What makes Day of AI, MIT's AI learning platform, appealing to elementary and middle school students in more than 110 countries?

Each of these knowledge points has different content geared toward teachers and students.

In 2024, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) launched the Day of AI program, a free learning platform for K12 with AI lessons, tutorials, and activities to support domestic use.

Day of AI offers an AI literacy program for K12 students (Artificial Intelligence (AI) Literacy), provides teachers with AI curriculum tutorials, and works with schools to ensure student safety and equity by designing and implementing appropriate AI policies in schools.

Official information indicates thatDay of AI is currently running in schools in more than 110 countries, with 10,000 educators bringing its programs to schools and homes.

Day of AI has a variety of novel, low-threshold, high-impact short-term courses that are available upon registration (no password login required), and each course is approximately 30-60 minutes in length, targeting elementary through high school grades, with users able to select courses corresponding to their age group. And, teachers are provided with PPTs for the lessons.

Born at MIT in June 2021, Day of AI is led by a team of faculty and research scientists from MIT's RAISE (Artificial Intelligence for Responsible Social Empowerment and Education), and has also partnered with i2 Learning to provide a series of free, hands-on AI literacy courses and professional development for K12 teachers. Additionally, Day of AI hosts AI Day during the year, dedicating a full day to engaging, free and interactive learning for students. The program can be taught on any day of the year and students will participate in STEM and AI-focused activities.

In August 2024, Day of AI was spun off from MIT and established as an independent non-profit organization.

The Day of AI curriculum is very systematic, with AI Literacy Fundamentals, AI Applications and Beyond AI Literacy (AI Programming) covered, and is set up in an age-specific manner, with a low threshold (already programmed with a good curriculum framework), and a highly interactive curriculum (with pictures, text, videos, and related mini-games).

It is worth noting that Day of AI emphasizes AI ethics in addition to the popularization of AI technical knowledge.Each of its topics is followed by discussion questions that lead children to think about the ethical and social implications of AI. In addition, each point ends with a hands-on AI activity that encourages students to use what they've learned to write one of their own programs, or make a poster, etc.

Day of AI utilizes research-validated active learning pedagogy, an educational methodology that is highly valued at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and which is integrated into the institute's motto of "learning to use your brain as well as your hands" ("mens et manus "), the school's motto.The Day of AI program combines academic courses with hands-on projects to inspire students to become active, insightful and creative users and designers of artificial intelligence.

1. Curriculum by age group and theme

Day of AI is exploring free lessons, tutorials, and activities designed for students of all ages, abilities, and levels of technical experience.

Duochi experience found that the AI literacy foundation, for example, has a series of settings for the underlying knowledge of AI, each with different content for teachers and students, as well as videos, PPTs, and so on.

Original text in English, images automatically translated by Google Translate

Take "What is Artificial Intelligence" for example, it will be divided into three parts, namely Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and Algorithms, each of which will last 45 minutes.

Each section has different content for teachers and students, as well as PPTs and videos, which need to be downloaded and studied. Noteworthy.Educator guides and teacher slides are available for professionals with relevant qualifications to edit the learning materials.

Original text in English, images automatically translated by Google Translate

In all the learning materials, they are presented in contextualized life cases, illustrated and lively.

The student resources also include practice questions that students can print out and do on their own. Some of the student resources also have direct links to AI tools or games that allow students to visualize AI.

Exercise topic "Is it Artificial Intelligence?"

in AI applications that relate to real life, in the hope of furthering AI literacy.and allow them to further explore and question AI tools and ethical issues. 

For example, ChatGPT in schools leads children to explore whether ChatGPT can be used at school.

The "Beyond AI Literacy" section focuses on AI programming and aims to tap into knowledge beyond AI literacy, which may require a longer time commitment.Topics include data activism, exploring AI creativity, building chatbots, and AI programming with Blocks or Python. These topics also develop students' creative problem-solving skills in coding applications. Most of the content in this section is more appropriate for the older age groups.

As can be seen.Day of AI's program has a very clear age-graded design, for elementary school students, the curriculum is mostly basic concepts of AI, but also algorithms and predictions generated by examining datasets and how they can be used to generate algorithms and predictions; for middle school students it will be a bit more in-depth, building AI literacy skills through exposure to AI in stories, pictures, and music, and there will be coverage of how to write AI programs; and for high school students, it will be more challenging and will include ethical decision-making and AI's real-life Applications.

Notably, Day of AI has also joined forces with Google, which offers expertise in artificial intelligence.

It is known that after schools in more than 110 countries took Day of AI lessons, students deepened their understanding of AI, but also made them more optimistic and motivated about their ability to shape the future with AI. After teachers used it, they were more willing to teach their students about AI.

In addition to learning resources for schools, AI concepts, AI tools, and AI policies are explained and taught to families. This piece is currently being refined and more will be presented in 2025.

2. Strengthening AI education in primary and secondary schools is a general trend

Nowadays, AI education in primary and secondary schools is being strengthened globally, and special documents have been issued in China for the development of AI education in primary and secondary schools.2024 On November 28th, the General Office of the Ministry of Education released theNotice on Strengthening Artificial Intelligence Education in Primary and Secondary Schools", for the first time, the construction of a systematic curriculum system was proposed.

Requirements of the Circular on Strengthening Artificial Intelligence Education in Primary and Secondary Schools:

"The lower elementary grades focus on perceiving and experiencing AI technology, the upper elementary grades and middle school level focus on understanding and applying AI technology, and the high school level focuses on project creation and cutting-edge applications."

This gives ideas and references for AI product settings, cascading from elementary to high school.

In fact, there are also products similar to Day of AI in China, such as Puyu Platform (English name "OpenInnoLab") under the Intelligent Education Center of Shanghai Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, which is a free AI learning service platform for teenagers and is used by more than 200,000 students and teachers. However, at the beginning of November 2024, the platform's team was in turmoil, which does not affect its use at present.

With the further popularization of AI, it is foreseeable that in the future, there will be more similar AI education platforms. For how to guarantee systematic curriculum design and the professionalism and accuracy of the content, it is necessary for the whole society to work together, and it is even more necessary for AI-related experts and scholars to join in.

Day of AI Experience Link: https://dayofai.org/