Online curricula helps teachers tackle AI in the classroom — from educationdive.com by Lauren Barack

Dive Brief:

  • Schools may already use some form of artificial intelligence (AI), but hardly any have curricula designed to teach K-12 students how it works and how to use it, wrote EdSurge. However, organizations such as the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) are developing their own sets of lessons that teachers can take to their classrooms.
  • Members of “AI for K-12” — an initiative co-sponsored by the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence and the Computer Science Teachers Association — wrote in a paper that an AI curriculum should address five basic ideas:
    • Computers use sensors to understand what goes on around them.
    • Computers can learn from data.
    • With this data, computers can create models for reasoning.
    • While computers are smart, it’s hard for them to understand people’s emotions, intentions and natural languages, making interactions less comfortable.
    • AI can be a beneficial tool, but it can also harm society.
  • These kinds of lessons are already at play among groups including the Boys and Girls Club of Western Pennsylvania, which has been using a program from online AI curriculum site ReadyAI. The education company lent its AI-in-a-Box kit, which normally sells for $3,000, to the group so it could teach these concepts.

 

AI curriculum is coming for K-12 at last. What will it include? — from edsurge.com by Danielle Dreilinger

Excerpt:

Artificial intelligence powers Amazon’s recommendations engine, Google Translate and Siri, for example. But few U.S. elementary and secondary schools teach the subject, maybe because there are so few curricula available for students. Members of the “AI for K-12” work group wrote in a recent Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence white paper that “unlike the general subject of computing, when it comes to AI, there is little guidance for teaching at the K-12 level.”

But that’s starting to change. Among other advances, ISTE and AI4All are developing separate curricula with support from General Motors and Google, respectively, according to the white paper. Lead author Dave Touretzky of Carnegie Mellon has developed his own curriculum, Calypso. It’s part of the “AI-in-a-Box” kit, which is being used by more than a dozen community groups and school systems, including Carter’s class.