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.
Qupcakery: A Puzzle Game that Introduces Quantum Gates to Young Learners
Quantum computing (QC) is an emerging field at the intersection of computer science and physics. Harnessing the power of quantum mechanics, QC is expected to solve otherwise intractable problems significantly faster, including in encryption, drug development, and optimization. High-quality and accessible QC resources are needed to help students develop the critical skills and confidence to contribute to the field. However, existing programs are often aimed at college students with an advanced mathematics or physics background, shutting out potential innovators.
To make quantum learning resources for a broad, young audience, we designed Qupcakery, a puzzle game that introduces players to several core QC concepts: quantum gates, superposition, and measurement. We present preliminary testing results with both middle school and high school students. Using in-game data, observation notes, and focus group interviews, we identify student challenges and report student feedback. Overall, the game is at an appropriate level for high school students but middle school students need more levels to practice when new concepts are introduced.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2115780
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10432370
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Proceedings of the 54th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 1 (SIGCSE 2023)
- Volume:
- 1
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 1143 to 1149
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Paper:
- https://doi.org/10.1145/3545945.3569837
