Everyday AI Make-a-thon: Co-designing with Teachers to Advance AI Education
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is changing the landscape of the future. At the Everyday AI Make-a-thon – a weekend hybrid hack-a-thon hosted by the MIT STEP Lab in partnership with the MIT Media Lab – we invited public school teachers from across the country, of diverse backgrounds, and representing content areas, to collaboratively address the question: “How do we equitably prepare our students to engage, innovate and lead in AI informed industries… particularly, when the school day is already jam-packed with mandated content?” Together with AI-experts, community organizers, and MIT researchers these teachers co-designed five approaches for advancing AI literacy in public schools.
We were surprised and inspired by their design solutions. What they designed speaks to the complexity of the work and acknowledges that AI literacy involves social and ethical knowledge as well as technical skills. Over the next few months, we will be showcasing their work here in the STEP Lab’s blog to share the variety of approaches these teachers took to prototype strategies for bringing AI education into public school classrooms. We hope these posts will remind curriculum designers, researchers, school administrators, and funders alike of the coordinated effort needed to promote AI education, and the rich funds of knowledge that our teachers bring to the work.
