Creative lessons in artificial intelligence, data and democracy

When Jeroen Storm's son was in year 4 at primary school, the boy was making light work of the material he was offered. With the school's backing, Storm and his wife therefore looked around for extra material that would provide more of a challenge. They particularly wanted to find digital skills programmes. "We were motivated by the fact that, although technology has enormous impact on society and on our daily lives, it doesn't get much attention at school," Storm explains.

Storm and his wife both work in online education: he's a technician and she's a psychology lecturer at the Open University. Unable to find any suitable teaching material for their son, they decided to develop their own. They made a series of videos accompanied by printable assignments, which their son could tackle independently. Soon, other parents and teachers started expressing an interest, so the Storms made the material freely available. And, with support from SIDN Fund, the initiative has since developed into the SkillsDojo: a public platform offering video-based practical technology lessons for children aged ten to fourteen.

Children encouraged to have a go

In the lesson series devoted to artificial intelligence, data and democracy, children are introduced to AI technology and the dilemmas it poses. The youngsters are challenged to try their hand at programming and, gradually, to think about the social impact of artificial intelligence. "We look at what can go wrong, but we keep it light," says Storm. "For example, we show how a dataset can be biased: if you don't like ripe bananas, you'll probably include fewer pictures of ripe bananas in your dataset than someone who loves them."

SkillsDojo wants children to see that technology isn't a static thing, but something they can develop and change. In the first series, children get to create a chatbot for ordering pizza, a mood meter that can recognise emotions, a recommendation programme for books, and more besides. The lessons make use of Cognimates, a programming environment based on Scratch. In the second series, youngsters develop their own datasets and consider the sensitivities involved. A third series challenges children to think about their ideal online platform and make a preliminary design.

SkillsDojo programmes are suitable both for independent home use and for group use in a classroom setting. The videos on artificial intelligence have now been watched about ten thousand times, and the platform as a whole gets 220,000 views a year. "Since the coronavirus crisis, the figures have shot up," says Storm.

Collaboration with NBD Biblion

On 1 January 2021, SkillsDojo was acquired by NBD Biblion, a joint venture by public libraries in the Netherlands. "Our teaching materials will become part of the services offered by public libraries and media libraries," explains Storm. "The move is in line with libraries' increasing interest in supporting digital literacy as well as conventional literacy. Many libraries now have media coaches on the staff, who provide support to local schools. And now they'll be using our materials. Through the libraries, we'll also be offering a toolkit including our worksheets, Microbits and associated reading lists."

With NBD Biblion's backing, SkillsDojo is intending to refine and upscale its offering. One important part of the plan is to migrate the platform to a modular design. "At the moment, you have to follow the programme in sequence," says Storm. "Making the materials available in the form of standalone modules will make it easier for children, teachers and media coaches to pick out certain parts and use them however they like." Storm also wants to make SkillsDojo more interactive. "We often get excited e-mails from kids who are keen to show us what they've made," he says. "That made us think it would be great to add functionality that lets children upload their creations to the platform."