Emerging technologies have the potential to make great contributions to society, and at the same time there is an urgent need to address the embedded bias, dominant perspectives and the replication of real-world structural inequities they perpetrate. It’s critical that all children are knowledgeable about the ethical implications of emerging technologies and have the agency to design, reflect and participate in decision-making processes. If we want technology to represent all of us, it needs to be created by all of us.

In our pursuit to cultivate a diverse generation of technology designers and decision-makers, we have designed a set of resources to help build the creative and digital agency of K12 communities.

Each learning experience provides children, families and educators with opportunities to tinker with the technical concepts underpinning emerging technologies like AI and gene editing, and consider the implications of designing with these mediums on society and the natural world. K12 communities are exposed to how emerging technologies as diverse as gene-editing (think designer babies) and algorithmic prison sentencing, to fun and familiar tools like AI assistants and social media platforms often benefit and center dominant groups while excluding or harming non-dominant groups (Black and Brown communities, persons with disabilities, LGBTQ, etc.).

Design challenges dispersed throughout the curriculum ask K12 communities to reflect on how our own biases and perspectives influence our design choices across the spectrum of experiences, data, products and systems. One activity asks participants to design a dataset for an AI assistant, consider from whose perspective that dataset has been shaped, and how that might marginalize the perspectives and lived experiences of others.

Let’s equip K12 communities with the tools to learn about the implications of our design choices, and design technology in service of a more just world.