How Does This Work?

Pallas units are first AI-generated, and then human edited. Here is how the process works:

Four-step process: a sealed state standards document goes to Pallas AI, which drafts the curriculum; a human editor reviews and marks up the draft; the finished unit reaches happy students, ready to teach.
  1. Pallas AI is limited to a certain fact set to avoid AI hallucinationand ensure what is reported comes from trusted historians and journalists.
  2. The curriculum Pallas AI generates follows the Four Question Method (4QM), created by Gary Shiffman and Jon Bassett. 4QM grounds each historical unit on four questions:
    1. What happened? This is the compelling story that tells the facts.
    2. What were they (the main characters of the historical narrative) thinking?
    3. What conditions allowed for it to happen? This is a bit advanced as it is essentially social sciences, and thus only for middle school and beyond.
    4. What do we think of this? This is where students articulate their principles and values to express how they feel about what has occurred.
  3. After Pallas AI generates the unit, a human editor needs to review and finalize the material before it can be published. To ensure quality, all editors must be trained in the Four Question Method. This means getting professional development from its creators via 4qmteaching.net. Editors are then granted access to edit raw Pallas AI output and publish them as polished units.

Note: The creators of 4QM were kind enough to guide us in the design of Pallas AI. However, they have not been consulted with its output, and do not bear any responsibility for it. Give them credit if you value it, but you can attribute any criticism or blame solely to Pallas.

Free for everyone

Every file is free with a school email — the student handouts and the teacher edition (slide decks, lesson plans, worked exemplars) alike.

Ready to get started? Find the unit that's right for you