With the growing prevalence of AI, the need for K-12 AI education is becoming more crucial, which is prompting active research in developing engaging and age-appropriate AI learning activities. Efforts are underway, such as those by the AI4K12 initiative, to establish guidelines for organizing K- 12 AI education; however, effective instructional resources are needed by educators. In this paper, we describe our work to design, develop, and implement an unplugged activity centered on facial recognition technology for middle school students. Facial recognition is integrated into a wide range of applications throughout daily life, which makes it a familiar and engaging tool for students and an effective medium for conveying AI concepts. Our unplugged activity, “Guess Whose Face,” is designed as a board game that focuses on Representation and Reasoning from AI4K12’s 5 Big Ideas in AI. The game is crafted to enable students to develop AI competencies naturally through physical interaction. In the game, one student uses tracing paper to extract facial features from a familiar face shown on a card, such as a cartoon character or celebrity, and then other students try to guess the identity of the hidden face. We discuss details of the game, its iterative refinement, and initial findings from piloting the activity during a summer camp for rural middle school students.
Promoting AI Education for Rural Middle Grades Students with Digital Game Design
The demand is growing for a populace that is AI literate; such literacy centers on enabling individuals to evaluate, collaborate with, and effectively use AI. Because the middle school years are a critical time for developing youths’ perceptions and dispositions toward STEM, creating engaging AI learning experiences for middle grades students (ages 11 to 14) is paramount. The need for providing enhanced access to AI learning opportunities is especially pronounced in rural areas, which are typically underserved and underresourced. Inspired by prior research that game design holds significant potential for cultivating student interest and knowledge in computer science, we are designing, developing, and iteratively refining an AI-centered game development environment that infuses AI learning into game design activities. In this work, we review design principles for game design interventions focused on middle grades computer science education and explore how to introduce AI learning experiences into interactive game-design activities. We also discuss results from our initial co-design sessions with middle grades students and teachers in rural communities.
more »
« less
- Award ID(s):
- 2148680
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10403790
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 1388 to 1388
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
more » « less
-
Recent years have seen growing recognition of the importance of enabling K-12 students to learn computer science. Meanwhile, artificial intelligence, a field of computer science, has with the potential to profoundly reshape society. This has generated increasing demand for fostering an AI-literate populace. However, there is little work exploring how to introduce K-12 students to AI and how to support K-12 teachers in integrating AI into their classrooms. In this work, we explore how to introduce AI learning experiences into upper elementary classrooms (student ages 8 to 11). With a focus on integrating AI and life science, we present initial work on a collaborative game-based learning environment that features rich problem-based learning scenarios that enable students to gain experience with AI applied toward solving real-world life-science problems.more » « less
-
Young learners today are constantly influenced by AI recommendations, from media choices to social connections. The resulting "filter bubble" can limit their exposure to diverse perspectives, which is especially problematic when they are not aware this manipulation is happening or why. To address the need to support youth AI literacy, we developed "BeeTrap", a mobile Augmented Reality (AR) learning game designed to enlighten young learners about the mechanisms and the ethical issue of recommendation systems. Transformative Experience model was integrated into learning activities design, focusing on making AI concepts relevant to students’ daily experiences, facilitating a new understanding of their digital world, and modeling real-life applications. Our pilot study with middle schoolers in a community-based program primarily investigated how transformative structured AI learning activities affected students’ understanding of recommendation systems and their overall conceptual, emotional, and behavioral changes toward AI.more » « less
-
Key ideas: Computational thinking and computer science can be taught to students in primary grades using low tech tools. Teacher leaders from rural Appalachia conducted a professional development training that supported other educators in their community. Learning computational thinking and computer science in the primary grades is important for setting a foundation that can be built upon throughout middle and high school.more » « less
-
Collaborative, playful learning represents an important avenue to mastering a range of skills within computer science education. This research presents findings from interviews with 9 members of an online community that started out as a gaming league and transitioned into a game development team. Community members learned programming skills to contribute their ideas to the game and participate in activities based around game development. Drawing on these experiences, we identify key elements from informal learning that can improve computer science education: 1) playful projects can help learners overcome barriers to participating in computer science; 2) community closeness facilitates a collaborative learning environment to support developing expertise in specific computational skills. We consider these findings in the context of learning as an everyday social practice, and discuss means of developing playful learning communities in computer science classrooms.more » « less
- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
-
Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Paper:
- https://doi.org/10.1145/3545947.3576333
