by Chrissi Nerantzi & John Hammersley, University of Leeds, UK and Konstantinos Kotsidis, University of Crete, Greece.
The Imaginative Curriculum Centre for Research and Scholarship, School of Education, University of Leeds, and elearningLab, Department of Public Education, University of Crete, Greece, inspired by Homer’s Odyssey, co‑created the openly available Navigating our AI Odyssey flashcard set, with Secure Copilot as an additional collaborator. The set offers an epic lens and an invitation to explore the use of AI in education in a novel and accessible way.
Moments from Odysseus’ journey and encounters with key characters have been selected to help make sense of contemporary learning and teaching experiences in the age of AI. The Odyssey tells the story of a long and uncertain journey, marked by ingenuity, temptation, guidance, risk, collaboration, and loss. These themes resonate strongly with contemporary experiences of navigating AI in education, where educators and students are increasingly asked to make sense of rapid change, uncertainty, and competing narratives about promise, efficiency, and risk. Rather than treating AI as something to adopt or resist, the flashcards use myth and metaphor to explore how educators and students experience, interpret, and respond to AI’s presence in learning and teaching.
The flashcard sets are currently available in English and Greek and are designed to be used collaboratively. They could also be used for self-reflection. Each set includes statement cards, which articulate recognisable ways of engaging with AI in learning and teaching, and question cards, which invite reflection and dialogue. Together, the cards encourage educators and students to pause, reflect, and talk openly about how AI influences decision making, learning and teaching practices, and learning relationships. They also help surface insights, dilemmas, perspectives, and ideas across a range of contexts, disciplines, and educational settings.
Several cards draw attention to a range of learning approaches shaped through engagement with AI. For example, some cards foreground resourcefulness, experimentation, and calculated risk‑taking, while others surface more cautious, hidden, or comfort‑seeking approaches. These metaphors are not used to judge or categorise practice, but to make visible patterns of engagement that often remain implicit and unspoken. In doing so, the flashcards create space for educators and students to reflect together on choices, consequences, and possibilities.
Other cards focus on teaching and collaboration, drawing on moments from the Odyssey that highlight guidance, trust, shared responsibility, and collective action. By foregrounding collaboration and dialogue, the set intentionally shifts attention away from individualised or compliance‑driven narratives of AI use, and towards community‑based sense‑making and decision‑making.
Having these conversations together matters, as AI is reshaping how we learn, how we teach, and how we relate to each other. Exploring its possibilities and challenges collaboratively helps build shared understanding, strengthens trust, and ensures that decisions about AI in education are shaped by communities rather than individuals alone. When educators and students reflect together, they co‑create thoughtful, responsible, and humane approaches to learning with AI.
We would love to hear your feedback if you are using the flashcards in your practice. And if you would be interested in translating the flashcard set into other languages, please also get in touch via this email:
C.Nerantzi@leeds.ac.uk
Note: Use AI-Flashcards as the subject
Professor Chrissi Nerantzi is a professor in creative and open education, director of the imaginative curriculum centre, school of education, senior lead of the knowledge equity network, University of Leeds.
Dr John Hammersley is a lecturer in design studies, school of design, steering group member of the imaginative curriculum centre, University of Leeds.
Dr Konstantinos Kotsidis is a postdoctoral researcher and university lecturer at the University of Crete, Greece, affiliated with the elearning lab (laboratory of advanced learning technologies in lifelong and distance education – EDIVEA).
