Skip to main content
Bright Minds. Health & Nutrition Health & Nutrition course pack
Resources · AI literacy

AI-use guide.

We don’t ban AI — we teach it. Here is what’s encouraged, what’s off-limits, and how to study with it honestly.

Most schools are still arguing about whether students should be allowed to touch AI. We think that argument is already over. The tools are in every pocket, woven into search engines, homework apps, and writing software your child already uses. Pretending otherwise doesn’t protect anyone — it just leaves students to figure it out alone, in secret, with no one teaching them the difference between using a tool well and laundering its output as their own work.

So our posture is simple, and it has two halves. First, we teach AI literacy — how to prompt, how to interrogate, how to catch the machine when it lies. Second, we assess in ways AI can’t fake. A student demonstrates understanding out loud, at a bench, defending a real lab notebook and analyzing a real diet from its nutrition data in front of a person. There is no prompt that reads the data, weighs the evidence, and defends the recommendation for you. When the assessment is honest, the studying becomes honest too, and AI turns back into what it should have been all along: a tutor that never gets tired, not a ghostwriter.

The course’s AI posture

We treat AI the way a good health & nutrition teacher treats a bold claim on a supplement label. It is genuinely useful and genuinely capable of doing damage, and the answer to both facts is the same: instruction, not prohibition. A student who has never been taught how AI fails — how it invents citations, misreads a nutrition label with total confidence, mis-states which nutrient a food is actually high in, and tells you what you want to hear — is far more dangerous to their own learning than one who has been shown exactly where the tool breaks.

Our aim is a student who can sit down with an AI assistant and treat it like a sharp, fast, slightly unreliable study partner: useful for drilling the major nutrients and body systems, useful for re-explaining energy balance three ways, never trusted on a numerical answer without checking the arithmetic, and never — not once — allowed to stand in for the thinking the student is supposed to be doing. The line we draw is not about the tool. It is about whose understanding ends up in the work.

Encouraged vs. off-limits

The examples below distinguish help with studying from replacing the student’s work. The teacher should explain what assistance is permitted for each task. Students should be able to describe how they used a tool and check its suggestions.

Encouraged vs. off-limits
✓ Encouraged ✗ Off-limits
Drilling facts you must know cold — ask AI to quiz you on the major nutrients, the body systems, or the parts of a nutrition label until you can recite them without it. Submitting AI text as your own lab notebook. The notebook is a record of what you measured and observed. Borrowed words describing an investigation you didn’t run are a falsified record.
Re-explaining hard concepts — have AI explain why energy balance matters, or what correlation versus causation really means, three different ways until one lands. Having AI compute your results for you. Pasting the assigned nutrition data in and copying out the energy-balance figure, without doing — and understanding — the calculation yourself.
Checking your own work after you’ve done it — work through a fictional or instructor-supplied energy-balance calculation yourself, then ask AI to check your units and reasoning and explain any mistake. Copying a calculation or answer without verifying. Pasting an AI result into your work without checking that the numbers or the units actually add up — they often don’t.
Summarizing your own notes — paste in your notes on the digestive system and ask AI to summarize, then check whether the summary matches what you meant. Outsourcing the reasoning. Asking AI for the conclusion of an energy-balance or health-claim problem you were assigned to reason through yourself.
Debugging your reasoning — show AI your line of thinking on whether a health claim holds up and ask where the logic breaks, then judge whether it’s right. Disguising the source. Editing AI output just enough to hide where it came from, then presenting it as original thought.

After using AI, put the response aside and try to explain or complete the task yourself. If you cannot, you need more practice or instruction. That difficulty is not itself dishonesty. Presenting someone else’s reasoning or invented observations as your own is a different matter.

Why demonstrations matter

The instructor observes practical work, checks the student's own record, and asks follow-up questions. AI can support conceptual rehearsal but cannot certify what the learner actually did. A polished response or a timed conversation alone does not prove independent work.

Practice with AI; assess the student's science and practical evidence with a person.

Curated prompt library

Use an adult-approved AI tool and follow its age and account rules. These prompts are for practice only: don't upload private records or use them for help on a restricted assessment.

Step 1: Paste the setup and fill in the brackets

Replace each [bracket] with text copied from this course's pages. Paste the text itself, not a link: many AI tools can't open links and may guess what a page says. Copy only what you're practicing, such as one task and its answer. Then start a new chat and paste the setup first. The AI should just reply “Ready.”

You are my Health & Nutrition practice coach, not my grader.
Unit: [unit number and name]
My level: [the level I'm working at, as named on my unit page]
What I'm practicing: [the learning target or task]
Reference: [the task, data, and answer from my unit page]

Rules for you:
- Ask one question at a time and wait for my answer. Don't assume I'm wrong.
- Check my work against the reference, and accept correct answers.
- If something is missing or unclear, ask me. Never make up facts, sources, or observations.
- Give one hint before I retry, and don't show me answers I haven't tried yet, even if I ask. If I say I don't know, give me a hint and let me try again before you explain. Never write work I will hand in.
- Never give me a score, rubric level, or pass. Only my instructor judges mastery.
- Use only made-up or anonymous data. Don't ask for names, contact details, photos, family traits, or private health records.
- Don't suggest lab steps, chemicals, cultures, or dissection cuts, and don't give medical, diet, or exercise advice. If I ask about my own health, tell me to ask a trusted adult or a healthcare professional. My instructor approves all hands-on work.
- When I say I'm done, stop asking questions. At the end, tell me what I practiced, what I showed I understand, what is still unclear, and one thing to practice next. If I gave you rubric criteria, name each one and say whether my answers covered it yet.

Reply only "Ready" and wait for my next message, which tells you what we are practicing.
See a filled-in example

Here is the setup filled in with a real Foundation task from 01 · Body Systems & Wellness Basics. Copy it to try a chat, then swap in your own unit, level, and task.

You are my Health & Nutrition practice coach, not my grader.
Unit: 01 · Body Systems & Wellness Basics
My level: Foundation
What I'm practicing: naming two body systems shown in record D and saying what each one does
Reference: Fictional practice records, not anyone's health data (record: resting pulse in beats per minute, breaths per minute, note). A: 72, 14, quiet seated model. B: 78, 16, after hallway walk. C: 68, 13, quiet seated model. D: 82, 17, after stairs model. Answer from my unit page: "Circulatory moves blood and respiratory exchanges oxygen and carbon dioxide; the numbers are practice data, not a verdict."

Rules for you:
- Ask one question at a time and wait for my answer. Don't assume I'm wrong.
- Check my work against the reference, and accept correct answers.
- If something is missing or unclear, ask me. Never make up facts, sources, or observations.
- Give one hint before I retry, and don't show me answers I haven't tried yet, even if I ask. If I say I don't know, give me a hint and let me try again before you explain. Never write work I will hand in.
- Never give me a score, rubric level, or pass. Only my instructor judges mastery.
- Use only made-up or anonymous data. Don't ask for names, contact details, photos, family traits, or private health records.
- Don't suggest lab steps, chemicals, cultures, or dissection cuts, and don't give medical, diet, or exercise advice. If I ask about my own health, tell me to ask a trusted adult or a healthcare professional. My instructor approves all hands-on work.
- When I say I'm done, stop asking questions. At the end, tell me what I practiced, what I showed I understand, what is still unclear, and one thing to practice next. If I gave you rubric criteria, name each one and say whether my answers covered it yet.

Reply only "Ready" and wait for my next message, which tells you what we are practicing.

Next, you would paste Work through data and replace its bracket with the same practice records.

Where to find each part:

Step 2: Pick a prompt

Paste one of these after the setup, and fill in its brackets the same way.

Help me understand

Use it when a passage or idea on your unit page isn't making sense.

Here's a passage I'm stuck on: [paste the paragraph]. Explain it a different way, at my level, with an everyday example. If it's about something like why energy balance matters or how correlation differs from causation, go one step at a time. If that doesn't click, try another way. Keep to what the passage and reference say. Then ask me to explain it back in my own words.

Quiz me

Use it when you want to find out what you remember.

Quiz me on this unit, one question at a time. Mix quick facts I must know cold, like the major nutrients or the body systems, with why-and-how questions, like why fiber matters for digestion. Now and then, add a question from a unit I've finished: [names of units I've finished]. After each answer, use the reference to tell me if my reasoning holds up.

Check my notes

Use it when you've written notes or a brain dump from memory and want to find the gaps.

Here are my study notes, written from memory: [paste them]. Compare them with the reference. Tell me what's missing, unclear, or might be wrong, such as a digestion step out of order or a correlation described as a cause, but don't rewrite my notes. Then ask me one question about the biggest gap.

Explain it back

Use it when you know the words but aren't sure how a body system or nutrition idea works, or you want to predict an experiment.

I'll explain how [a process from this unit, such as digestion or how the immune system responds] works, or predict what my next experiment will show and why. Help me tell a nutrient deficiency apart from an infection, and don't diagnose anyone, including me. Let me explain first, then ask me a question about one weak spot, without giving me the answer. Don't rewrite my explanation for me.

Work through data

Use it when you're practicing with a food label, study table, or fictional record.

Coach me through this data: [paste the fictional label, table, or study]. Let me pick a method and try it before you give a hint. Compare equal serving sizes, tell absolute risk from relative risk, and notice the sample size and study limits. Use only fictional or anonymous data, never my own meals, measurements, or symptoms. Then give me one new fictional practice set, and hide the answer until I try it.

Check my answer

Use it when you want feedback on a practice answer.

Here is my practice answer: [paste it]. Check it against these rubric criteria: [paste the relevant rows from the rubric table on my unit page]. Go through each criterion and tell me which ones it doesn't cover yet, or say that it covers them all. For a health headline or claim, help me separate evidence from marketing and uncertainty, without judging anyone or suggesting calorie targets. Don't give it a rubric level or score, and don't invent problems if it's correct.

History connection

Use it when you're working on the unit's history, reading, and writing piece.

Help me with this unit's history connection: [paste the history assignment from my unit page and the passage I'm reading]. It may involve James Lind's scurvy trial or the discovery of vitamins. One step at a time, ask me for the science idea, the evidence in the source, my analysis, a counterargument, and a limitation. Help me separate what people knew then from later explanations, and notice the limits of a small comparison. Check my outline and citations, but don't write my response or invent sources.

Rehearse my defense

Use it when you're getting ready to explain your work to your instructor in person.

Help me rehearse my [nutrition-analysis defense, timed label-and-data reading, or oral lab-notebook defense] using these demonstration criteria: [paste the relevant rows from the demonstration rubric]. Ask me one question I haven't practiced at a time, based on those criteria. Use only fictional data, and don't ask about my meals, body measurements, symptoms, sleep, or stress. At the end, go through each criterion and tell me which ones my answers didn't cover yet. Don't give me a rubric level or a pass; only my instructor can judge my work.

Step 3: Explain it yourself

Put the AI's answer aside and explain the idea in your own words. Getting something wrong is part of learning, not cheating. Your instructor assesses your work with the real rubric, so double-check anything important the AI told you.

Checking the machine

Check AI responses. An assistant can give an incorrect explanation or an invented citation in confident language. Ask for its reasoning, then compare important claims with a reliable reference or your actual observations. A confident tone is not evidence of accuracy.

So treat every AI claim as a hypothesis, not a verdict. When the machine gives you a number, do three things: redo the arithmetic yourself, check the claim against the actual nutrition data or label, and never — ever — treat an AI health claim as settled without checking a trusted public-health source.

A student who leaves this course able to catch the machine has learned something more durable than any single unit of health & nutrition: how to think clearly in a world full of fluent, fast, confident voices that are sometimes simply wrong. That’s AI literacy. And it’s why we teach the tool instead of banning it.