Exciting news – Experience AI is a new national program developed by the Raspberry Pi Foundation and delivered by Adelaide University’s Computer Science Education Research Group (CSER)
If you’ve been wondering how to help your students build confidence in using AI responsibly, you’ll want to head along to an Experience AI workshop. The workshops are online and in person, so you can join from wherever you are in Australia!
Experience AI has been co-developed by the global education charity Raspberry Pi Foundation and Google DeepMind, and funded by Google.org in Australia. The programme supports teachers in the fast-moving area of AI while helping students become passionate about it.
In the workshop, you’ll unpack how AI technology works and the essential knowledge and skills students need to develop in this area.
“Teachers will engage in hands-on learning experiences, explore practical lesson ideas, and discover student-friendly AI tools that can be used in the classroom,” explains Dr Rebecca Vivian, Senior Research Fellow and Project Lead, CSER Group at Adelaide University.
“Our team have localised the Experience AI materials to align to the Australian curriculum, including real-world contexts to support the concepts being taught and which are relatable to young Australians.”
The benefits of attending an Experience AI workshop
Teachers receive:
- Six hours of free professional learning
- A certificate of completion aligned to the Australian Curriculum and AITSL Standards
- Classroom-ready resources to use with students
“They will exit with free resources and everything they need to confidently deliver AI in the classroom,” says Rebecca. “They’ll be able to build their confidence in the content and gain hands-on experience with the AI tools before they use it in the classroom.”
This approach ultimately benefits students, giving them access to cutting-edge AI education tools and classroom activities that demystify how AI systems function.
Free resources? Tell me more
Teachers gain access to free Experience AI resources, including:
- Lesson plans
- Slide decks
- Worksheets
- Videos
“All of the resources were developed using a research-informed approach and have been designed around core pedagogical principles,” says Rebecca. “The student activities help teachers introduce students to AI and hands-on activities that help them understand how AI works, how AI can be used and the limitations and biases in AI systems. The student resources are for Years 5-10, but this training is relevant to teachers of all year levels who would like to upskill in AI.”
An educator’s perspective
Karen Butler, an educator, curriculum leader and President of EdTechSA, believes it’s important for teachers to skill up in AI.
“Many students below the age of thirteen are engaged with Gen AI chatbots, and while they may be banned from using them at school, they are definitely using them at home,” says Karen. “Teachers require support to sort through all the noise and engage with useful information that allows them to create safe and informed spaces for students to understand what generative AI is, how it works and how to think critically about its prominence in their lives.”
Karen recommends the Experience AI workshop because it goes beyond teaching educators how to prompt – it also looks carefully at how generative AI is constructed through human training and data inputs.
“It looks under the hood and shows us this is how it works, this is how it uses your data and why we need to be critical of its outputs,” Karen explains. “By using a computer science lens, the course invites teachers to engage their students in understanding that generative AI is not magic, it’s constructed by humans and we can be active participants in its use, creation and regulation.”
Karen also says the Experience AI resources are practical, classroom-ready and relevant across all eight learning areas.
“Particularly through data literacy in Mathematics, media literacy in English and the Arts, Technologies through a computer science lens and Engineering through a robotics element.”
Head along to a workshop
Worried you don’t have the tech know-how to attend? You don’t need it. The training and resources have been designed so that teachers in a wide range of subject areas with different levels of experience can use them. No prior knowledge of AI is necessary.
Rebecca encourages all teachers to come along. “AI is rapidly changing the way people live, work and study, and this is a timely opportunity to prepare both teachers and students to understand AI deeply,” she says. “Students need to know more than how to use AI tools – they need the knowledge, skills, and confidence to understand how AI works and the capability to create their own AI solutions, as well as to critically evaluate AI technology and its impact.”
Need to talk about your requirements? Email [email protected]
This article was brought to you in partnership with Adelaide University’s CSER Group
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