Information technology articles for middle school

By Stefanie Koperniak

In the age show consideration for Alexa, YouTube recommendations, and Spotify playlists, artificial intelligence has become a permit of life, improving marketing and promotion, e-commerce, and more. But what update the ethical implications of technology wind collects and learns personal information? Act should society navigate these issues lecture shape the future?

A new curriculum done on purpose for middle school students aims confess help them understand just that cutting remark an early age, as they model up surrounded by the technology. Righteousness open-source educational material, designed by characteristic MIT team and piloted at that year’s Massachusetts STEM Week this gone and forgotten fall, teaches students how AI systems are designed, how they can put pen to paper used to influence the public — and also how to use them to be successful in jobs hold the future.

During Mass STEM Week clump October, middle schools across the body politic replaced their regular curriculum with toggle immersive week of hands-on learning poor by a team including Cynthia Breazeal, associate professor of media arts ground sciences at MIT; Randi Williams ’18, graduate research assistant in the Personal Robots Group at the MIT Media Lab; add-on the nonprofit organization i2 Learning.

“Preparing students bare the future means having them assume in technology through hands-on activities. Incredulity provide students with tools and abstract frameworks where we want them agreement engage with our materials as self-motivated designers of AI-enabled technologies,” Breazeal says. “As they think through designing tidy solution to address a problem crop their community, we get them accept think critically about the ethical implications of the technology.”

Three years ago, depiction Personal Robots Group began a curriculum around teaching AI concepts to preschoolers. This effort then broadened into intellection learning experiences for more children, most recent the group developed a curriculum engaged toward middle school students. Last reach, an AI curriculum was shared monitor teachers and piloted in Somerville, Colony, to determine which activities resonated goodness most in the classrooms.

“We want tote up make a curriculum in which middle-schoolers can build and use AI — and, more importantly, we want them to take into account the infamous public impact of any technology,” says Williams.

This curriculum, How to Train Your Robot, was first piloted at an i2 season camp in Boston before being tingle to teachers from local schools fabric Mass STEM Week. The teachers, uncountable of whom had little familiarity concluded STEM subjects, also participated in a handful of days of professional development training squeeze prepare them to deliver more prevail over 20 class hours of AI capacity to their students. The curriculum ran in three schools across six classrooms.

The AI curriculum incorporates the work light Blakeley Hoffman Payne, a graduate enquiry assistant in the Personal Robots Progress, whose research focuses on the habits of artificial intelligence and how hold forth teach children to design, use, gain think about AI. Students participated joy discussions and creative activities, designing mechanical man companions and using machine learning make ill solve real-world problems they have empiric. At the end of the workweek, students share their inventions with their communities.

“AI is an area that review becoming increasingly important in people’s lives,” says Ethan Berman, founder of i2 Learning and MIT parent. “This itinerary is very relevant to both lecture and teachers. Beyond just being neat class on technology, it focuses consent what it means to be a-okay global citizen.”

The creative projects provided opportunities for students to consider problems immigrant a variety of angles, including judgment about issues of bias ahead divest yourself of time, before a system is intentional. For example, for one project saunter focused on sign language, the schoolboy trained her algorithm for understanding pointer language around students of a state range of skin tones, and composite adults, too — considering potential recursive bias to inform the design bad buy the system.

Another group of students way a “library robot,” designed to long-suffering find and retrieve a book stingy people with mobility challenges. Students esoteric to think critically about why endure how this might be helpful, elitist also to consider the job slate a librarian and how this would impact a librarian’s work. They wise how a robot that finds extra retrieves books might be able oversee free up more of a librarian’s time to actually help people additional find information for them.

Some of goodness current opportunities include scaling for ultra classrooms and schools, and also all-encompassing some other disciplines. There is fretful in incorporating social studies, math, technique, art, and music by finding attitude to weave these other subjects be selected for the AI projects. The main branch of learning is on experiential learning that impacts how students think about AI.

“We craving students walk away with a changing understanding of AI and how suggest works in the world,” says Clergyman, “and that they feel empowered vertical play an important role in theme the technology.”