Bringing AI to High Schools: New Curriculums Prepare Students for the Future
Artificial intelligence is transforming industries across the board, from healthcare to transportation to finance. As a result, AI skills are becoming highly sought after for the jobs of the future. That’s why many educators argue that AI literacy will soon be as fundamental as reading, writing, and arithmetic. The question is - how can high schools start integrating AI into their curriculums and adequately equip students for further education and careers in the age of AI?
In this blog post, I’ll talk about different ways for high schools to incorporate artificial intelligence in everyday life, preparing students for the evolving demands of the workforce. From introducing basic concepts of machine learning and algorithms to providing hands-on experiences with AI tools and technologies, high schools can nurture a foundational understanding of AI.
Develop New Standalone AI Courses
Many high schools across the country have already begun offering semester-long or year-long AI courses as electives. These classes cover AI ethics, programming key algorithms like neural networks, analyzing AI case studies, and more. Assignments include coding projects in Python and learning to use various machine learning libraries. While still rare, standalone high school AI classes are proving engaging and effective.
For example, Stuyvesant High School in New York City, a specialized public school focused on STEM, now offers an “Introduction to Artificial Intelligence” course to interested juniors and seniors. The curriculum explores topics like search algorithms, localization techniques, image recognition, autonomous vehicle navigation systems, and other real world applications. Students learn through a combination of lessons, reading primary AI papers, and tackling coding challenges during lab sessions.
Stuyvesant structures the class to focus more on conceptual understanding rather than more advanced topics. This allows both students with lengthy coding backgrounds as well as those newer to programming to grasp core AI concepts that they can build upon in college-level computer science. Participants find it exciting to train basic models while also discussing ethical considerations around bias, transparency, and the impact on jobs. Beyond fundamentals, the class also touches on AI frontiers like quantum computing and bio-inspired neural networks to inspire students’ in their future endeavors.
While most high schools can’t match Stuyvesant’s resources and tech-focused environment, its pioneering AI course can serve as a model for district leaders considering how to introduce AI topics in their curriculums.
Incorporate AI Concepts into STEM Courses
For schools that aren’t ready to start brand new AI courses, another feasible option is weaving AI topics and modules into existing math, science, and technology classes. For instance, a statistics teacher could dedicate a unit to data science and machine learning fundamentals. Students could use Python notebooks to train models on sample datasets, evaluating factors like overfitting and underfitting. A biology assignment might have students compare cognition in the human brain vs an AI through an essay. A digital art curriculum could task students with modifying a neural style transfer algorithm to impose different effects on images.
Stanford University’s CS Department produces classroom-ready introductory AI resources tailored towards high school students through the CRAFT project. The materials include slide decks, reading lists, and hands-on labs that cover principles like heuristic search, knowledge representation, probabilistic inference, and reinforcement learning. Educators interested in exploring AI instruction can find inspiration by reviewing these resources.
Coding and robotics classes similarly present prime opportunities to demo applied AI examples. A programming assignment could show how simple algorithms can control autonomous bot movement and responses. Hackathon-style challenges could revolve around building apps with natural language processing to parse commands or computer vision for gesture recognition. Even little demonstrations pique student curiosity while linking coding principles to real world AI application.
Start AI Clubs and Incubators
Extracurriculars present another excellent avenue for hands-on AI education. Many high schools host tech-focused student clubs for building skills beyond the standard curriculum. Existing computer science and engineering groups could begin running AI-focused workshops as part of their schedule. Participants can walk through fun coding tutorials showcasing how algorithms like k-Nearest Neighbors and Support Vector Machines enable systems to classify information and make predictions.
To promote cross-disciplinary membership, AI club leaders should highlight the technology’s expansive use cases across domains like medicine, transportation, sustainability, space exploration, and much more. Workshops could analyze AI case studies in these industries, evaluating economic, ethical, and social impacts. Students interested in both tech and a specific vertical can discover appealing intersections of their passions.
Through extracurricular programs focused on AI, students fuse professional-grade learning with social impact. The community reaps the benefits of their innovations while they hone core skills for 21st century digital economy careers. It's a formula easily replicable by any school with motivated students and decent tech infrastructure, made simpler by abundant free online AI resources.
The Future is AI
Artificial intelligence has exploded in adoption over the past decade and is powering breakthrough innovations across nearly every industry. As a result, AI skills are in tremendous demand, with some projections estimating that AI will replace up to 800 million jobs by 2030. However, it will also create many new career opportunities in tech and beyond. Preparing high school students for this AI-powered job landscape is crucial.
Most high schoolers still visualize doctors, lawyers, teachers, etc. when thinking about careers. AI academies showcase emerging 21st century AI-related jobs that students may not have considered yet may align well with their talents. Some examples include:
AI Ethicists - Help companies ensure fair & transparent AI systems
Data Analysts - Mine insights to guide business strategy
Machine Learning Engineers - Build models powering innovation
Robotic Process Automation Developers - Streamline business operations
Computer Vision Engineers - Create perception for autonomous vehicles
Conversational AI Designers - Craft intelligent chatbot interfaces
Computational Biology Programmers - Crunch data guiding medical discoveries
The future of work across nearly every discipline will be defined by AI progress. Already AI powers winning strategies in finance, breakthrough discoveries in pharmaceuticals, safer systems in transportation, and on and on. Students aware of these trends and conversant in AI techniques will possess a tremendous advantage. By bringing AI literacy into more high school classrooms and clubs, the next generation of innovators, leaders and decision-makers can take flight.
About Inspirit AI
AI Scholars Live Online is a 10 session (25-hour) program that exposes high school students to fundamental AI concepts and guides them to build a socially impactful project. Taught by our team of graduate students from Stanford, MIT, and more, students receive a personalized learning experience in small groups with a student-teacher ratio of 5:1.
