The use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in schools is changing how we teach and learn. Is AI a helpful assistant or a tempting cheat code? We can find the answer by looking at how students actually use it.
  A recent international school project, “Nemophilist Econuts for Green Planet,” gives us a perfect example. Within the scope of their Erasmus & eTwinning project, nearly 100 students from 5 schools (from Türkiye, Croatia, Romania, and Italy) worked together to create a 10-chapter book about climate change. They mixed their own ideas with AI tools. This process clearly showed the best parts of using AI and the challenges we must watch out for.
  The project succeeded because students first led the effort (designing characters, setting, and theme), and then used AI to speed up the writing, design, and publishing and dissemination of the final work.
The Good Factors of AI in Education
AI Makes Teamwork Better
AI was successful because it helped students from different countries work together faster and easier. It acted as a shared tool that leveled the playing field for everyone.
1. Writing Faster with AI
   After students finished the initial planning, they faced the big task of writing the story. Using AI to generate the 10-chapter story showed how AI can be a great writing partner:
● Breaking Down Walls: In a project with many countries, writing a single story can be slow because of language differences and scheduling. AI provided an instant, single piece of writing based on the students’ shared vision.
● Saving Time: AI did the first, quick draft. This allowed students to spend their time on more important skills like editing, fixing the structure, and thinking critically about the text—the things a machine can’t do well. Their job changed from being the “writer” to being the crucial “editor.”
2. Better Pictures for Everyone with AI
  To make the book look professional, students used AI to create background pictures:
● Creative Help: Students who weren’t good at drawing could now create high-quality, professional images that perfectly matched their climate change story. This built confidence and meant the quality of the book depended on their imagination (what they asked the AI to create), not just their drawing talent.
● Seeing the Story: AI helped turn big ideas about climate change into clear, interesting visuals, making the final book richer and more engaging.
3. Making Different Formats with AI
In the last step, students used AI to turn the finished book into both a MindMap and a Podcast:
● Organizing Ideas: The AI-made MindMap forced students to summarize the book’s 10 chapters into main points. This helped them understand and analyze the content better.
● Making Content for New Audiences: Turning the text into a Podcast used AI to switch the project from a written book to an audio file. This taught students about creating content for different platforms and audiences—a key skill in today’s digital world.
    The Bad Factors of AI in Education
   While the benefits are clear, we must manage the risks that come from trusting AI too much or not using it carefully.
1. The Danger to Originality and Thinking
 The biggest risk is losing the line between writing with AI and writing what you truly thought of yourself. If students let AI write the whole story, they miss out on the hard, but important, thinking needed to create a plot or develop characters:
● Losing Your Voice: Relying too much on AI can make stories sound general, like they were written by a machine. This stops students from developing their own unique writing style.
● Telling vs. Creating: The lesson changes from the skill of writing to the skill of giving instructions (prompting) to the AI. While prompting is important, teachers must make sure AI is only a tool, not a replacement, for deep, creative work.
2. Knowing How to Use AI and Avoiding Bias
  Using AI tools means students need new skills in digital literacy:
● The Instruction Problem: Students need specific training on how to give the AI good instructions (prompts) to get the pictures or text they want. Without this training, some students may feel left behind, making the digital gap wider.
● Bias and Fairness: All AI models learn from huge amounts of existing information, which can sometimes include unfair or old-fashioned ideas (bias). Students must learn to look closely at the AI’s output for stereotypes and understand that AI shows patterns from its training data, it doesn’t always generate the “truth.”
Working Together: Human and Machine
  This project successfully proves that AI’s value in school depends on how it’s used. AI is more than just an automatic tool; it’s a powerful partner and accelerator when people give it clear, strong instructions.
 The successes—fast writing, high-quality design for everyone, and easy conversion into podcasts—show that AI can help students around the world. But these benefits will only last if teachers actively prevent the challenges: making sure students use AI critically, that the original human idea remains the most important part, and that the hard work of editing and judging right from wrong is never given to the machine.
   In school, AI is about building a new partnership between human cleverness and artificial help.