Using AI for STEM: Lessons & More

What's one thing you've tried with AI — or one thing you're curious about? No wrong answers.

In the shared doc, add to the table: Where have you (or your students) encountered AI in a STEM context? Star anything that surprised you in someone else's entry. Be ready to share one highlight.

Vote honestly — no judgment here. We'll look at the results together.

In small groups, discuss: What's the #1 barrier to using AI in your classroom? (Admin policy? Student misuse? Your own comfort?) Capture the group's top concern and one possible reframe in the shared doc.

Using the prompt template in the shared doc, write a prompt for YOUR subject and grade band. Enter it into any LLM. Paste the result into the shared doc and note: what's good, what's wrong, what's missing?

In your group, take the same base prompt and each enter it into a different LLM platform. Compare results in your group's shared doc section. Discuss: Which gave the most useful output? What did you have to fix? Prepare one "aha" and one "uh-oh" for share-out.

Each group shares their best "aha" and worst "uh-oh" from the cross-platform comparison.

Open the NGSS-aligned lesson template. Using your prompt engineering skills, populate it for your specific classroom. Use any LLM. TAs are circulating — flag us if you get stuck. Finished early? Try: differentiation tiers, rubric generation, or a parent communication draft.

Look at the displayed outputs. In the chat and shared doc, call out: factual errors, hallucinated standards, wrong grade levels, vague assessments, copy-paste filler. This is the engineering trust-but-verify mindset. Sneak preview: Workshop #2 goes deep on verification with the "Check the Machine" protocol.

Go back to the lesson you built. Find one thing the AI got wrong or one thing you'd need to fix before using it. Note it in the shared doc.

Pair up. In 10 minutes, sketch a rough lesson for your classroom that follows C→R→A→F→T. It doesn't have to be perfect — just map one idea per phase. Share your favorite phase with the whole group in the last 5 minutes.

Open the shared Drive folder and bookmark the resource website. Everything is yours: prompt library, lesson templates, platform comparison cheat sheet.