Reimaging the Textbook: Building AI Literacy Through a Custom Classroom Bot

This workshop explores how two teacher educators replaced a traditional textbook with a custom AI bot to strengthen AI literacy in a foundations of education course. Presenters will give a practical overview of how the bot was created and used to support human-centered instruction, weekly discussions, and responsible engagement with AI. Lessons learned from the pilot semester will highlight what worked well and where challenges emerged. Students will offer authentic reflections on their experience using the bot. Attendees will leave with a sense of how to create a custom AI app using PlayLab that may serve as a useful strategy for personalizing learning in their own teaching contexts.