AI is opening new pathways to information, giving people faster access to answers, ideas, and knowledge. At the same time, it’s making it harder to know whether the content we see is authentic.
Companies that build AI have a responsibility to make it reliable and trustworthy, and that responsibility doesn’t shift to the people who use it. But AI is already shaping how people search, learn, and encounter information. Helping people navigate that reality means building media and AI literacy (MAIL): the judgment to decide whether and how to use AI and what information to trust. These skills are as foundational as AI safety, and educators are asking for help teaching them.
That’s why, during Global Media and Information Literacy Week, we’re launching the expanded AI Classroom Toolkit: Unlocking Generative AI Safely and Responsibly, created with the online safety organization Cyberlite. It’s part of Microsoft’s broader commitment to make sure AI strengthens human thinking rather than replaces it. It also reflects Microsoft’s focus on education and empowerment, a core pillar of our Safe Participation Framework.
The expanded toolkit adds a deeper focus on critical thinking, verification, and media and AI literacy, helping students judge AI outputs and make informed decisions about what to trust online. Together with the original modules, it’s now a single, classroom-ready resource that covers the core of AI safety and literacy. Realistic, scenario-based lessons and activities help students practice these skills in situations they may encounter online:
“When we created the first Classroom Toolkit: Unlocking Generative AI Safely and Responsibly with Microsoft in 2023, most of the conversation was about using AI safely. Today, the questions young people ask about AI have grown sharper and more personal, like what to believe online or how far to trust a chatbot’s answer,” said Michelle Yao, cofounder of Cyberlite.
The toolkit also reflects what young people in our co-design sessions with Cyberlite told us: they want to learn by doing, through games, real-life scenarios, and peer discussion. Teachers don’t need to be AI experts, and students don’t need an AI tool in hand to start.
That approach builds on the reach and results of the original toolkit. Since 2023, the first version has reached educators in 10 countries and 11 languages, including through government and partner learning platforms. In South Korea, 93% of participating educators reported improved knowledge and understanding of ethical issues, privacy, and bias related to AI.
“Our hope is that every student leaves a little surer of their own judgment, and that everyone feels more confident deciding how AI fits into their lives,” said Yao.
Education is one part of the equation. Our commitment to media and AI literacy also shows up in how we design products and the policies we support.
Last month, we set out five principles for AI in education, including “AI designed to support students’ learning, not replace their thinking.” We also committed to enforceable privacy, safety, and transparency protections for qualifying educational AI products in US school districts. These protections help schools and families understand how these tools work and the controls available to them.
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has released a framework for a MAIL assessment beginning in 2029. As part of its Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), it will examine how students reflect on, analyze, and evaluate information, including AI-generated information. This week in New Delhi, UNESCO is also launching an AI extension of its “Think Critically, Click Wisely” global curriculum, which Microsoft advised on.
This growing global focus makes the need for support urgent—educators want help, and many aren’t getting it. In Microsoft’s 2026 AI in Education report, 53% of educators and 77% of students say they haven’t had AI training.
Closing this skills gap matters beyond the classroom. Healthy societies depend on a shared basis of facts, informed public debate, and confident civic participation. As authenticity gets harder to judge, there’s a risk that people start doubting everything, creating what the Digital Inquiry Group calls a “dangerous declaration of permanent uncertainty.” MAIL offers a way through. It builds the confidence to decide what to trust.
Across Microsoft, we’re helping people build these skills wherever they learn and find information:
What’s next
Through Microsoft Elevate for Educators and local partners, we’ll bring the AI Classroom Toolkit to new audiences, with more languages and localized content rolling out through 2027. We’ll keep evolving it as technology and educators’ needs change.
Explore the toolkit and supporting resources for educators today.
AI will keep changing how people find information and the content they encounter. Our goal is to help people meet that change with confident, informed judgment about the AI they use and the information they trust so they can fully take part in civic and democratic life.
The post In an age of AI, deciding what to trust is a foundational skill. Here’s how we’re helping educators teach it. appeared first on Microsoft On the Issues.
Phishing is an attack in which someone impersonates a person or organization you trust, like your host, registrar, bank, or colleague, in order to steal information, redirect a payment, or talk you into an action that helps them. The message is the delivery vehicle, and the goal is always the next action you take.
If you run a website, you’re on both sides of this problem. Your hosting panel, domain registrar, WordPress admin, email, and payment accounts are all valuable targets, and if an attacker gets in through any of them, your site can quietly end up hosting phishing pages aimed at someone else’s customers.
Continue reading What Is Phishing? Recognizing and Preventing Attacks at Sucuri Blog.
The rapid diffusion of AI globally and the pace at which AI is developing put us at a societal crossroads. The choices we’re making now will determine who has access to AI and the opportunity it affords. There is perhaps no more important tool than our education systems for addressing the uneven diffusion of AI we’re seeing currently: national adoption runs above 70% in countries such as the United Arab Emirates and falls to low single digits across much of sub-Saharan Africa, close to a tenfold difference.
The way we teach AI and learn with it will have long-lasting impacts on jobs, the workforce, and our broader economy. Learning Curves: Rethinking Education from Classrooms to Careers in an AI-Driven World is a collection of research-driven essays that can help guide those choices. This book brings together the body of work from the second cohort of Senior Fellows from the Microsoft AI Economy Institute (AIEI), a flagship think tank that produces research and convenes experts to generate insights into how AI is reshaping work, education, and the broader economy.
In Learning Curves, researchers consider how AI is reshaping the earliest stages of learning and work, from K–12 classrooms and community and technical colleges to college‑to‑work transitions and entry‑level jobs, and what it will take for that transformation to widen opportunity rather than deepen divides across institutions, communities, and countries.
Below, I share a few of my own reflections that informed my contributions to Learning Curves, a collaborative effort that wouldn’t have been possible without the truly talented, diverse cohort of researchers who contributed to this book.
Before delving into the specifics of how to incorporate AI in classrooms, we need to ask ourselves whether we’re teaching for knowledge, or for learning.
The book, the calculator, the personal computer, the internet, the search engine, and the smartphone all arrived in classrooms carrying real promise alongside the worry that they would hollow out young minds. Usually the truth landed somewhere in between, and where it landed depended less on the tool than on the choices the adults made about how to use it.
The fact is that the AI-native generation is already here, and its members are in classrooms around the world. More than half of US teenagers already use AI chatbots for schoolwork. I’ve personally seen the promise of AI as a force for good in education up close in my own classroom, where I teach a computer science class to elementary school students.
But of course, the good is only part of the story. We can’t shy away from the downsides of incorporating AI into classrooms. While AI can help with accessibility and individualized learning, it can also create over–reliance, contribute to student cheating, or prevent students from recognizing when information may be false.
The rapid deployment of AI in K–12 classrooms needs to come with a sober assessment of how that technology impacts all students. This assessment must go beyond the technology itself to encompass how students, teachers, parents, and society use AI.
If classrooms are where students learn how to think, teachers are the conduit through which this learning happens. In Learning Curves, Joseph Orero, Senior Researcher in AI at Strathmore University’s School of Computing and Engineering Science, posits that teachers aren’t resistant to AI in classrooms; they just need proper training to help them adequately adapt and teach their students critical skills. His research contribution explores game-based learning with AI-enabled African languages.
AI usage and adoption worldwide are also dependent on accessibility. Another chapter of the book looks at barriers and opportunities in Arabic education and finds that the primary barrier teachers encountered when introducing AI writing assistants into classrooms was Arabic digital literacy, particularly students’ typing ability.
Researchers often circled around a similar theme: there is no one-size-fits-all approach to developing AI competency; instead, such an approach must be sensitive to local knowledge and contextualized teaching and learning practices. This means that teachers, in turn, must have training that makes sense for the unique contexts in which their students are learning.
Frank Nagle, now Microsoft’s Chief AI Economist, Sarah Rodriguez, Associate Professor of Engineering Education at Virginia Tech, and other researchers in Learning Curves make the case that, in many ways, nontraditional pathways such as apprenticeships and two-year-degree programs, particularly those that are virtual, are more nimble and thus better able to adapt their curricula to the rapidly changing field of AI.
Education has never been about simply preparing people for the future of work so they can thrive in the labor market. When considered holistically, it is about teaching students not what to think but how to think. In our AI era, education is one of the core institutions through which the future of work will be built, distributed, and made more (or less) equitable. Successful AI integration remains human-centered by focusing on organizational change, durable human skills like empathy and judgment, strong employer partnerships, and learner needs.
As research from Laura Nuriski, Head of Program on the Future of Work at the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS), highlights, access to AI alone does not ensure successful integration. Technology transfer, data infrastructure, organizational readiness, and a human-centered approach to building and deploying AI are also key indicators of success.
Whether we’re talking about the classroom or the boardroom, it’s worth keeping in mind that AI tends to do the most good when it strengthens human capability and the most harm when it substitutes for it. That holds as true in a fourth- grade reading lesson as in a software team or a hospital ward.
The children in our schools deserve tools that serve their learning rather than stand in for it, and that is within our power to provide. Our most successful future with AI will be one that is human-centered, inclusive, and designed to help people thrive.
The post Learning Curves: The future of education, from classrooms to careers, in an AI-driven world appeared first on Microsoft On the Issues.
How 300 Academic Partnerships Are Helping Close the Cyber Skills Gap Check Point’s SecureAcademy has reached 300 academic partnerships across more than 80 countries, connecting educational institutions with industry-aligned cyber security training and resources. While the milestone reflects the program’s continued growth, it also highlights a broader shift: educational institutions are increasingly looking for ways to align cyber security education with the skills employers need today. Turning Classrooms into Career Pathways Organizations worldwide continue to face a shortage of cyber security professionals, while educational institutions are under pressure to keep pace with rapidly evolving technologies and threats. Through SecureAcademy, institutions […]
The post Closing the Cyber Skills Gap with 300 Academic Partnerships appeared first on Check Point Blog.
The internet is a vast and confusing place no matter your age. Trying to help youth engage with it safely and privately is a complicated topic that touches on many different skillsets and ideas. But just because it’s complicated doesn’t mean it’s impossible. We’ve launched our Online Privacy for Parents and Youth Surveillance Self-Defense guide in hopes to provide a framework for finding solutions that work for you.
EFF rolls out this crucial resource as state and local governments consider ill-advised laws that cut young people off from essential information and experiences. This particularly harms vulnerable youth and marginalized groups who often find safety in supportive online communities they can't access offline. Such laws also entail age gating, which compromises the privacy of all internet users and stifles young users’ ability to learn, grow, and express themselves.
Young people have unique needs and those needs change over time. Trying to protect from everything all the time is an exhausting process, but the security community has long had a solution for this: security planning (also called threat modeling). The idea is to provide a series of questions designed to help you focus on what’s truly important. When it comes to online privacy, this is as applicable for youth and parents as it is for anyone else.
We used a security plan as our foundation for this guide because deciding what is and isn’t important is the first step we should all take when assessing our privacy risks. But this isn’t a place for quick fixes, and every young person has their unique needs and considerations. There is no single tool or technology fix that can substitute for spending time learning, and then teaching a young person, how the internet works, how to use it, what sorts of harms exist, and how to navigate those harms.
Solutions are rarely about the tools or software you use. It’s about understanding the threats and concerns you have, and then determining what steps you can take to mitigate those risks. We hope our Online Privacy for Parents and Youth guide can help provide the outline to get the conversation started.
You load your site, or visit an API endpoint your app relies upon, and instead of a page you find a brief, unhelpful message: 401 Unauthorized. Sometimes a browser password box appears. Other times, a blank white page presents only that number. In either case, visitors are shut out, and if the error strikes your admin area, even you are left at the threshold.
The good news is that a 401 is one of the more honest HTTP responses.
Continue reading HTTP 401 Unauthorized: What It Means and How to Fix It at Sucuri Blog.
You load your own site, and instead of your homepage you get a blank page with a line of text reading 500 Internal Server Error. No explanation, no stack trace, nothing to act on. For visitors, it looks like the site is simply gone, and for you it usually means the admin area is down too, so the one tool you’d normally reach for is unavailable.
The frustrating part is that a 500 is deliberately vague.
Continue reading 500 Internal Server Error: What It Means and How to Fix It at Sucuri Blog.
If you run a website, you’ve already met encryption even if you’ve never used the word. It’s the 🔒 padlock in the browser bar, the reason your host told you to stop using plain FTP, and the checkbox on your backup settings that says “encrypt archive.”
Encryption is one of the few security controls that works quietly and almost never needs your attention, which is exactly why it’s easy to misunderstand. Plenty of site owners install an SSL certificate, see the padlock appear, and assume the site is now “secure.” That’s the gap we want to close here.
Continue reading What Is Encryption? How It Protects Your Website and Its Data at Sucuri Blog.
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