MY-WAI – Myths, Witness, and Critical Dialogue with AI

Alessandro CIERRO (UCLouvain, BE), Stefano CUOMO (University of Florence, IT), Vladimir DELOV (ICS, MK), Leo DUPONT (CFA ASBL, FR), Maria LEONIDA (KARPOS, GR), Borbála TIMAR (MOME, HU), Kostas VOROS(IOE-UCL, GR).

The project proposes a pedagogical pathway for developing critical AI literacy through creative and dialogic learning. Instead of banning AI, the project teaches students to engage it as a thinking companion and critical interlocutor. Across three stages – storytelling, debate, and reflection – they move from playful co-creation with AI to metacognitive self-assessment. The approach merges media education, game-based learning, and constructivist principles to foster curiosity, responsibility, and critical awareness.

Concept

MY-WAI – Myths, Witness, and Critical Dialogue with AI is a pedagogical framework designed to transform the way students and teachers relate to generative artificial intelligence. Instead of treating AI as a threat to academic integrity or a shortcut to quick results, the project reframes it as a catalyst for critical dialogue, creativity, and reflection. The idea is simple yet radical: to move from policing AI to educating with it, helping learners become responsible and self-aware users of new media technologies.
Developed in line with constructivist and dialogic learning theories (e.g. Vygotsky’s socio-cultural approach and Freire’s critical pedagogy), MY-WAI introduces a third interlocutor into classroom conversation: the machine itself. Students interact with AI in structured “trialogues” involving peers, teachers, and the tool. Through this process, they learn how prompts shape meaning, how to interpret AI’s limitations, and how to transform algorithmic suggestions into meaningful human expression.
The methodology follows a progressive path – from collective exploration to individual metacognition. Students begin by understanding what AI is and how it functions (Step 0), then engage in collaborative storytelling (Step 1) and structured debate (Step 2), and finally internalize these practices through an individual reflective diary (Step 3). Each phase strengthens their capacity to question, verify, and curate AI outputs rather than passively accept them.
The project combines media education, game-based learning, and ethical reflection to build a generation of learners who are not intimidated by AI but capable of critically coexisting with it. In this sense, MY-WAI does not teach students how to use a tool, but how to think with it – and, when needed, against it – developing reflective and creative digital citizenship.

Priority

Main: Priority 3 – Developing Skills as a Critical AI Prompter (in Media Reception and Production)
Related: Priority 5 – Creative Prompting and AI Training

Rationale:
The project directly addresses Priority 3 by training students to become critical AI prompters – users who can question, refine, and evaluate AI outputs rather than consuming them passively. Through structured trialogues between peers, teachers and the machine, learners experience prompting as a process of reasoning, not automation.
At the same time, MY-WAI contributes to Priority 5 because creativity is treated as the gateway to critical awareness. By experimenting with narrative, debate, and reflection, students learn that creative prompting is not only about generating content, but about understanding how meaning is co-constructed between humans and AI, creatively and responsibly.

Objectives

Target group

The primary target group consists of teachers and educators working with secondary or young adult learners who wish to integrate GenAI into their teaching in a critical, reflective, and ethical way. MY-WAI provides them with a complete pedagogical toolkit – lesson plans, evaluation grids, and reflective practices – to guide students toward responsible and creative use of AI.
The final beneficiaries are students at secondary schools who engage with AI through storytelling, debate, and reflective writing. The approach, however, is easily adaptable to younger learners or adult education contexts, as the framework focuses on developing transversal competences – critical thinking, media literacy, and digital ethics – relevant across age groups and disciplines.

Modalities: steps and instructions

The MY-WAI learning path is structured as a progressive sequence moving from collective discovery to individual reflection. Each step translates the same pedagogical principle – critical dialogue with AI – into different learning formats: play, collaboration, argumentation, and self-assessment. The progression ensures that students first build shared understanding, then experiment creatively, debate critically, and finally consolidate awareness through individual reflection.
Step 0 – Meet Your Machine: shared introduction to AI concepts, basic mechanisms (e.g. how large language models generate outputs), and related ethical questions.
Step 1 – Once Upon an AI: collaborative storytelling with generative models, focusing on prompting and peer reflection.
Step 2 – The AI Courtroom: role-play debate where students fact-check AI outputs and defend arguments before a “jury.”
Step 3 – AI & I: individual reflective diary documenting AI use, decisions, and validation of information.

Each phase includes group work, peer evaluation, and metacognitive follow-up.