Program

“Apple or popcorn? Ask AI!” was the title of a play performed by students from Gymnasium Theodorianum grammar school at the Open Day on Saturday, 19. November. The performance was part of the Paderborn University “Project Data Science and Big Data in schools” (ProDaBi), which is funded by the Deutsche Telekom Foundation and has been running in cooperation with the Gymnasium Theodorianum since 2018. In class, students developed a data-driven AI that classifies food by its nutritional values “unplugged” – that is, without using computers. They used their creativity and imagination to convert this process into a stage play. Practice reports from co-workers in the project supplemented the two 15-minute performances.

AI in the classroom

Film selections on streaming platforms, facial recognition to unlock smartphones or suggested advertisements in computer browsers: AI makes decisions for us in all these areas. “Since AI has become part of our everyday lives, it is essential that we are able to understand the basic principles and concepts behind data-driven decision-making. Only then can we interact with this new technology in a self-determined, responsible way and take part in social debate about it,” said Sven Hüsing, research associate of the Paderborn expert group “Didatics of computer science”. Inspired by this idea, teaching materials and education projects about various aspects of data science and AI were developed by “ProDaBi” and evaluated after testing on groups of school students.

In the play, the students assumed the roles of various foods that wanted to find out if they could be recommended or not on the basis of their nutritional value – they became the data carriers in the context of a “living statistics” scenario. The performance, with its movements in three-dimensional space, visualised data patterns and the construction process of AI which will ultimately decide which of the foods can really be recommended.