Build Your Own AI - In One Hour
Your pupils use AI every day - in search engines, games, and the videos they watch. But do they know how it works, what it gets wrong, and how to stay safe around it?
In this fast-paced one-hour workshop, every pupil trains their own working artificial intelligence - no coding, no logins, just curiosity and a school computer.
What happens in the session
- ⦿ Human or AI? - a whole-class game that asks the big question: can you tell the difference?
⦿ Beat the machine - pupils race a real AI in a live drawing challenge
⦿ Train your own AI - working in pairs, pupils build and test a genuine machine-learning model that recognises objects through the webcam
⦿ The sabotage experiment - pupils deliberately train an AI badly and watch it make unfair decisions, experiencing algorithmic bias first-hand
⦿ Real or fake? - an age-appropriate look at deepfakes and why we check before we trust what we see online.
Pupils leave understanding the single most important idea in AI: a computer is only as fair as the examples it learns from.
Why it matters
AI is finding new planets, spotting illnesses doctors miss, and predicting floods. It is also spreading fake images and making biased decisions. This workshop gives children both sides - the tremendous upside and the real risks - and the critical thinking to tell them apart.
Curriculum & safeguarding
⦿ Computing KS2 - understanding how digital systems work and how they are programmed
⦿ PSHE / Online Safety (KCSIE) - evaluating online content, misinformation, and digital trust
⦿ All tools are free, browser-based and require no pupil logins or accounts
⦿ Webcam training images are processed in the browser and are not uploaded or stored
⦿ Fully DBS-checked presenter; risk assessment and public liability insurance available.
Practical details
⦿ Length: 60 minutes per class
⦿ Group size: One class (up to 32 pupils)
⦿ Year groups: Years 5 & 6 (adaptable for Year 4)
⦿ You provide: Shared computers or laptops (1 between 2), ideally with webcams; projector/whiteboard
⦿ We provide: Everything else, including offline backup activities
⦿ Sessions per day: Up to 4 classes
Bundle and save
Book the planetarium in the morning and AI workshops in the afternoon: One unforgettable science day, one invoice.