Teaching Operator Skills (the useful unit)
How to run Spec-Before-Prompt, Hallucination Hunter, Privacy Trail, and Personal AI Playbook so students leave with Monday-morning skills.
Objectives
- Facilitate a 50-minute operator lesson with process evidence
- Grade specs, verification plans, and refuse lines — not AI prose polish
- Build a class AI hygiene charter students actually follow
What “useful” means here
Students should leave able to: write a task spec, run a verification triage, refuse dangerous pastes, and keep a personal playbook. If your grade rewards only final essays, you will get ghostwritten essays.
Assessment that creates skill
Require process artifacts: (1) pre-AI spec card, (2) claim→evidence→confidence table, (3) disclosure line, (4) one refuse line. Oral defense kills empty fluency.
Lab sequence that works
Day A: Prompt Architect + weak vs strong prompt bake-off. Day B: Hallucination Hunter + evidence lab. Day C: Privacy Trail + class charter. Day D: playbook draft + peer critique. Keep timing visible on the board.
Hard conversations
When students say “but everyone uses it,” answer with standards: allowed assistive uses, required checks, and integrity. Teach the skill and enforce the norm — neither alone is enough.