AI Explorers

Curriculum

90 min session × 5 weeks • 1 session/week • $300 total

Class 1 – Intro to AI

Course Information (25 min)

  • Welcome & introductions (10 min)
  • Application-first approach explanation (5 min)
  • Course structure overview (hands-on, homework, professional project) (10 min)

What is AI? (15 min)

  • Definition and basic concepts (10 min)
  • Real-world AI examples discussion (5 min)

AI/Human Interactive Quiz (10 min)

  • "Can you tell which is AI-generated?" with images, text, audio

ChatGPT / Claude / Gemini / Perplexity Demo (15 min)

  • Live demonstrations of each tool (12 min)
  • Students try simple prompts (3 min)

Project Planning Workshop (15 min)

  • Problem identification (5 min)
  • Solution brainstorming (5 min)
  • Users & Success metrics (5 min)

Assignment & Wrap-up (10 min)

  • Assignment explanation: Find 3 AI tools for Padlet board (5 min)
  • Next class preview (3 min)
  • Q&A buffer (2 min)

Class 2 – How does AI Work?

Recap & Check-in (10 min)

  • Review AI tools found by students (8 min)
  • Quick questions (2 min)

Data: The Foundation (15 min)

  • What is training data? (8 min)
  • Hands-on: Data quality exercise (7 min)

Training & Inference (20 min)

  • Training process explanation with analogies (10 min)
  • Interactive demo: Training vs. Inference (10 min)

Transformers & Attention (15 min)

  • Simplified explanation of transformers (10 min)
  • "Attention is All You Need" visual demo (5 min)

Scaling Laws (10 min)

  • Bigger models, more data, more compute (7 min)
  • Interactive scaling visualization (3 min)

Reinforcement Learning (10 min)

  • Learning from feedback (7 min)
  • RLHF example with ChatGPT (3 min)

AI Economics (5 min)

  • Cost of training and running AI models

Assignment & Next Class (5 min)

  • Quiz assignment explanation (3 min)
  • Next class preview (2 min)

Class 3 – Using AI

Recap & Quiz Review (15 min)

  • Quick quiz results discussion (10 min)
  • Questions from last class (5 min)

Text AI Tools Deep Dive (20 min)

  • Advanced prompting techniques (10 min)
  • Hands-on: Students try different prompting strategies (10 min)

Image & Video AI Tools (20 min)

  • Demo: Midjourney, DALL-E, Runway (12 min)
  • Students create something visual (8 min)

AI Agents (15 min)

  • What are agents? (7 min)
  • Agent demo and examples (8 min)

MCP (5 min)

  • Brief explanation of AI tool integration

Automation with AI (10 min)

  • Introduction to n8n and automation concepts (7 min)
  • Simple automation examples (3 min)

Assignment & Preview (5 min)

  • Assignment: Build automation pipeline in n8n (3 min)
  • Next class preview (2 min)

Class 4 – AI Ethics

Automation Showcase (15 min)

  • Students present their n8n automations (12 min)
  • Quick feedback and discussion (3 min)

Real Life Scenarios (25 min)

  • Present 3-4 ethical dilemmas (15 min)
  • Small group discussions (10 min)

AI in Education Debate (25 min)

  • "Should students use AI for homework?" (15 min)
  • Structured debate: Tool vs. Cheating (10 min)

Privacy & Security (15 min)

  • Data privacy concerns (8 min)
  • Security risks and mitigation (7 min)

Bias & Fairness (5 min)

  • Quick examples of AI bias

Assignment & Preview (5 min)

  • Assignment: Find ethical/unethical AI stories (3 min)
  • Final class preview (2 min)

Class 5 – Future of AI

Ethical Stories Sharing (20 min)

  • Students present their found stories (15 min)
  • Discussion and insights (5 min)

Robotics & Embodied AI (15 min)

  • Physical AI demonstrations and videos (10 min)
  • Discussion: robots in daily life (5 min)

Expanding Context & Capabilities (15 min)

  • Longer context windows (7 min)
  • Multimodal AI future (8 min)

New AI Devices (10 min)

  • AI hardware trends (Omi, Meta Glasses, etc.)

Project Showcase (25 min)

  • Each student presents their course project (20 min)
  • Peer feedback and voting (5 min)

Course Wrap-up (5 min)

  • Key takeaways and next steps for continued learning