AIQ
AIQ
Part of the AI in Your Pocket lesson guide. Teaching a different grade? 🌈 Explorer (5–7) · 💻 Hacker (11–14) · ⚡ Architect (15–18)
Open with a challenge: "How many of you have a phone, or use one at home?" Most hands go up. Follow up: "Keep your hand up if you've ever unlocked a phone just by looking at it." Most hands should stay up. "Keep it up if you've ever had a video app show you something you'd never even searched for, but you ended up loving it." Some hands drop, some stay — that's fine, it sets up the variety of examples you're about to cover. Then deliver the hook line:
Say: "Your phone has more AI than a science lab from 20 years ago. Every app, every feature — AI is running behind the scenes!"
Let that sink in for a second, then add: "Twenty years ago, AI was locked up in university labs with giant computers. Now it's sitting in your pocket, running quietly, all day, without you even noticing. Today you're going to become App Experts — you're going to figure out exactly which parts of your phone are secretly AI, and which parts just aren't."
Write two column headers on the board: "AI" and "NOT AI." Tell the class: "By the end of today, you'll be able to sort anything on a phone into one of these two columns — and explain exactly why."
Set the earning stakes explicitly, since Builder mode runs on XP and badges: "This lesson's badge is called App Expert, and it's not handed out just for showing up — it's for being able to explain the difference between AI and NOT AI on your own, without me telling you. Let's see if you can earn it."
Work through the lesson's three categories as a guided sort, building the two columns on the board as you go. For each item, ask the class to guess first, then reveal the real answer and the fact behind it.
Category 1: Phone AI.
Pause here for the rule-of-thumb this whole lesson runs on: "Notice the pattern — the AI ones all get better or more personal the more you use them. The NOT AI ones do the exact same thing on day one hundred as they did on day one. That's the test."
Category 2: Social & Entertainment.
For a class that's engaged and moving fast: ask an extension question before moving on: "TikTok and Netflix are both recommendation AI, but one is video clips and one is full shows. Do you think the same kind of AI works for both, or would they need something a little different?" There's no single right answer expected here — the goal is getting students to notice that a system built for 15-second clips and one built for 90-minute movies are probably tuned differently, even if the underlying idea (learn what you like, show more of it) is the same.
Take a moment on the FM radio example specifically — it's the one students find hardest to accept as "not AI" because a radio feels like old technology working alongside new technology. Ask: "If you and your best friend both turned on the same radio station right now, would you hear different songs?" (No.) "If you both opened TikTok right now, would you see the same videos?" (No.) "That difference — everyone gets the same thing, versus everyone gets something different — is exactly the AI line."
Category 3: Shopping & Maps.
Once the board is full, run the practice round: call out the 8 practice items (Face ID, Ruler app, TikTok algorithm, FM radio, Shopping recommendations, Paper list, Spotify Discover, Alarm clock) in a random order and have students give a thumbs-up for AI, thumbs-down for not AI, before you confirm the answer. (Alarm clock is NOT AI — it's a fixed timer, same as the ruler app.) Push a little further on this one if a student hesitates: "An alarm clock does know what time to go off — so why isn't that AI?" Guide toward: "Because YOU told it the time directly. It's not guessing or learning anything about you."
These questions match the multiple-choice format students will see in the app — read all four options aloud before revealing the answer, since two of the wrong options in each question are designed to sound plausible if you're only half paying attention.
Close with: "You just earned your App Expert badge — you can now spot AI hiding in places most adults never think about. That's a real skill: noticing the invisible technology running your everyday apps."
Extension activity (15–20 minutes): Have students pick one app on a family phone or tablet at home (with permission) and write three sentences: what the app does, whether they think it uses AI, and one clue that gave it away. The next day, do a quick "app show and tell" where a few volunteers share their app and the class votes AI or not AI before the volunteer reveals their answer.
If you want a class-period-length version instead: split students into pairs and give each pair five app icons (drawn or printed) — mix in at least one deliberately tricky one, like a calculator app or a weather app, which are NOT AI even though they live on the same "smart"phone. Have each pair present their sort to the class with one sentence of justification per app, then open the floor for the class to challenge any answer they disagree with before you confirm it.
A note on the "tricky" apps for this extension: a basic weather app that just displays a forecast pulled from a weather service is not itself doing anything you'd call AI — but the forecast it's displaying was very likely generated using AI-assisted weather modeling somewhere upstream. This is a good "it depends on what part you're looking at" example if a confident student pushes back on the "weather app = not AI" answer — both they and you would be partly right, and that's worth saying out loud rather than papering over.
Timing note: the guided sort through all three categories typically takes 10–12 minutes at a good discussion pace, discussion another 5–8 minutes, and the quiz walkthrough 5 minutes — putting the full core lesson at 20–25 minutes, with either extension option filling the rest of a standard class period.
Whichever extension you choose, close the loop before the bell: ask the class to name, out loud, one AI feature and one non-AI feature they now feel confident explaining to a parent or younger sibling. That's the real test of whether "App Expert" is more than a badge — can they teach it to someone else?
A last thought worth sharing with students directly: knowing which apps use AI isn't just trivia for a quiz. It's the beginning of being a more informed user of the technology they'll carry every day for the rest of their lives — someone who understands, at least in outline, why their phone behaves the way it does.