Samsung & the Mark Cuban Foundation Are Sending Classrooms Back to School with a New AI Curriculum

School bells have either just rung or are about to, and across the country, teachers are facing the same question: How do you actually teach AI, not just talk about it?

Samsung Electronics America’s The State of STEM Education survey underscores just how pressing that question has become. Ninety-seven percent of teachers say they need additional support or resources to bring emerging technology like AI into their teaching, ranking professional development and updated curriculum as urgent priorities on par with better classroom technology itself.  Additional research found 53% of teachers have received no formal training on using AI in the classroom, a number that rises to 64% at under-resourced schools.

The demand is clear, and Samsung is addressing it heading into the school year with a new, free AI curriculum created in partnership with the Mark Cuban Foundation, an organization that empowers diverse learners with ethical AI skills and agency to thrive in their communities. The ready-to-teach curriculum arrives ahead of the 17th annual Samsung Solve for Tomorrow STEM competition, giving educators nationwide a clear, structured way to help students develop the AI fluency, critical thinking, and responsible technology skills they will need in school, work, and life.

“The Mark Cuban Foundation has been an incredible partner because we share a belief that young people should have the opportunity to understand AI, build with it, and ultimately shape what comes next,” said Katie Stratakis, Head of Corporate Communications & Citizenship at Samsung Electronics America. “Together, we’ve been able to bring that belief to life for students and teachers, and this curriculum gives us the opportunity to reach even more classrooms across the country with resources educators can put to use right away.”

The new curriculum builds on Samsung’s broader education commitment through Solve for Tomorrow, which invites public middle and high school students to apply science, technology, engineering, and math to real challenges facing their communities. Since launching, the program has provided more than 620,000 U.S. schools with over $31 million in technology and classroom resources, helping teachers create hands-on STEM learning opportunities for students nationwide. Free educator professional development has always been part of the offering, but this year that support gets a major upgrade!

What’s Inside the Samsung and Mark Cuban Foundation AI Curriculum?

The new seven-session curriculum guides students through the full arc of working responsibly with AI, moving them from AI consumer to AI builder to AI evaluator over the course of a unit. Built for grades 6 through 12 and designed to minimize prep time for teachers, the curriculum includes complete lesson plans with word-for-word facilitation scripts, student handouts, a full materials checklist, and background reading to help educators confidently answer student questions, guide discussions, and navigate important issues as they arise.

Rather than treating AI as a single lesson or a novelty tool, the curriculum is designed to build durable habits students will carry into any subject or career path. A few examples of what that looks like in practice:

• Curriculum designed to build healthy skepticism from day one. In the opening sessions, students learn how large language models actually work and practice the BRIEF prompting framework (Background, Role, Input, End Goal and Format), then immediately put lateral reading to use, the same verification technique professional fact-checkers rely on, to catch AI hallucinations before they trust them.
• Curriculum designed to turn research into a real project. Students use Google’s NotebookLM to curate credible sources and land on a project goal tied to a career field they care about. They then learn how to direct an AI agent to conduct structured research and comparisons, using Claude in the lesson, before turning their findings into an interactive data visualization.
• Curriculum designed to make students better communicators, not just better prompters. Students learn data storytelling, build a professional chart in Datawrapper, and embed it into an AI-assisted app mockup, applying real UI and UX principles along the way.
• Curriculum designed to end in accountability, not just output. The final session has students examine real-world cases of AI bias, then produce formal ethics documentation, either a Model Card or a Responsible Use Card, for their own project.

“We want educators to feel equipped to help students move beyond simply using AI and understand how to question it, build with it, and use it responsibly. This curriculum gives teachers a way to build that fluency step by step, so students walk away not just knowing how to use AI tools, but knowing how to use them thoughtfully and with good judgment,” said Charlotte Dungan, Chief Learning Officer at the Mark Cuban Foundation. “Our partnership with Samsung helps bring practical AI learning into more classrooms and gives young people the skills and agency to shape how this technology is used in their communities.”

How Have Samsung and the Mark Cuban Foundation Partnered on AI Education?

The curriculum launch lands at a pivotal moment. As more classrooms weigh how, and how much, to bring AI into daily instruction, Samsung and the Mark Cuban Foundation are betting that the answer starts with equipping teachers first.

The Mark Cuban Foundation has been part of the Samsung Solve for Tomorrow story for two years running, helping shape AI programming during the 15th and 16th competition seasons. Last year, Samsung and the Foundation teamed up to host the Samsung Solve for Tomorrow: AI in Action Lab, an experiential learning program for hundreds of New York City students designed to build confidence using emerging AI tools.

This new curriculum builds on that partnership, extending the work into a practical resource educators can put to use from day one. It also reflects a simple reality: teachers need resources that can translate into actual classroom instruction, on whatever timeline their school year allows. The seven sessions can be taught as one consecutive unit, while the first four lessons can also stand alone when classroom time is limited.

That flexibility matters. Eighty-eight percent of teachers believe AI will be important to their students’ futures – a gap this curriculum is built to help close.

Explore the new AI curriculum here and stay tuned for more information about the 17th annual Samsung Solve for Tomorrow competition, which will begin accepting competition entries starting on September 30, 2026. To learn more about the Mark Cuban Foundation’s mission to expand ethical AI education, visit markcubanai.org.