For School Librarians
Students already use AI. The question is whether they learn to use it with judgment.
Understanding and Working with AI is a print-first AI-Ed program that helps students understand what AI is, where it fails, when to lean on it, when not to, and how to stay responsible for their own thinking.
An A-G approved course — the University of California and Cal State college-preparatory standard — now being taught at a high school in the San Diego area.
The case for AI-Ed
Most every student takes Driver's Ed. It's time for AI-Ed.
We don't hand a teenager the keys and hope they figure it out. We teach the rules, the risks, and the responsibility first — then we let them drive. AI is a far more powerful machine, and we've handed it to students with no instruction at all.
AI-Ed is the course that's missing — it teaches students to drive the AI safely, effectively, and creatively, and to know which roads to travel on their own and which to travel with help, before the AI starts driving them. And the library, the one room that belongs to every department, is where that course can begin.
Why the library
The library reaches all departments.
No one is quite sure which department should teach AI-Ed — but the library works to support all departments. School librarians are certified teachers who lead information literacy every day, which makes AI literacy a natural fit. And libraries are one of the few places in a school devoted not just to information, but to judgment: what to trust, what to question, what to use, and what to reject. In the most print-centered place in the building, a print-first AI-Ed program is a homecoming.
Belongs to every department
No turf issues over who teaches AI-Ed — the school library serves the whole school.
Low-friction to pilot
Because it's print-first and vendor-neutral, many libraries can introduce it as enrichment — often a librarian's initiative and a principal's approval — without a full edtech adoption process.
Print-first, screens as needed
Pen, field journal, and the student uses AI only as directed. Everyone is working with a book, not an app.
Three ways to say yes
Display it. Share it. Run it.
Take it as far as you like — from a book on the shelf to a program you teach.
Display it
You're being asked about AI literacy — here's the print-first answer for your shelf. Handsome, timely, and built for students to pick up on their own.
Share it
Any teacher in your building can request a free classroom pilot. The copy in your library becomes the whole school's on-ramp.
Run it
Host it yourself as a study-hall or after-school enrichment program — facilitator guide included.
The enrichment model
From information literacy to AI literacy.
The program is self-contained: the two volumes, a pen, a field journal, the student's designated AI, and 22 short videos where the author teaches every core lesson. A facilitator guide provides the support you need. Teach the program as a short course or full-semester experience.
At the end, you hand out certificates. Students also leave with an original creative work of their own — and taught alongside a creative-writing course, those finished pieces can be added to your library's catalogue. Students view the library differently when they see themselves within it.
The safety story
On school computers. Under your supervision. In structured labs.
When it's time to work with AI, students do it in the library, on library computers, under your supervision — using whatever base model you find available and appropriate. It also solves equity, since not every student has a device and an account at home, and it keeps the program vendor-neutral.
The guiding principle
“Don't use AI to avoid the road that builds you. Use it to reach roads you couldn't travel before.”
AI-Ed does not teach students to hand their thinking to a machine. It teaches them to recognize what thinking they need to do themselves, what AI can appropriately assist with, and how to make that choice deliberately.
Make it an informed choice.
What students actually do
From AI literacy to fluency.
Every chapter interleaves five recurring lesson forms, anchored by a running field journal — the spine that turns reading into practice, and practice into judgment.
Core Lessons
Understand what AI is, how it works, and where it fails — in plain language, no math, minimal jargon.
AI Labs
Test the technology directly: find its limits, catch its confabulations, and compare what it says with what you already know.
Projects
A sustained creative work, paired with a field journal: what the student did, what AI did, and whether the collaboration built their capabilities or bypassed them.
Reflections
The harder questions: What thinking did I hand over? What did I keep? Did AI make me more capable — or merely faster?
Spotlights
Real-world cases — from Clever Hans to deep-fakes that failed — connecting AI to school, work, creativity, bias, and society. Kept current each revision.
Serving a public library?
The same model works beyond the school day.
Independent reading plus a weekly gathering fits a public library just as naturally — for teens, adults, and community learners. We've told that story on its own page.
See the Public Library PageHow to get it
A purchase you can usually make yourself.
Fits normal acquisition channels
Because it's print-first and vendor-neutral, schools can often purchase the books through existing library or instructional-material budgets — without a new software platform, data-privacy agreement, or IT review.
Order a class set
When you're ready to run it, order a lending set through your usual channels — Follett or Mackin for schools, Ingram Library Services or Brodart for public libraries. The field journal is a composition notebook.
Fund it with a cohort
If the budget is tight, a DonorsChoose project can fund a class set — and rallies parents behind the program before it even begins.
Bring it to your library
Start with a copy in your hands.
Request your copies and the facilitator guide, ask about a pilot for a teacher in your building or a program in your own library, or just tell us you'd like to run it. We'll take it from there.