Why I Didn’t Build an AI Course

April 16-Written By Tara Voigt

I create resources all the time— 

for my students, myself, for other educators. 

So designing an AI literacy course felt like a natural next step.

Something structured.

Step-by-step.

Something I could use with my own students

and share with others.

But the more I tried, the less it made sense.

Because AI isn’t just a subject.

It’s a language.

And language needs context to mean something.

This isn’t like teaching Python or Excel.

There is no fixed set of commands.

No clear sequence of skills.

No checklist you can walk through and call it complete.

AI doesn’t live in isolation.

It only becomes powerful

when anchored in content—

when it has something to shape,

stretch, and respond to.

You can’t teach it meaningfully

without teaching through something else.

Because AI is a lens. 

Not the subject itself— 

but a way of seeing the subject more clearly.

It opens up the space

between what we know

and what we could imagine.

When we teach about AI,

we stay on the surface.

But when we teach through it—

that is where the depth lives.

That is where the thinking happens.

That is where students don’t just use AI

they learn to think with it.