This lesson is part of the curricular unit “Exploring AI in Primary School”, which consists of 7 moments: Moment 1, Moment 2, Moment 3, Moment 4, Moment 5, Moment 6, and Moment 7.
Overview of the curricular unit
Moment 1: Lessons 1 to 3
Teacher Cláudia Meirinhos begins to explore the students’ preconceptions about Artificial Intelligence. Over three lessons, she creates moments where students talk about what they think of AI, express their ideas by making a drawing, and play a game while discussing how the game works.
In this lesson, students will have the opportunity to share their thoughts on what AI is and how it is used. This is the first step in exploring the topic of AI with the class. The group discussion will provide the teacher with valuable information for the following lessons.
Some questions for discussion:
- What is the first thing you think of when you hear Artificial Intelligence?
- What does Artificial Intelligence mean to you?
- What do you know about Artificial Intelligence?
- Where is Artificial Intelligence applied in our lives?
- Have you ever talked to a Google Assistant, like Alexa or Siri?
- Did you know there are autonomous cars? Would you ride in one?
- Do you think robots think like humans?
- Do you think robots have feelings? Or emotions?
- What jobs could robots do?
- Will robots replace some professions?
- Will everyone need to know how to work with Artificial Intelligence or have knowledge about it in the future?
- How do you think Artificial Intelligence will be used in the future?
Teacher Cláudia challenges students to draw what AI means to them. This same challenge will be repeated at the end of the 12 lessons, after all the learning, and the drawings will be compared to understand the developed knowledge.
Play a game
In this lesson, all students play the Akinator, game, a genie that “magically” tries to guess which character the students are thinking of. Following a set of clues through questions and answers, the Akinator genie appears to perform magic.
Group Discussion
After playing the game, the teacher facilitates a conversation where students try to uncover how the genie can guess correctly.
The key question is: how does the game work?
These conversations help to understand that AI involves programming and making decisions about functionalities. The goal is for the students to become experts, one conversation at a time. (The teacher had access to the game’s functioning details in the FAQ section of the website).
