big Ideas and their grade band progression charts help people understand where AI shows up in their everyday lives, and the concepts that underlie it.
Take for example a robo-taxi. Through exploring Big Idea 1, Perception, students learn about the devices a self-driving car uses to sense the world around it, and grapple with the difference between sensing and perception. (Perception is the extraction of meaning from raw sensory data, and requires AI.)
Big idea 2, Representation and Reasoning, explores how computers represent knowledge as data, and how they use algorithms to operate on that data to solve reasoning problems. A self-driving car, for example, represents the world using a map, and employs search algorithms to reason about the route it will take. Another Big Idea 2 example is how the meanings of words are represented using large lists of numbers called “embeddings” which are created by machine learning algorithms. Neural networks such as ChatGPT use these embeddings for reasoning.
How do we teach K-12 students about concepts that until eight years ago were discussed mainly in graduate-level university courses? We find ways to simplify the concepts and connect them to students’ everyday encounters with AI.
Reading & Resources
AI4K12.org - Artificial Intelligence for K-12 (AI4K12) Initiative. Introduces the Five Big Ideas in AI, and national guidelines for teaching AI across four K-12 grade bands. Includes a curated a AI resource directory.
AI4GA.org - Artificial Intelligence for Georgia Project - NSF-funded Middle School AI Curriculum and Teacher Professional Development Project.
AI4MiddleSchools.org - A multi-state AI teacher capacity building project focused on equipping teachers, schools, and district leaders to teach AI in every middle school and support teachers in a multi-year professional learning community. The project is building infrastructure to scale through state, regional, and non-profit partnerships.
Dr. David S. Touretzky is a Research Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His current research focus is K-12 AI and robotics education. After founding AI4K12.org in 2018, Touretzky and his colleagues introduced the Five Big Ideas in AI and developed national guidelines for what children should know about AI and what they should be able to do with it. He and his students have created numerous online learning resources such as Neuron Sandbox, Diffusion Demo, and Word Embedding Demo that promote hands-on experimentation and learning about AI. Touretzky was named a Distinguished Scientist by the Association for Computing Machinery, a Senior Member of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 2022 he shared the AAAI/EAAI Outstanding Educator of the Year award with the three other members of the AI4K12.org Steering Committee.
Contact: dst@cs.cmu.edu
Social media: #CMUCSD @CSDatCMU
Web: https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst
Dr. Christina Gardner-McCune, University of Florida, Associate Professor Computer Science
Dr. Christina Gardner‑McCune is a trailblazer in K–12 AI education and an Associate Professor of Computer Science at the University of Florida’s Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering. She is a co‑founder and co‑chair of the AI for K–12 Initiative (AI4K12.org), where she co‑led the development of the Five Big Ideas in AI and the national AI guidelines that help students understand, evaluate, and create artificial intelligence technologies. These resources are now shaping AI curricula, standards, and learning pathways around the world.
Christina is deeply committed to building AI teacher and student capacity through her AI for Georgia (AI4GA) and AI for Middle Schools scale‑up projects. Working alongside educators, she and her team have co‑developed a middle school AI curriculum and equipped more than 200 teachers and 9,300 students with the foundational skills needed to become AI‑enabled professionals.
Dr. Gardner-McCune was recognized as a 2023 CSTA Hero and 2022 AAAI/EAAI Outstanding Educator (shared with the AI4K12 Steering Committee) — honors that celebrate her relentless commitment to inspiring the next generation of AI and computing professionals. Christina isn’t just preparing students and teachers for the future—she’s helping them shape it.
Dr. Gardner‑McCune holds a PhD and MS in Computer Science from Georgia Tech and a BS in Computer Engineering from Syracuse University.
Contact: gmccune@ufl.edu
Social Media:
Instagram - UF CISE Department - @uf_cise
LinkedIn -
Christi Scarborough, Career, Technical, & Agricultural Education Teacher & Robotics Coach, Veterans Memorial Middle School
Christi is a veteran educator with 24 years of classroom experience and currently teaches Computer Science—with a focus on artificial intelligence—to middle school students in the Muscogee County School District in Georgia. Before moving into computer science, she taught science, math, English language arts, and social studies, giving her a uniquely interdisciplinary perspective on how AI can enrich learning across subjects. Although this is her first year formally teaching computer science, Christi has spent the past three years integrating AI concepts into her science curriculum, helping students learn how AI works. Beyond her classroom, Christi coaches teachers and plays an active role in building AI teacher capacity across the country through the AI4MiddleSchools project. She supports educators as they learn to integrate AI into their instruction. She is helping her districts prepare for emerging AI‑focused coursework. Christi is deeply committed to expanding AI education in Georgia and is working toward the adoption of statewide middle school AI standards. She was teacher of a 2025 Teacher of the Year for Muscogee County and a coach of multiple award‑winning FLL and FTC Robotics teams. In 2026, Veterans Memorial had the highest rated FTC Robotics Team for middle schools.