Why creative practice is how you teach AI literacy.
The boot camp is for high school age students who want to understand generative AI and computation, whether they have written code before or not. The week is credit-bearing, project-based, and studio-paced: students make things in order to learn how the systems work.
The premise
Students rarely build deep understanding from technical lectures separated from their own passions. They build it by making things they care about and being shown the underlying computation as the thing that makes the making possible.
This boot camp extends the Creative Computing tradition of teaching computation through creativity — from Papert to Maeda to Reas to Resnick to Shiffman — and adds generative AI as the newest medium creative coders are learning to think with. The art-making is the vehicle for the literacy, not the destination.
Who this is for
No technical prerequisite. Students need curiosity, willingness to revise, and respect for the code of conduct. The teaching pattern is Gradual Release of Responsibility: instructor demonstration, class co-construction, then student studio time (Kapor Foundation on gradual release; Springer review).
What you come away with
By Friday, students should be able to explain in their own words how a generative image model works functionally; use prompting as an iterative practice rather than a one-shot search; write a small generative sketch with controllable parameters and a seed; identify bias and provenance concerns in AI-generated media; and recognize when AI is the right tool and when it is not.
- A 5-image prompt iteration grid.
- A style-and-specificity image series.
- An edit triptych.
- A 4-8s MP4 or a GLB 3D artifact.
- A p5.js sketch with controllable parameters.
- A three.js scene or GLSL shader.
- Two or three portfolio entries with process notes.
- A 100-word reflection for each selected piece: what you made, how you iterated, and what you learned about how the model thinks.
Tech students will use
Students work in ij8.ai through the in-class instance. The platform supports image, video, 3D, audio generation, creative code, and a lightly tested app lab. The boot camp uses staged cohort capabilities rather than promising per-lesson model pinning.
Code of conduct
- No imagery of real classmates, teachers, or any identifiable minor.
- No content that would violate school AUP or local law, including CSAM laws. These laws apply to minors creating images of minors.
- Cite your sources when you reference an artist or a work.
If anything in this boot camp is making you uncomfortable, tell your instructor right away.
Accessibility
The schedule is pre-readable, slides can be shared in advance, noise-cancelling headphones are welcome, and handouts use sans-serif type. These practices reflect inclusive-teaching guidance for neurodivergent students (Brown Sheridan inclusive teaching).