AI Explorers Lab · Grades 6–8 · Live online
Free chatbots taught a generation to copy and paste. AI Explorers Lab teaches the next generation to think with AI — prompt it precisely, fact-check it ruthlessly, train it directly, and use it without losing their own brain in the process.
Students learn how AI actually works — data, patterns, predictions — not just which buttons to press in ChatGPT.
Every session ends with a real artifact: a poster, a model, a chatbot, a fact-check report. Things they can show.
Bias, hallucination, privacy, plagiarism — covered as skills, not stickers. Honest habits get baked in early.
By week eight, your kid walks out with a body of work they can talk about — to a teacher, a grandparent, a future admissions officer.
Each session is 90 minutes of warm-ups, concept, demo, build, and share. Designed for middle-school attention spans, executed at a level that respects their intelligence.
"How can a computer learn without being told every rule?"
Rules vs. examples · how AI sees patterns · where AI shows up in daily life · why "AI" is not magic.
A visual "AI in My Life" poster showing 5–7 places AI is already touching your day.
"Why does the same AI give a great answer one time and garbage the next?"
Role, context, constraints, examples · why prompts iterate · when AI is helping you learn vs. doing it for you.
A personal Prompt Pack: prompts for explaining a concept, generating a practice quiz, getting hints (not answers), and checking writing.
"Can we trust everything the AI says?"
Hallucinations · source reliability · why confident wrongness is the most dangerous failure mode.
A short AI-assisted story or explainer plus a fact-check report documenting which claims you verified — and how.
"How does a sentence turn into a picture?"
Text-to-image at a kid level · style and composition prompts · copyright, deepfakes, and where the ethical line is.
An AI-for-Good poster campaign on a theme you care about — environment, kindness, anti-bullying, space, whatever lights you up.
"What happens inside the machine when it 'learns'?"
Training data · labels · testing · accuracy · what happens when your data is biased or thin.
An image classifier you trained yourself — recyclable vs. trash, rock-paper-scissors, or your own idea. Then break it on purpose to see how.
"How does a chatbot know how to act like a tutor — or a goofy sidekick?"
Intent · personality · knowledge base · conversation flow · safety rules and refusal behavior.
A working Study Buddy or Topic Expert bot — space, math, healthy habits, books, animals. Personality and guardrails are on you.
"How does an AI character figure out what to do next?"
What an agent is · environments, actions, feedback, reward · trial-and-error learning at a beginner level.
An AI-powered quiz, game, or smart character that reacts to a player — designed in Scratch, ML for Kids, or Code.org AI.
"How do I use this without becoming the worst version of myself?"
Bias · privacy · misinformation · academic integrity · when AI is a partner and when it's a shortcut you'll regret.
Your final AI Explorers Portfolio Presentation: pick 2–3 projects, explain what you built, what failed, and what you'd do next.
No 90-minute lecture has ever worked on a middle schooler. Every session is broken into eight tight beats — warm-up, concept, demo, build, debug, share. They learn it. They make it. They show it.
Run the whole program as a summer day-camp: Mon–Fri × 2 weeks, 90 minutes a day, ten sessions total. Same curriculum, same portfolio, faster pace.
10 days · 90 min/day · Mon–Fri × 2 weeks · grades 6–8 · live online
AI Explorers Lab is the entry point. Students who fall in love can keep going — into Python, into machine learning, into mentored research with PhDs.
AI literacy, responsible use, creative tools, beginner model-building. You are here.
→Python, machine learning, neural networks, computer vision, NLP, real model development.
→1-on-1 research with PhD mentors in AI, medicine, robotics, engineering, and data science.
All beginner-friendly, all chosen with safety and age-appropriateness in mind. We start no-code and graduate to low-code only when students are ready.
If something isn't here, write us. We answer in plain English, not marketing copy.
Eight live, instructor-led sessions. A portfolio. A certificate. Skills your kid will use every day for the next twenty years.
8 weeks · live online · grades 6–8
Eight weeks. A real portfolio. A kid who can explain a neural network at the dinner table. Seats are limited per cohort.