Call the game.
Notebooks, Skills and AI, explained as a basketball team. You’re still the head coach, and the new plays come from you.
Four roles, one team.
Meet the bench.
Not everyone plays at once.
Skills wait on the bench instead of crowding every conversation.
- 1. Not everyone plays at once. Skills wait on the bench instead of crowding every conversation.
- 2. Every player has a role card. A short name and description tell the AI who’s available.
- 3. They check in when it counts. The AI makes the sub, or you call the Skill by name.
- 4. Specialists bring their own gear. Templates, examples and files travel with the Skill.
- 5. Sometimes you need a lineup. One task can use several Skills at once.
- 6. Develop your own players. Write a Skill for the way you work. Homegrown players know your system.
Six frames. Six coaching calls.
From the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy (opens in new tab), revised 2026. Start anywhere.
The assistant isn’t the referee.
With AI: confident isn’t the same as correct.
- AI isn’t authoritative by default.
- It can look neutral and still carry bias.
- Lived experience counts as authority.
Know how the tape was made.
With AI: the output is a remix of human-made tape.
- Polish can hide a weak process.
- Spot what AI made, and what it drew on.
- Count AI’s environmental and social cost.
Film costs something.
With AI: every prompt and upload has value too.
- Credit sources, and disclose AI use.
- Notice your own information privilege.
- Making meaning is human work.
Watch film with a question.
With AI: it can help you refine. The asking is yours.
- AI output is derivative.
- Don’t bend evidence to fit your plan.
- Stay with hard questions.
The game has a history.
With AI: a tidy summary can make a live debate look settled.
- Scholars and synthesis tools need different scrutiny.
- Seek the counternarrative.
- Name the AI tools you used.
Scout before the assistant draws the play.
With AI: you get an answer instead of results to sift.
- It tends to agree with your framing.
- Its answers trend toward the same play.
- Ask too early and it steers the research.
The AI runs plays. You draw new ones.
Every AI answer is built from tape that already exists. A play nobody has run yet has to come from a human.
- Original ideasThe Framework names original thought as human work.
- Your playersYou know this room, these kids, this moment.
- Breaking the patternAI answers drift toward the same play. You can go somewhere new.
- Making meaningTurning information into meaning is still human work.
Ask the AI for ten ideas. Then make the eleventh it didn’t list.
Before you trust the play.
Four team drills.
Film session
Groups take two frames each and question the same AI answer.
Draft your bench
List weekly routines. Write a one-line role card for each Skill.
Call timeout
Agree on a signal anyone can use to ask “Who says?”
Whiteboard first
Everyone sketches an idea before anyone opens AI. Then compare.
The Notebook is the film room. Skills are the bench. The AI is the assistant coach. You’re the head coach who draws the new plays.
The full paragraph
Working with AI is like coaching basketball. The Notebook is the film room, Skills are the bench, and the AI is the assistant coach. You’re the head coach, and information literacy is how you coach. You check who’s really an authority, how the tape was made, who paid for it, what question you’re actually asking, what conversation you’re joining, and whether you explored before letting the assistant agree with you. The AI can run the plays it has seen. Only you can draw up a new one.
Courtside handout
Lineup, six frames, sideline card and the coach’s challenges.
Source: Association of College & Research Libraries, Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education, revisions approved September 2, 2026 (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0), paraphrased. Written for higher ed; in K–12, use it as a lens for what’s next. Basketball analogy, questions and drills by Tricia Friedman.