# LLMs Unplugged

Every page below is also served as markdown at its HTML path plus `.md` (`https://www.llmsunplugged.org/a/` → `https://www.llmsunplugged.org/a/index.html.md`), linked from its head. [llms-full.txt](https://www.llmsunplugged.org/llms-full.txt) has every page's text in one file (about 63k tokens; slide decks are left out).

## Pages

- [About](https://www.llmsunplugged.org/about/): The history and foundations of LLMs Unplugged, from CS Unplugged to Shannon's information theory.
- [Workshop blurbs](https://www.llmsunplugged.org/blurbs/): Standard descriptions of the LLMs Unplugged workshop at various lengths, for hosts, event organisers, and conference programs.
- [FAQ](https://www.llmsunplugged.org/faq/): Frequently asked questions about using LLMs Unplugged resources, materials needed, and how the activities relate to modern AI.
- [Try it yourself](https://www.llmsunplugged.org/try-it/): Build a language model at the kitchen table in twenty minutes, with a pen, some paper and something random, and use it to write a sentence nobody has written before.

## Decks

- [LLMs Unplugged — How AI writes stories (ledger, 45 min)](https://www.llmsunplugged.org/decks/how-ai-writes-stories-ledger-45min/): A 45-minute school workshop (ages 10-16) using paper ledger sheets and a cup of coloured counters to discover how AI writes stories
- [LLMs Unplugged — How AI writes stories (ledger)](https://www.llmsunplugged.org/decks/how-ai-writes-stories-ledger/): A 90-minute school workshop (ages 10-16) using paper ledger sheets and a cup of coloured counters to discover how AI writes stories
- [LLMs Unplugged — How AI writes stories](https://www.llmsunplugged.org/decks/how-ai-writes-stories/): A 90-minute primary-school workshop (years 5-6) using paper cutout language models to discover how AI writes stories
- [LLMs Unplugged — My First Language Model (2 hours)](https://www.llmsunplugged.org/decks/my-first-language-model-2h/): A 2-hour grid-flavour workshop for high schoolers to adults --- train a language model on paper, generate text with dice, scale up with pre-trained booklets, then extend the model with tools (agentic AI)
- [LLMs Unplugged — My First Language Model (60 min)](https://www.llmsunplugged.org/decks/my-first-language-model-60min/): A 60-minute grid-flavour workshop for high schoolers to adults --- train a language model on paper, then generate text with dice
- [LLMs Unplugged — My First Language Model (90 min)](https://www.llmsunplugged.org/decks/my-first-language-model-90min/): A 90-minute grid-flavour workshop for high schoolers to adults --- train a language model on paper, generate text with dice, then scale up with pre-trained model booklets

## Lessons

- [Build, break, extend](https://www.llmsunplugged.org/lessons/build-break-extend/): An extended cutouts workshop. Build paper language models from scratch, combine them, break them (sycophancy), extend them with tools, and finish with a poetry slam.
- [How AI writes stories with a cup of counters](https://www.llmsunplugged.org/lessons/how-ai-writes-stories-ledger/): A 45- or 90-minute school lesson (ages 10-16) where students generate stories from a finished paper language model, then train their own from a new text and pool the class's models into one story.
- [How AI writes stories](https://www.llmsunplugged.org/lessons/how-ai-writes-stories/): A 90-minute primary-school lesson where students discover what AI is, then build their own paper language models and use them to generate stories.
- [My First Language Model](https://www.llmsunplugged.org/lessons/my-first-language-model/): The classic LLMs Unplugged workshop. Train a language model on grid paper, then roll dice to generate new text---and see why ChatGPT works the same way. Comes in lengths from 60 minutes to two hours.
- [Shaping a model](https://www.llmsunplugged.org/lessons/shaping-a-model/): A discussion-heavy follow-on. Change a model's training data, change what it gets rewarded for, and feed it its own output---three ways to give a model a personality, all run by hand.
- [Under the hood](https://www.llmsunplugged.org/lessons/under-the-hood/): A follow-on for groups who've built the paper model and want to know what a real one does differently. Complete a pattern the model never trained on, and measure how close two words are---all by hand.

## Modules

- [Agentic AI](https://www.llmsunplugged.org/modules/agentic-ai/): Turn your model into an agent. Every punctuation token becomes a tool call, a real text message to a real person, and generation picks up again once the reply is back.
- [Generation](https://www.llmsunplugged.org/modules/generation/): Use your hand-built bigram model to generate new text through weighted random sampling.
- [In-context Learning](https://www.llmsunplugged.org/modules/in-context-learning/): Make your model finish a pattern it never trained on, purely from what's already on the page---then give it a short-term memory that keeps the text on topic. The tricks behind few-shot prompting and attention.
- [More Context](https://www.llmsunplugged.org/modules/more-context/): Generate from a bigram booklet and a trigram booklet of the same book and compare---two words of context makes the text far more coherent and the booklet far thicker. Then build a trigram by hand, and add cheap extra context with a skip grid.
- [Pre-trained Model Generation](https://www.llmsunplugged.org/modules/pretrained-generation/): Use a provided pre-trained booklet to generate text without training your own model.
- [RLHF](https://www.llmsunplugged.org/modules/rlhf/): Run it as a game show. Two judging teams with different tastes rank the same model's output for three rounds, and one base model comes out as two, shaped by whoever was holding the scorecard.
- [Sampling](https://www.llmsunplugged.org/modules/sampling/): Same model, different output---experiment with temperature, truncation strategies, and your own house rules, then put it all together in a poetry slam.
- [Search Sheets](https://www.llmsunplugged.org/modules/search-sheets/): Deal a whole text's token pairs across the room, one sheet each, and generate as a crowd---call a word, hands go up, pick one at random. The generation activity for a hall, a lecture, or a big class with thirty minutes.
- [Sycophancy](https://www.llmsunplugged.org/modules/sycophancy/): Skew your model toward over-agreeable, flattering responses by piling in sycophantic training data.
- [Synthetic Data](https://www.llmsunplugged.org/modules/synthetic-data/): Run a relay around the room. Each group trains only on the text the group before it generated, and nobody after the first ever sees the original. Watch the vocabulary shrink at every link in the chain.
- [Training](https://www.llmsunplugged.org/modules/training/): Build a bigram language model that tracks which words follow which other words in text.
- [Weighted Randomness](https://www.llmsunplugged.org/modules/weighted-randomness/): Learn how to make random choices where some options are more likely than others---a core generative AI operation.
- [Word Embeddings](https://www.llmsunplugged.org/modules/word-embeddings/): Guess which two words in your grid behave alike, prove it by swapping them in your text, and check one distance by hand, then let the widget do all the pairs at once.

## News

- [Website launch](https://www.llmsunplugged.org/news/2025-11-20-website-launch/): The LLMs Unplugged website is now live.
- [ACT Academy of Future Skills workshop](https://www.llmsunplugged.org/news/2025-12-10-act-aofs-workshop/): Working through LLMs Unplugged with ACT specialty STEM teachers
- [LLMs Unplugged: the pitch to teachers](https://www.llmsunplugged.org/news/2025-12-12-why-use-an-unplugged-approach-in-your-classroom/): How do we build the confidence to have discussions about LLMs and AI in our classrooms?
- [LLMs Unplugged at Brimbank Tech School](https://www.llmsunplugged.org/news/2026-02-13-brimbank-tech-school-workshop/): A hands-on AI workshop for educators at VU Sunshine Campus with Brimbank Tech School
- [Designing the LLMs Unplugged brand mark](https://www.llmsunplugged.org/news/2026-03-13-designing-the-brand-mark/): The new brand mark encodes GPT-3 token IDs into visual dot patterns --- here's how it works.
- [LLMs Unplugged at ICTENSW DigiTLL](https://www.llmsunplugged.org/news/2026-03-15-ictensw-digitll-conference/): Presenting "LLMs Unplugged" at the ICTENSW DigiTLL Conference in North Sydney on 15 March
- [Mapping LLMs Unplugged to the Australian Curriculum](https://www.llmsunplugged.org/news/2026-03-18-curriculum-mapping-example/): An example of how LLMs Unplugged activities align with the Australian Curriculum for Year 5/6.
- [LLMs Unplugged for ACT teachers](https://www.llmsunplugged.org/news/2026-03-18-llms-unplugged-for-teachers/): A hands-on workshop for ACT educators at the Hedley Beare Centre on 18 March
- [Teaching AI literacy with paper and dice](https://www.llmsunplugged.org/news/2026-03-20-ai-framework-without-the-burden/): How teachers can use LLMs Unplugged to teach probabilistic text generation without needing students to use an online AI service.
- [Open-enrolment workshops in May and June](https://www.llmsunplugged.org/news/2026-03-24-open-enrolment-workshops/): Two upcoming hands-on LLMs Unplugged workshops at ANU, open to everyone
- [Luritja resampled](https://www.llmsunplugged.org/news/2026-04-07-tjabal-centre-autumn-school/): Running LLMs Unplugged at the Tjabal Centre Autumn School with Luritja poet Matt Heffernan, using his poem Ngurrparringu as the training text
- [LLMs Unplugged is TQI-accredited](https://www.llmsunplugged.org/news/2026-04-24-tqi-accreditation/): The ACT Teacher Quality Institute has accredited LLMs Unplugged as a two-hour professional learning program
- [Cutouts get a glow-up](https://www.llmsunplugged.org/news/2026-05-07-cutouts-glow-up/): A revamped cutouts variant of the Training and Generation lessons, with crisper print materials and a generation mechanic that does weighted sampling for free.
- [Generating the cutout palette](https://www.llmsunplugged.org/news/2026-05-24-generating-the-cutout-palette/): The cutout palette is now algorithmically generated, with 30 perceptually distinct colours instead of 14 hand-picked ones.
- [How AI writes stories at Duffy Primary](https://www.llmsunplugged.org/news/2026-06-02-how-ai-writes-stories-at-duffy/): Taking LLMs Unplugged into a Year 5 classroom at Duffy Primary School, with the ACT Academy of Future Skills
- [LLMs Unplugged for political scientists](https://www.llmsunplugged.org/news/2026-06-16-apsa-quantitative-methods-workshop/): Running the opening session at the 3rd APSA Workshop on Quantitative Methods at ANU, for a room of political and social science researchers
- [Yoda, ELIZA, and a Year 7 bigram model](https://www.llmsunplugged.org/news/2026-06-23-yoda-and-eliza-in-the-classroom/): A pre-service teacher took LLMs Unplugged into a lower-SES Year 7/8 classroom, swapped the children's book for a Yoda monologue, and added a 1966 chatbot for contrast
- [LLMs Unplugged at the ACDICT L&T Forum](https://www.llmsunplugged.org/news/2026-07-02-acdict-lt-forum/): Slides and worksheets for my ACDICT Learning & Teaching Forum session, plus a self-guided path for anyone joining online.
- [Mandarin Chinese support for widgets and booklets](https://www.llmsunplugged.org/news/2026-07-03-chinese-language-support/): The interactive widgets and the booklet generator now segment Mandarin Chinese into words, not just characters. Thanks to Zhang Xilian for the nudge.
- [Search sheets for group text generation](https://www.llmsunplugged.org/news/2026-08-06-search-sheets/): Search sheets let a group generate text together, using one printed page per participant. Four ready-to-print sets are on the tools page.
- [The classroom request behind search sheets](https://www.llmsunplugged.org/news/2026-09-17-classroom-request-behind-search-sheets/): Queensland teacher Samantha Ephraims ran LLMs Unplugged with primary students and 40 teachers, and the space problem she hit became search sheets.
- [Watch the Visionaries Among Us talk](https://www.llmsunplugged.org/news/2026-10-06-visionaries-showcase-talk-video/): ANU TV has published the video of my Visionaries Among Us Showcase talk, in which a hall of about 360 people runs a language model by show of hands.

## Talks

- [Demystifying large language models](https://www.llmsunplugged.org/talks/demystifying-large-language-models/): A fifteen-minute talk in which the whole audience becomes a bigram language model built from three unnamed books, generates a sentence nobody wrote, then finds out which books the words came from.
- [Unplugged in the age of AI](https://www.llmsunplugged.org/talks/unplugged-in-the-age-of-ai/): A twenty-minute talk that runs the room as a bigram model of The Cat in the Hat, then puts the paper model's three scales beside a frontier LLM's and asks whether unplugged still matters.