Basic Course - Week 1

AI Literacy Through Critical Interrogation

Course Overview

This intensive week introduces AI literacy through hands-on exploration, systematic annotation, and progressive skill building. Each day addresses a fundamental question about working with Large Language Models.

Daily Structure

Each day consists of:

• Morning session (9:00-10:30): Skills development
• Break (10:30-11:00): Grimoire work and annotation
• Midday session (11:00-12:30): Critical discussions and judgment development

Week at a Glance

Day 1 (Monday, Sept 8): Can we control AI output?

• Session 1: Welcome and Getting Started - Setup, introductions, goal setting
• Session 2: The ‘Confident’ Assistant - System prompts, drunk tutor problem

Day 2 (Tuesday, Sept 9): How do we populate the context window?

• Session 1: Basic Prompting Foundations - Rules of thumb, annotation practice
• Session 2: Metaprompting - Blank page problem, epistemic humility

Day 3 (Wednesday, Sept 10): What can we verify?

• Session 1: File Handling and Source Work - Extraction vs interpretation
• Session 2: Model Differences - Service grain, failure patterns

Day 4 (Thursday, Sept 11): How should we work?

• Session 1: Research Infrastructure - State management, conversation strategy
• Session 2: The Boring Important Stuff - Legal, ethical, privacy discussions

Day 5 (Friday, Sept 12): When do things break?

• Session 1: Breaking Things Systematically - Failure modes, evaluation criteria
• Session 2: Synthesis and Next Steps - Reflection, community building

Core Learning Objectives

By week’s end, participants will:

1. Understand fundamental concepts - Context windows, tokens, confidence paradox
2. Develop practical skills - Prompting, verification, state management
3. Recognize limitations - Confabulation, model differences, failure patterns
4. Build judgment - When to use, when to avoid, how to verify

The Grimoire

Throughout the week, we build a collective “spellbook” of prompts through:

• Daily “Show me your prompts” sessions
• Systematic annotation practice
• Shared documentation on Conceptboard
• Peer learning from successes and failures

Required Preparation

Before Day 1:

• Check email for API key
• Create account at chatcraft.org
• Review course resources

Technical Requirements

• Laptop with modern browser
• ChatCraft account with API key
• Access to Conceptboard (link provided Day 1)
• Ability to print prompts for annotation