From Classroom to Career: AI Literacy Through Two Expert Lenses

Algorithms and AI shape what students read, watch, believe and share, yet most students have no idea how these systems work. In this poster presentation, a news literacy educator and a professional instructional designer tackle the same problem from two worlds: how do we teach students to think critically about AI before it thinks for them? Explore how search and suggestion algorithms decide what people see on social media and why teaching credibility as a spectrum builds more analytical power than labeling sources credible or not. Survey the generative AI landscape, from large language models to image and video generators, and look honestly at what goes wrong when outputs are accepted without question. Drawing on the News Literacy Project's standards and industry AI governance principles, you will gain strategies for verifying sources, spotting manipulation and prebunking, plus four plain-language questions any student can apply to any AI output. Evaluate real AI-generated content and leave with free resources, including a student-facing fact-checking document and a free classroom news literacy platform.