We launched AILitKit this morning. And the timing could not have been better, because this week the rest of the world decided to make the case for us.
Let me walk you through what happened in the last seven days.
Maryland just passed the AI Ready Schools Act
On Tuesday, the Maryland General Assembly passed legislation that will reshape how AI is taught across every K-12 school in the state. The Artificial Intelligence Ready Schools Act requires statewide AI guidance, educator training, local school system accountability, and designated AI coordinators in every district.
This is not a suggestion. It is law. Maryland now requires schools to integrate AI literacy across the curriculum, link it to workforce preparation, and ensure teachers are trained to deliver it. A new partnership with the University of Maryland system will create labs and fellowships where students learn ethical, secure AI use by working on real state projects.
That makes Maryland the latest in a growing list. Idaho enacted its own statewide K-12 framework earlier this year. California passed student data privacy legislation. Utah embedded AI ethics into mandatory Year 7 and 8 standards. As of March 2026, 134 bills across 31 US states are addressing AI in education. The direction is clear. This is becoming law, state by state.
Ireland launched free AI Fluency courses for every educator
Ireland's Higher Education Authority released a suite of free, self-paced courses this month: AI Fluency for Educators, AI Fluency for Students, and Teaching AI Fluency. Built by University College Cork, Ringling College of Art and Design, and Anthropic, the courses are open to anyone and have already attracted over 300,000 enrolments globally.
The framework behind them uses four competencies: Delegation, Description, Discernment, and Diligence. Professor Joseph Feller, one of the course creators, described AI fluency as "working with AI in ways that are effective, efficient, ethical, and safe."
Ireland also launched AIReady.ie this week, a national platform aiming to upskill one million people in AI. The Minister for Further and Higher Education was blunt: "AI readiness is no longer optional. It is essential."
These are higher education courses and national platforms. They are not reaching the primary teacher in Cork who needs to know how phonics connects to AI literacy. But the signal is loud. Governments are moving. Fast.
The Microsoft and Trinity College report dropped a stat that should worry every school leader
The AI Economy Ireland 2026 report came out on Tuesday. The headline: 92% of organisations now use or plan to use AI. But fewer than half have a formal AI policy.
Here is the number that stopped me. Organisations with a formal AI policy are ten times more likely to report major productivity gains than those without one. 30% versus 3%. Ten times.
Read that again from a school perspective. The schools that have a structured approach to AI literacy will see the benefits. The schools that leave it to individual teachers to figure out will not. The data from the corporate world is telling schools exactly what is coming.
The report also found that 70% of women hesitate to use AI at work, compared to 52% of men. An 18-point confidence gap directly linked to lower self-reported AI literacy. If confidence comes from literacy, and literacy comes from training, then the question is who is providing the training. For most teachers, the answer right now is nobody.
The Arqus Alliance workshop said what everyone is thinking
The Arqus European University Alliance held its second international workshop on AI literacy on Tuesday. The theme: "AI that complements and does not replace you."
That phrase captures the anxiety sitting underneath every staffroom conversation about AI. Teachers are not worried about AI being useless. They are worried about AI making them useless. The Arqus workshop addressed that head on: the goal is not to replace pedagogical expertise with technology. It is to use technology in ways that make pedagogical expertise more effective.
That is exactly the principle AILitKit is built on. The teacher is the expert. The tool shows them where their expertise connects to AI literacy. It does not replace them. It reveals what they already know.
And then there is Mark Cuban
Mark Cuban published a column this week warning businesses that if they are not integrating AI into their workflows, they are falling behind. The analysts who responded made a point that matters more: adopting the technology is not enough. Companies need to pair integration with AI literacy and education programmes for their employees to see actual returns.
The Microsoft data backs this up. Having the tools without the literacy is worse than useless. It is a false sense of progress. The organisations that trained their people saw ten times the gains.
Schools are not businesses. But they face the same dynamic. Buying AI tools and hoping teachers figure them out is the educational equivalent of the corporate strategy that produces a 3% return instead of 30%.
Why we launched today
I have been building AILitKit since January, when I sat through three days of keynotes at Bett and heard the same message from every stage: AI literacy belongs in every subject, not just Computing.
I agreed with all of it. And I kept thinking: who is going to help the Year 4 teacher actually do this?
That is what AILitKit does. You upload a lesson. Any subject, any key stage. In about a minute it generates four AI literacy activities with coaching notes, support, challenge and differentiation. Aligned to 11 frameworks including the DfE guidance, UNESCO, and the OECD AILit Framework.
Maryland is legislating it. Ireland is funding it. The corporate data proves it works. The European university sector is debating how to do it without losing the human element.
And right now, a PE teacher in Birmingham still does not know that fitness tracking apps are an AI ethics lesson waiting to happen.
AILitKit shows them.
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Founding members (100 places) get unlimited lesson guides, a full 284-term AI glossary adapted for five age groups, and a free copy of my book Every Teacher, Every Subject: A Practical Guide to AI Literacy Across the Curriculum. Founding pricing locked for life.
Matthew Wemyss is the founder of AILitKit and IN&ED, and author of AI in Education: An Educator's Handbook.