Using AI Tools to Support Project-Based Learning

With the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) in education, more secondary school teachers are looking for creative and practical ways to integrate AI into student learning. Many educators have a common concern: How can students use AI without losing their creativity, authentic voice, and ownership over their work and the content they create?

Undoubtedly, AI will only get better, more powerful, and more deeply embedded in our everyday lives—how we work and create, as well as access and learn new information. That’s why it’s important to equip today’s students with AI literacy—the ability to understand, evaluate, and use emerging technology confidently and with care for the greater good (helping others).

In a previous article, I discussed how to teach kids about AI by building their foundational knowledge and understanding about what it is, what it does, and how it can be applied. Now we’re on the next step: using generative AI to create meaningful content as part of class projects.

For this purpose, I like and highly recommend the AI Literacy Framework developed by Digital Promise because it’s grounded in research. Furthermore, schools can leverage its components, understand, evaluate, and use, to provide kids with the evolving fluency needed to make informed choices and use AI tools responsibly and creatively, no matter where technology goes next.

When we integrate AI into teaching and learning with intention, it gives learners the technological literacy and know-how to use tools to express themselves as real-world digital creators do (e.g., text, graphics, audio, and video for social media, websites, YouTube). Project-based learning (PBL) is a powerful vehicle for driving this digital transformation in learning and creating.

Why PBL Is a Good Fit for Teaching AI Effectively

PBL is powerful instructional pedagogy because it’s a student-centered approach that facilitates inquiry and creation processes. Additionally, teachers can coach students to intentionally connect their interests and passions to purpose and academic content to make projects more meaningful to them.

Projects designed with the student experience in mind engage them in authentic problems, enhance interdisciplinary connections, and lead to the development of high-quality products that are shared with authentic audiences, such as their own communities.

Furthermore, creating relevant, modern products through projects requires students to research, write, record, film, design, and edit. This is where AI tools and AI-empowered tools can help amplify their efforts—supporting content creation without automating the intended learning.

Note: I use “AI tools” to refer to platforms and applications built primarily on AI (e.g., ChatGPT, Copilot, and Gemini). “AI-empowered tools” are apps that weren’t originally built on AI but have been enhanced with AI features such as auto-captioning, smart design tools, and content suggestions (e.g., Edpuzzle, Adobe Express, and Canva).

Keep reading to learn how students can use some of these tools to create content that helps spread positive awareness of important issues for the greater good.

Aligning AI Tools With the Digital Promise AI Literacy Framework

Teachers can align student projects with the Digital Promise AI Literacy Framework to help them better understand how AI works and evaluate its role in how it can help them learn and create ethically.

Here are “freemium“ and premium tools that leverage AI features to enhance student workflows while supporting the framework’s elements in PBL.

Understand/Use

ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, and Claude support the understand and use elements by assisting students with brainstorming ideas, outlining scripts, generating question prompts, and explaining complex concepts in kid-friendly language.

Example: In science class, middle school students use Gemini to simplify how renewable energy supports sustainable development. They then create a script and compile reliable data for a video reel explainer and data-driven infographic.

Evaluate

The evaluate element can be used by students in all content areas to analyze the accuracy and bias of AI-created content from AI platforms such as ChatGPT and Claude.

Example: In history class, high school students use ChatGPT to create a summary of a well-known historical event. To implement AI ethics, they then fact-check it by referencing reliable primary sources and scholarly articles to assess the AI-generated summary for accuracy, missing perspectives, and potential bias.

Use Technology

Adobe Express for Education makes content creation safe for students with many intuitive AI features to empower students and make them think critically (including video and images). The platform even includes guardrails for generative AI prompts and results, which help ensure that content is appropriate for K–12 learners. Educator Claudio Zavala Jr. provides excellent how-to content on Instagram for getting educators started and leveling up.

Descript is a powerful tool for demonstrating the use technology element by demystifying video and audio editing for learners. The tool allows audio to be transcribed and formatted like a typical document. The tool’s ability to identify unnecessary text (e.g., filler words and repeated words) to enhance clarity in the final files is powerful. This supports media literacy and creative expression.

Quso.ai and Remini are great tools for refining content into well-polished images and videos for final digital products. These tools also support the use technology element by drastically improving video quality and converting long recordings into shorter, engaging clips. I personally use these to add gloss to my Instagram content, and they make a real difference.

Example: These tools (and also others) are applicable in PBL across any grade 6–12 class to help students improve final products, improve their digital media production skills, and express their learning creatively.

I created a single-point rubric with help from ChatGPT. Feel free to have your students use it to self-assess and gauge where they are in their AI literacy skills as they work through content creation.

Final Thoughts

As your students learn how to design and create with new tech tools, remind them that creating polished content isn’t the final destination of their projects. The goal is to become better learners. Instill the value of productive struggle because creating and achieving on their own builds knowledge and true confidence over time. Using AI tools with intention should sharpen their thinking and learning and help them become wiser and more capable digital citizens.