01
A working mental model
What a large language model is, in plain terms, and the failure modes you need to expect.
AI Academy · AI-01 · Beginner
AI Every Day: start here, free.
AI-01BEGINNER
Free
- Modules7
- Time~3.5 hours
- FormatSelf-paced + hands-on
- UpdatesIncluded, always
Get real work out of Claude and Google AI from day one. No jargon, no theory dumps.
Who it is for: Anyone who wants AI doing useful work today: founders, staff, students, complete beginners.
What you walk away with
Skills you use the same week.
A working mental model of what LLMs do well and where they fail
Claude chats, Projects and Artifacts running your everyday tasks
Gemini, NotebookLM and AI Overviews used where each one wins
Prompts that get the output you wanted on the first or second try
A personal checklist for what to trust, check and never paste
TOOLS YOU WORK IN
Claude.aiGeminiNotebookLMGoogle AI OverviewsInside every lesson
Pages you work, not slides you skim.
Each lesson is a short deck of activity-book pages. You predict before you are told, do the task in your own store, and keep the notes. Built to be done, not skimmed.
Predict, then reveal
Commit a guess before the lesson gives you the answer, so it actually sticks.
Hands-on labs
Tick off real tasks in your own store, one at a time, with your progress saved.
Write-in workbook
Jot your answers straight into the page. They save on your device, yours to keep.
No walls of text
Flip-cards, compare panels and deep-dives instead of dense paragraphs to wade through.
Lab
LAB · AI EVERY DAY
- Do the first task in your real workspace
- Tick each step off as you complete it
- Save the result as your deliverable
YOUR CALL FIRST
What will you try first?
Syllabus
7 modules, ~3.5 hours, one capstone.
02
Claude fundamentals
Chats, Projects, Artifacts and files. The features that turn Claude from a chatbot into a workspace.
03
Google AI fundamentals
Gemini, NotebookLM and AI Overviews. Where Google wins and how to use each surface.
04
Prompting that works
Context, examples and iteration. Skip the prompt-magic folklore and learn the three moves that matter.
05
Everyday workflows
Email, documents, research, summarising, spreadsheets and images, rebuilt with AI in the loop.
06
Trust, safety and privacy
Hallucinations, data handling and the short list of things you never paste into a chat.
07
Your path from here
A capstone workflow plus a quick quiz that points you at the right next course.
CAPSTONE
Rebuild one real task from your week (an email, a report, a research question) as an AI workflow you run in minutes.
Before you ask
Questions, answered.
Seven modules: a working mental model of LLMs, Claude fundamentals (chats, Projects, Artifacts), Google AI fundamentals (Gemini, NotebookLM, AI Overviews), prompting that works, everyday workflows for email, documents, research and spreadsheets, trust and privacy, and a capstone where you rebuild one real weekly task as an AI workflow.
Free in full. Every lesson, quiz and the capstone, with no card and no time limit. It is our front door: if the teaching is good, some readers will buy a deeper course or hire us. That is the whole model.
It is written for exactly you. The first lesson builds the mental model from zero, and every exercise walks through the real tool step by step. If you can use email, you can do this course.
About three and a half hours of lessons, plus the exercises you do in the tools as you go. Most people spread it over a week of lunch breaks. It is self-paced, so nothing expires.
A free Claude account (claude.ai) and a Google account for Gemini and NotebookLM. Free tiers cover every exercise in the course.
The capstone quiz points you at the right next course for your role: Claude Cowork for knowledge work, Claude Code for building software, Managed Agents for API development, or the Google Cloud course for running agent teams. No pressure either way, the free course is complete on its own.