Children and young people today are constantly using artificial intelligence (AI) in their everyday lives, often without consciously realizing it. They unlock their smartphone with their fingerprint, have it calculate the shortest route to their destination, or put a filter over their photos. In the same way, they use AI when they compete against the computer in a video game in the afternoon. In many cases, artificial intelligence is clearly recognizable or even explicitly named, but it usually operates rather invisibly in the background. Users often use the technology without thinking about how it actually works. This can make it easy to misunderstand or overestimate. In sixth grade, students have not yet internalized these misconceptions, which makes it an ideal time to build a deeper understanding of the technology.
In North Rhine-Westphalia, the core curriculum for computer science includes picking up the topic of AI and neural networks in grades 5 or 6, and further exploring these topics in the higher grades. As teachers at a high school in NRW, we were initially skeptical about whether it would be possible to successfully teach these complex topics at such an early stage. But in the course of a model test on this series of lessons, we found that our reservations were gradually reduced.
It quickly became clear to us that it was necessary to reduce the thematic complexity to make it more understandable and accessible to children. Therefore, we focused on simple feedforward networks that cannot be learned independently. Later in the series of lessons, we give a small preview of the fact that there are more powerful neural networks that can learn and how this learning process takes place.
Through this approach, we hope to give students a solid insight while providing them with the necessary understanding to prepare them for future challenges related to AI and neural networks. This will give them the opportunity to further develop their digital skills and better understand the technical applications of their everyday devices. This results in opportunities to use technology responsibly and in an informed manner and to recognize its benefits without falling into the trap of misunderstandings or overestimation.
