Posted by In February of this year, (2026) I was featured in WI Life Magazine, as I talked about AI and being a tutor on VIA.
Afterwards, I received some lovely messages from readers across the UK, saying what I wrote chimed with them and that they wanted to know more.
A week later, I gave an in-person talk: When women were computers, which came out of me researching the history of AI and computing to put together my original talk on Demystifying AI.
During the women-computer talk, I realised I was talking to myself, yearning to see myself reflected in technology. I had been sitting in a circle on a retreat the weekend before, exploring Fairytale Medicine and us all sharing what was important to us, speaking about ourselves. And, as I luxuriated in both lovely safe spaces, a plan came together.
So! I put together a page as the first step into creating a similar lovely safe space in which people could learn about AI, without any fuss, saying this:
I built AI before it was fashionable and shiny.
Before the headlines.
Before the hype.
Before Y2K and dot-com boom.
Today, AI can feel fast, noisy, and intimidating,
which is why I want to create a space where we can learn – together:
Slower.
Safer.
Human.
A place to ask questions without judgment,
to explore ideas without pressure,
and to be curious without the rush.
It’s about everyone
That text has gone now as I keep updating the page to represent the people who have shown up because:
I believe that technology is a mirror for society, so if you can’t see yourself in the mirror, then how well are you seen in society?
And once I asked people:
What do you need to know so that you talk about AI confidently so we can have appropriate conversations around its employment?
A fabulous journey began.
Step 1: The Questionnaire
I created a three-question questionnaire called: What would you like to know about AI?
I sent it to everyone who had reached out and kept it brief. Most people already have 10,000 things to do everyday without learning about AI or answering long detailed questions about AI.
I decided that a good starting point would be three things:
Understanding AI, Using AI, and Explaining AI.
I was also in talks with the lovely team at VIA about giving an extended version of my Demystifying AI original talk and the team kindly shared my questionnaire with their community too.
The results came quick and fast!
Step 2: The Pilot Group aka the AI Co-Creators
Using feedback from 300 people, I created an outline of a course to answer everyone’s comments and questions along with their fear and hopes. Then I realised, that I needed help to make sure I explained things at the right level. So, I did a call out on my website, asking people to sign up via my newsletter.
Eight people answered the call and the AI Co-Creators was born, complete with the wonderful AI logo generated above (Google Gemini).
For four weeks throughout the month of May, I promised to deliver weekly 2-3, 5-8 minute videos each Friday following, answering as many questions as I could from the course outline. The following Wednesday, after my AI Co-Creators had had time to explore the materials, we had an online call. They also sent me wonderful detailed emails full of insight answering the prompt:
Tell me what helped, what confused you, questions you still have.
This led to new suggestions for video topics, and things I hadn’t thought to include, which was brilliant.
Then I would go back in the following week and alongside what was in the outline, I would create more videos incorporating what I had missed in my materials, and questions which had come up.
For example, some people were worried about safety, security in terms of permissions and viruses, something I hadn’t explicitly listed or thought of so I added that in.
It was pretty intense, but absolutely wonderful. I soon found also, that I may have potentially bitten off more than I could chew. Creating videos, managing feedback, and then changing the planned videos to include materials that I hadn’t thought of, along with the admin of emails, zoom call reminders, all at once, is a lot.
Apparently at home, I talked and did nothing other than AI for the full month. Though it was fabulous to be that deep in something and committed whole heartedly. I had so much energy.
Agile Teaching
Some things I learnt along the way:
Firstly, I overpromised. There was no way I could realistically explain what I wanted to say in five minutes. So, some of the videos ran longer. Secondly, in some weeks there were five videos, which was a bit off-putting.
The AI Co-Creators were great and took it all in their stride and suggested many ways to deal with that from splitting up the videos to running it longer.
Practicalities noted to ponder, from them I collected information in two ways:
- Quantitatively via video data analytics: I could see which parts of the videos people looked at more than once and which bits people got bored and dropped.
- Qualitatively via email: The group fed back really detailed observations such as explanations that didn’t work, either because they were missing important details to not giving enough of a recap or repetition before building on concepts already defined. Then there were delivery insights from the way I displayed and used visual aids to when the audio was not exact. The lack of lip synching could be really off-putting for those who listen and lip read at the same time.
At some point I will explicitly document the feedback as it as it is a great resource for designing courses aimed at the general public specifically to reduce the friction to learning something like AI.
Step 3: Refine and Adapt
Reading their feedback and suggestions, I stripped out what didn’t work, emphasized what did, added missing explanations and extra suggestions of other things they wanted to know about based on what they had learnt so far, and together we shaped the curriculum in an Agile Teaching style which was so much more rewarding than if I had done it myself.
The major revelation I found was that the AI Co-Creators needed far less technical detail than I thought. They didn’t want or need a dense academic lecture; they just needed it to make sense from start to finish, with more examples and clear hands-on instructions.
This meant adjusting the learning flow. By:
- Reducing information density per segment.
- Adding more explicit transitions and sometimes more details between ideas.
- Reinforcing key concepts over time with repetition and reintroduction before building on them.
- Simplifying terminology on its first introduction and repeating it and explaining it a few times each time I mentioned it.
All the AI tools I used were free, which meant that when it came to creating AI generated videos, I used a lot of tools – perhaps too many, but that was the only way to create something for free especially when I made an AI movie.
This was an odd trade-off, as too many tools can be overwhelming, but only one or two tools would have meant that I expected my AI Co-Creators to sign up and pay money, which is rather a commitment. I am still pondering this practicality. I am thinking, I can spring for a subscription and do some fancy examples to wrap up the course to show other people whether it’s worth the money. This is a change for me as I invariably behave like a student – well one from the days when education was a free, life-enriching, beautiful gift, instead of some big debt around a young person’s neck.
What It Felt Like (Honestly)
Building a course this way is intense.
I was creating content, teaching it, and analysing it simultaneously in a constant feedback loop where I was always refining and thinking, rather than finalizing and finishing. Most of the time it felt messy and I didn’t feel confident and some of the time I was just exhausted, especially as we had a couple of the hottest May days ever. But, now, looking back at the 16 videos and the 6-page handout we created along with the wise feedback for course design, I am really pleased with the results. It was so much better than anything I could have done by myself and the journey was so much fun.
It felt very comradely with the AI Co-Creators and I love that the course was shaped by real learner experience, not assumptions.
Instead of asking: What should they understand? I got to see in real-time and answer: With what are they struggling? Am I giving them the right information at the right level? I focused on fixing that, mainly by explaining things better, or differently, sometimes more succinctly and other times, with less technical detail. And, sometimes they would come to my rescue and suggest something.
For example, one AI Co-Creator suggested putting in an explanation about the difference between normal coding and AI coding, so I have now put that in and got to see how that was received last week in the first live session on VIA.
The difference between my should and their actual is truly where the value lies.
It is a course built entirely on real questions, tested by real users, and delivered with genuine human interaction. I asked, they answered, and via information and data, together we shaped a course and further refined it based on feedback.
The First Live Iteration
As mentioned above, I am teaching the results of the May-intensive once a week on VIA. I began on Tuesday 2nd June 2026 and will continue for four sessions.
This means that I am repackaging content from the videos I created for and with the AI Co-Creators each week into hour long sessions ready to deliver on Tuesdays. This is much easier than creating materials from scratch, but it is still a bit of work, so yesterday afternoon I was grabbing stills from the videos to put into slides and thinking about timings and interactivity.
I am also collecting prompt ideas to share with everyone. Tuesday just gone someone shared a fabulous prompt idea:.
I have been putting old black and white photos into ChatGPT and asking it to colourise them.
This is the best bit for me about technology and I’ve blogged about the phenomena of computing experience, which is that people will always find unexpected enriching ways to use technology every single time. I love it!!
The VIA team have me pencilled in to run it again in August, and hopefully again before the end of the year, to catch people at different times. I am ready for them whenever they call.
The Next Chapter
My original plan for the next phase was to package it all into a static, online video course for anyone who wanted it. But during this time, I realised that I prefer live interactions in real-time. It’s lovely to see people learning by conversing, asking questions, making suggestions and we all get immediate feedback.
And, after the intensity of May and the repackaging of June, it would be fun to teach it a couple of times whilst it is fresh in my head, tweaking to make it richer and clearer and adding in more examples, as I get more and more feedback.
So! Instead of hiding behind pre-recorded videos, I have decided to host and teach this course live as I test out different formats for the rest of the summer starting in July. It will be great fun to deliver these materials a few more times in different ways in one block, in four weeks or two to see what lands.
Keep an eye on the Demystifying AI page for more details.
Either way this will eventually lead to an online video course, either as a complement to the live sessions, or as a bundle, or as a separate format entirely, so people who prefer learning at their own pace can Demystify AI that way.
People who like the live sessions can do those, and then at some point I would love to do in person sessions: Bring your laptop let’s learn together! I just have to figure out venues and logistics. Getting together in real life is totally the best to watch people use technology in fresh and unexpected ways.
In the meantime, there’s still time to attend the online four part Demystifying AI sessions on VIA until the end of June, and everything will be available on VIA catch-up for a while after.
And! I will be Demystifying AI over a Pint on Wednesday 24th June, in real life in Brixton and Monday 27th July in Islington. Come for pint, leave demystified!
If you have an idea for how you would like to see Demystifying AI delivered or would like me to repackage it for your organisation, drop me a line via the contact page.
Us, the AI Co-Creators have already talked about coming back together in the Autumn to create new materials so I will announce that on the AI Co-Creators page nearer the time. I am so looking forward to it already, getting the gang back together and welcoming in new Co-Creators.
So! Come join us as part of the team, or sign up at one or all of the above, so that we can Demystify AI and co-create together.
I can’t wait to see you there!