Hands-On Learning: How NCERT’s AI module uses real-life examples, classroom activities to teach Classes 9 to 12

Spotting a friend across a crowded school canteen, identifying a song from three notes or guessing which bus queue will move faster may seem like everyday observations. But they introduce a skill central to artificial intelligence (AI): recognising patterns.

The National Council of Educational Research and Training’s (NCERT) introductory module on computational thinking (CT) and AI for Classes 9-12, released on October 23, uses such familiar situations to introduce the technology, before moving to how machines learn, why they make mistakes and how students can use them responsibly.

“The module adopts an experiential, activity-based learning approach through discussions, practical exercises, experimentation, and reflection,” NCERT said in a statement on October 23.

The statement added that activities can be conducted with or without digital devices, “ensuring meaningful participation across diverse school contexts”.

In the first unit, AI is Already in Your Life, students distinguish a simple device, rule-based automation and learning-based AI. A pressure cooker responds to physical pressure; FASTag follows set rules; a smartphone keyboard predicts the next word by learning patterns from examples.

The unit also shows where pattern-matching can fall short. Inaya, a student from Bhopal, finds that her translation app renders the Hindi idiom “mere bhai ne naak mein dum kar diya hai” as “my brother has put life into my nose”. The example illustrates how AI can translate words but struggle with cultural context and idioms.

The second unit, How Machines Learn from Examples, asks students to test what a machine has actually learnt. In a classroom activity, they train a classifier using pictures of blue pens, red pens and erasers, then test it on unfamiliar objects. Karthik, from Visakhapatnam, discovers that a classifier trained on his own pen may fail to recognise a different brand.

The module’s lesson is that “narrow examples produce narrow learning”. By testing unfamiliar objects and deliberately trying to break the classifier, students see how a system’s performance depends on its training examples—and why it needs to be evaluated beyond the cases on which it was trained.

Unit 3, When AI Gets It Wrong, deals with confident but incorrect outputs, misinformation and manipulated images. Students examine synthetic media for inconsistencies and conduct a “Hallucination Hunt”, asking an AI assistant questions about a subject they know. They are taught five checks—source, claim type, comparison, pause and confidence—before relying on or sharing an answer. “An AI tool can sound confident and still be wrong,” the module cautions.

The fourth unit, Your Data, Your Rights, Your Responsibility, uses everyday digital decisions to teach privacy and consent. Students dissect an app’s privacy policy by asking what data it collects, why, with whom it shares it, how long it retains it, and how to delete it. Scenarios include whether to upload school notes containing classmates’ personal details and what to do when a face-recognition system repeatedly rejects someone at a metro gate. The exercises encourage students to turn complex privacy questions into practical decisions about data and consent.

The final unit, Working with Modern AI Tools, asks students to use AI as a helper rather than a replacement for their own thinking. Rohan, a Class 10 student from Bhubaneswar, uses an AI tool to prepare maths practice questions for his mother’s neighbourhood class. His first prompt—“Give me 10 maths problems for kids”—produces questions with uneven difficulty and unfamiliar contexts. He refines it to specify Grade 4two-digit multiplication and settings familiar to children in coastal Odisha, such as fish markets, school tiffin, and birds at Chilika Lake.

The exercise shows how breaking a task into specific requirements and refining a prompt can make AI output more useful—while leaving the user responsible for judging and adapting it.

Students are asked to record their work in a “Curious Notebook”, a portfolio that includes an AI diary, classifier tests, a verification checklist, a privacy analysis and a prompt library. Where devices are unavailable, they can write prompts on paper and have classmates role-play an AI system responding literally to instructions.

“The module encourages students to become informed, confident, and responsible users of technology, while reinforcing that human judgement, creativity, and ethical responsibility remain central to learning,” NCERT said.

Praneet Mungali, trustee of Sanskriti Group of Schools in Pune, said students need to understand not only how to use AI but also “where they can be utilised, and their limitations”. Early exposure, he said, can build critical thinking, creativity and logical reasoning among students.

The module’s development team sums up its approach in the letter to students section: “This is not a module to be memorised. It is a set of habits to be practised.”