🧠 Learn how AI works · 🏫 Classroom tools
AI Unplugged
By Stefan Seegerer and Annabel Lindner (FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg). Visit AI Unplugged
Desk research from the maker's own pages. Not yet tried by us. Checked 2026-10-24.
A free set of five printable, computer-free activities that teach how AI works. Students sort monkey picture cards to see how a decision tree learns, group image cards to explore unsupervised learning, play board games that show reinforcement learning (with online versions), and question a "computer" to think about the Turing test. Materials come in several languages, with a brochure, presentation slides and 3D-printable pieces, made by computer-science education researchers in Germany.
Our take: A strong free choice for teachers or homeschool parents who want kids to understand how AI learns without using AI tools; families wanting a ready-to-run app should look elsewhere.
Checked in a browser
A browser check on 2026-10-25: what loads, the ads and trackers we saw, and what a child meets first. Not a hands-on test.
| Child safety: 4 out of 5 | No ads or chat; links out to other teaching sites (CS Unplugged, Tinkercad, Teaching London Computing). |
|---|---|
| Data: 4 out of 5 | Only Google Analytics plus a VG Wort counting pixel (vgwort.de, a German authors' royalty counter); no ad or tracking networks. |
| Ease: 3 out of 5 | A plain list of download links for printable activities, meant for a teacher or parent, not for a child to use alone. |
| Cost honesty: 5 out of 5 | Free downloads; no price shown. |
What we found
- 4 third-party hosts on 4 sites; 3 cookies, none from a third party.
- 0 ad frames.
- Activities are offered as printable cards and presentations in up to 9 languages.
From the test: Free printable AI activities for a grown-up to run, with no ads and only Google Analytics.
| Ages it suits | about 10-18 (designed for lower and upper secondary; some activities adapt for primary) |
|---|---|
| What its terms say about age | Not stated. There are no accounts and no terms; the makers say the materials are online under a Creative Commons license. (terms) |
| Price | Free. Free downloads (Oct 2026) |
| Works on | Web |
| Account | No account needed |
| Ads | None |
| In-app purchases | None |
| The AI in it | No AI (paper activities that explain machine learning) |
What's good
- No screens, accounts or data
- Explains real machine-learning ideas with cards and games
- Free in many languages
Watch for
- Needs a teacher or parent to prepare and lead
- Some materials only in German
- No outcome study yet
Data and privacy
No privacy policy found on the site; the page links to Google Analytics. Kids use paper materials, so no child data is entered.
Does it work?
The makers' peer-reviewed papers (ISSEP 2019, INFOS 2019) describe the activities and classroom trials at a German secondary school; they do not report a controlled outcome study.
In the Big Index
- On the list 14 AI unplugged activities with no screen
- On the list 12 ways to teach kids how AI actually works
- AI Unplugged
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Where these facts come from
- https://www.aiunplugged.org/
- https://www.ddi.tf.fau.de/schule/unterrichtsmaterialien/ai-unplugged/
- https://cris.fau.de/publications/226619181?lang=de_DE
- https://dl.gi.de/bitstream/handle/20.500.12116/28940/c18.pdf
Prices, terms and features change. Nobody paid to be listed, nothing here is an affiliate link, and Peabody never rates itself. Where we and the maker disagree, the maker's own pages are the ones to trust.