While students are becoming increasingly fluent in generative AI and algorithmic tools, Charlene Cooper, executive director of national nonprofit CYBER.ORG, said many caregivers are finding it difficult to keep up with rapid technological shifts, creating a disconnect that she warned could become a long-term equity and safety issue if left unaddressed.
To bridge this gap, CYBER.ORG has launched nine new AI lessons designed specifically for caregivers. Unlike the organization’s traditional teacher-facing curriculum, these modules aim to equip parents with the foundational knowledge necessary to guide AI use at home and maintain their role as active participants in their children’s education.
“I think all education, especially AI education, can’t happen only in the classroom,” Cooper, who also was a classroom teacher for 21 years, said. “Educators and schools can introduce a lot of the concepts and responsible use, but caregivers and parents are going to help to reinforce those conversations and help, just like with reading, for students to become thoughtful users of AI and very comfortable with it as well.”
Moreover, Cooper emphasized that the rapid integration of AI into the education landscape has left many adults feeling sidelined.
According to Bryan Hower, an education consultant for the Pennsylvania Training and Technical Assistance Network and a former teacher with over two decades in the classroom, the atmosphere when generative AI first hit the mainstream in 2023 was a “freak out” moment for many in the field.
“Teachers have to build an instructional comfort and policy framework in real time,” Hower said. “Caregivers often have even less exposure ... especially if you’re getting to older caregivers ... they’re not going to have the experience even with technology.”
Because of such, he said, the responsibility for AI literacy must be shared, likening this challenge to promoting traditional literacy: Just as a wealth of language at home supports reading comprehension at school, a shared vocabulary regarding AI can promote safe digital citizenship.
“To me, caregivers don’t have to be the know-everything and be engineers of AI,” Hower said. “They need to understand the shared language, and I think they can ask how AI is used ... and discuss the originality and the ethics of using AI.”
Cooper said the nine new modules are structured to demystify complex technical concepts by grounding them in daily life. The curriculum is divided into three grade bands: ages 5-8, middle school and high school. This tiered approach ensures that a parent of a third grader and a parent of an 11th grader both have age-appropriate entry points into the conversation, Cooper added.
In the lower-level activities, lessons use familiar services like Netflix to explain how AI functions.
“We started with things that they would be really familiar with,” Cooper explained. “If you go to Netflix and you turn it on, it’s going to have recommendations for you. Well, how does it know what to recommend for you, and what does it base that on?”
The modules also tackle more complex themes, such as bias, ethics and the necessity of fact-checking AI-generated outputs, she said.
Furthermore, a key component of the initiative’s design was ensuring accessibility for those without a technical background. Cooper said the lessons were written by former classroom teachers and underwent a rigorous review process by parents on the CYBER.ORG team. This “parent lens” was intended to strip away the “fancy instructional strategies” and education acronyms that often act as barriers to entry for families, she said.
This focus on accessibility aligns with a broader national push for AI literacy. Cooper said that last summer, the Cyber Innovation Center, CYBER.ORG’s parent organization, signed the White House Pledge to America’s Youth committing to provide resources that foster early interest in AI and promote literacy for educators and parents.
For Hower, the equity piece is nonnegotiable. He said free, structured resources are essential for ensuring students in high-poverty or urban districts aren’t left behind because their caregivers lacked access to the tools to support them.
“Sustainable progress for me happens when the district communicates clearly and provides accessible resources for the caregivers,” Hower said. “That’s the important [part] — giving them the resources to maybe do some things at home that can help reinforce what’s going on in the schools.”
According to Cooper, the ultimate goal of the caregiver modules is to create a multilateral front where educators and families work in tandem.
“I’m really excited now that we’re coming full circle and able to offer our content to caregivers — that we’re approaching this from all sides, so that we can help students keep themselves safe online and be super productive and prepared for our cyber and AI-driven workforce,” Cooper said.
The modules are available for free to all caregivers through the CYBER.ORG website, she said, adding that CYBER.ORG plans to expand the caregiver modules beyond foundational AI to include more advanced cybersecurity topics, such as identifying phishing attempts and understanding suspicious text messages.
