The AI Literacy Institute published its May review this week. If you have not come across it before, it is a monthly roundup of everything happening globally in AI literacy. Policy, research, training, education. Every sector. Every continent. Every age group.
The picture is clear. Governments are funding AI literacy for older adults. Universities are mandating it for graduates. Corporations are spending billions on workforce training. Parents and children both say AI is a life skill.
And in the middle of all of it, classroom teachers are being asked to deliver AI literacy with no training, no resources and no time.
Everyone is getting upskilled except teachers
The consulting firm EY and the American Association of Retired Persons (a US advocacy group for people over 50) surveyed 2,515 people aged 60 to 85 across 16 countries. They are launching AI literacy courses for this age group delivered by text message. Text message. Because that is the platform older adults can access.
Ireland launched national AI fluency courses that have attracted over 300,000 enrolments globally. Purdue University in the US mandated AI literacy for all undergraduates. DeVry University is embedding it into every course. LinkedIn is offering free AI learning paths through 2027.
Corporates are further ahead. Google committed $750 million to upskill its partner network. OpenAI pledged $150 million for teacher training and digital wellbeing. Cognizant launched an entirely new AI-native learning platform. Research from Microsoft found that organisations with a formal AI policy are ten times more likely to report major productivity gains. Ten times. 30% versus 3%.
The money, the courses, the infrastructure, the evidence. It is all there. For older adults. For university students. For corporate employees.
But the primary school teacher in Dublin who has been told "AI literacy is part of your job now"? She got a one-hour session at the start of term and a PDF she has not opened.
The training gap is not about willingness
Teachers want to learn. I have sat in enough staffrooms and run enough training sessions to know that the issue is not motivation. Teachers care about this. They know their students are using AI. They know it matters.
The issue is that traditional training does not work for this. A one-day course on "AI in education" gives teachers a general overview and zero practical tools. They leave the room knowing that AI literacy is important and still having no idea what it looks like in their Year 5 Maths lesson or their Year 10 Geography class.
The corporate world has already worked this out. Research from the learning analyst Josh Bersin found that 74% of major corporations say their traditional training systems are failing entirely to keep pace with the demand for new skills. The ones getting results have moved to contextual learning: training built into the flow of work, matched to the actual task in front of the person, delivered at the point of need.
Schools need the same model. The most effective AI literacy training for a Geography teacher is not a lecture about machine learning. It is a tool that takes her existing lesson on population data and shows her, in that moment, how it connects to AI literacy. With activities she can use that afternoon. With coaching language she can say to her class. With adaptations for every learner who needs a different entry point.
How AILitKit upskills teachers
AILitKit was built on this principle. The tool is the training.
When a teacher uploads a lesson and gets back four AI literacy activities with coaching notes, they are not just getting resources. They are learning. They are seeing, for the first time, how their subject connects to AI literacy. They are reading coaching notes that show them what to say and why. They are discovering connections they did not know existed.
A PE teacher uploads a lesson on fitness tracking. The guide shows her four activities connecting that lesson to data ethics, algorithmic decision-making and privacy. She has never made that connection before. Now she has. And she will see it in every fitness tracking lesson she teaches from now on.
A History teacher uploads a lesson on propaganda. The guide connects it to AI-generated misinformation, deepfakes and media manipulation. He did not need a course on AI to understand those connections. He needed someone to draw the line between what he already teaches and what AI changes about it.
That is how teachers upskill at scale. Not through courses that pull them out of the classroom. Through a tool that meets them inside the lesson they were already going to deliver. Each guide teaches the teacher something new about their own subject. Over time, the connections become second nature. The teacher stops needing the guide because they have internalised the thinking.
The upskilling is built into every guide
Every AILitKit guide includes four components designed to build teacher confidence as well as student activities.
The coaching notes tell the teacher exactly what to say to introduce each activity. Not "discuss AI bias with your class." That is useless to a non-specialist. Instead: "Ask your students: if an AI system learned about this topic only from the internet, what perspectives might be missing? Give them 90 seconds to write three answers before sharing." That is a script. A teacher can read it, adapt it, use it.
The "behind the scenes" section explains why each activity connects to AI literacy. This is the bit that builds teacher knowledge over time. The teacher does not just run the activity. They understand why it matters. Next time a student asks a question about AI, the teacher has a framework for answering it.
The framework alignment shows which AI literacy standards each activity maps to. The teacher learns which competencies they are covering without needing to read the full framework documents themselves.
And the support, challenge and adaptations-for-every-learner guidance shows the teacher how to adapt each activity for the class in front of them. That is pedagogical development as well as AI literacy development.
83% of families say critical thinking comes first
The media literacy organisation Common Sense Media found that 83% of parents and children agree: young people need to learn to think critically for themselves without AI support. Even families who say AI is essential for the future say independent thinking must come first.
That matches what AILitKit does. Every guide starts with the subject knowledge the teacher already delivers. The AI literacy layer sits on top. Students are not learning about AI in the abstract. They are applying critical thinking to AI through the lens of a subject they are already studying.
A Science student evaluating whether an AI-generated hypothesis follows experimental method is doing both things at once. Building Science skills. Building AI literacy. In the same activity. In the same lesson.
The upskilling problem has a solution
Older adults are being trained by text message. University students are getting mandatory AI literacy courses. Corporations are spending hundreds of millions on AI training platforms.
Teachers deserve the same investment. But they do not need to wait for it. AILitKit gives every teacher, in every subject, a way to build their own AI literacy while delivering it to their students. One lesson at a time.
Upload a lesson. Learn something new about your subject's connection to AI. Teach it. Come back next week and do it again.
That is how 100+ teachers across every subject are upskilling right now.
ailitkit.com
Matthew Wemyss is the founder of AILitKit and IN&ED, and author of AI in Education: An Educator's Handbook.