Enthusing and inspiring with reusable kinaesthetic activities

We describe the experiences of three University projects that use a style of physical, non-computer based activity to enthuse and teach school students computer science concepts. We show that this kind of activity is effective as an outreach and teaching resource even when reused across different age/ability ranges, in lecture and workshop formats and for delivery by different people. We introduce the concept of a Reusable Outreach Object (ROO) that extends Reusable Learning Objects. and argue for a community effort in developing a repository of such objects

Fostering Awareness and Personalization of Learning Artificial Intelligence

This paper illustrates the activities of the projects SMAILE and AILEAP, which are devoted to foster the growth of awareness and readyness to learn artificial intelligence in the general population. The first project was mainly oriented to children and young adults, while the second is more oriented to the personalization of the learning experience also in professionals

AI Audit: A Card Game to Reflect on Everyday AI Systems

An essential element of K-12 AI literacy is educating learners about the ethical and societal implications of AI systems. Previous work in AI ethics literacy have developed curriculum and classroom activities that engage learners in reflecting on the ethical implications of AI systems and developing responsible AI. There is little work in using game-based learning methods in AI literacy. Games are known to be compelling media to teach children about complex STEM concepts. In this work, we developed a competitive card game for middle and high school students called "AI Audit" where they play as AI start-up founders building novel AI-powered technology. Players can challenge other players with potential harms of their technology or defend their own businesses by features that mitigate these harms. The game mechanics reward systems that are ethically developed or that take steps to mitigate potential harms. In this paper, we present the game design, teacher resources for classroom deployment and early playtesting results. We discuss our reflections about using games as teaching tools for AI literacy in K-12 classrooms

The Problem of Evil in Virtual Worlds

In its original form, Nozick’s experience machine serves as a potent counterexample to a simplistic form of hedonism. The pleasurable life offered by the experience machine, its seems safe to say, lacks the requisite depth that many of us find necessary to lead a genuinely worthwhile life. Among other things, the experience machine offers no opportunities to establish meaningful relationships, or to engage in long-term artistic, intellectual, or political projects that survive one’s death. This intuitive objection finds some support in recent research regarding the psychological effects of phenomena such as video games or social media use. After a brief discussion of these problems, I will consider a variation of the experience machine in which many of these deficits are remedied. In particular, I’ll explore the consequences of a creating a virtual world populated with strongly intelligent AIs with whom users could interact, and that could be engineered to survive the user’s death. The presence of these agents would allow for the cultivation of morally significant relationships, and the world’s long-term persistence would help ground possibilities for a meaningful, purposeful life in a way that Nozick’s original experience machine could not. While the creation of such a world is obviously beyond the scope of current technology, it represents a natural extension of the existing virtual worlds provided by current video games, and it provides a plausible “ideal case” toward which future virtual worlds will move. While this improved experience machine would seem to represent progress over Nozick’s original, I will argue that it raises a number of new problems stemming from the fact that that the world was created to provide a maximally satisfying and meaningful life for the intended user. This, in turn, raises problems analogous in some ways to the problem(s) of evil faced by theists. In particular, I will suggest that it is precisely those features that would make a world most attractive to potential users—the fact that the AIs are genuinely moral agents whose well-being the user can significantly impact—that render its creation morally problematic, since they require that the AIs inhabiting the world be subject to unnecessary suffering. I will survey the main lines of response to the traditional problem of evil, and will argue that they are irrelevant to this modified case. I will close by considering by consider what constraints on the future creation of virtual worlds, if any, might serve to allay the concerns identified in the previous discussion. I will argue that, insofar as the creation of such worlds would allow us to meet morally valuable purposes that could not be easily met otherwise, we would be unwise to prohibit it altogether. However, if our processes of creation are to be justified, they must take account of the interests of the moral agents that would come to exist as the result of our world creation

Proceedings of the ANR ​#CreaMaker​ workshop: co-creativity, robotics and maker education.

International audienc

Data Science and Big Data in Upper Secondary Schools: What Should Be Discussed From a Perspective of Computer Science Education?

The domain of data science is a large field, combining statistics, computer science and sociocultural issues. It is an open question which topics and which contents can and should be implemented in school, e.g. from the perspective of computer science education. Within the frame of a design-based research project a pilot course is designed by computer science and statistics educators at the Paderborn University, addressing upper secondary students. In this paper, we concentrate on the second of four modules, in which machine learning and neural networks are adressed. Some individual phases of the module are presented, followed by a metaperspective of the curriculum development that contributes to our project, and further research questions

ANR #CreaMaker workshop : Co-creativity, robotics and maker educationProceedings

International audienceWe’re living exciting but also challenging times at the worldwide level. From one side, there are environmental challenges that can compromise our future as humanity and the socio economic tensions generated in a context of mass consumption within a model of fossil and nuclear energy which endangers a sustainable development. From the other side, we have a growing number of citizen-based initiatives aiming to improve the society and the technological infrastructures making possible to cooperate at large scale and not only at a small-group level. Younger becomes empowered for their future. In their initiatives such #FridaysForFuture they are no longer (interactive) media consumers but move forward as creative activists to make older generations change the system in order to save the planet. At the same time, we have observed in the last years the emergence of a wide diversity of third places (makerspace, fablab, living lab…) aiming to empower communities to design and develop their own creative solutions. In this context, maker-based projects have the potential to integrate tinkering, programming and educational robotics to engage the learner in the development of creativity both in individual and collaborative contexts (Kamga, Romero, Komis, & Mirsili, 2016). In this context, the ANR #CreaMaker project aims to analyse the development of creativity in the context of team-based maker activities combining tinkering and digital fabrication (Barma, Romero, & Deslandes, 2017; Fleming, 2015). This first workshop of the ANR #CreaMaker project aims to raise the question on the concept, activities and assessment of creativity in the context of maker education and its different approaches : computational thinking (Class’Code, AIDE), collective innovation (Invent@UCA), game design (Creative Cultures), problem solving (CreaCube), child-robot interactions and sustainable development activities. Researchers from Canada, Brazil, Mexico, Germany, Italy and Spain will reunite with LINE researchers and the MSc SmartEdTech students in order to advance in how we can design, orchestrate and evaluate co-creativity in technology enhanced learning (TEL) contexts, and more specifically, in maker based education