Artificial Intelligence 

Using AI in Primary school 

LESSON FOCUS

DIGITAL SKILLS & Computing Focus

Key vocabulary
Artificial Intelligence (AI), Algorithm, Machine Learning, Data, Robot, Neural Network, Training, Prediction, Automation, Chatbot, Ethics
Computer Vision, Supervised Learning, Unsupervised Learning, Reinforcement Learning, Bias, Deep Learning, Big Data

📸photographic summary 📸

🧠What is Artificial intelligence AI⌨️

Artificial intelligence (AI) is all about making computers mimic human capabilities. It's a branch of computer science that tackles tasks that usually require human intelligence, like learning, problem-solving, and decision-making.

AI isn't one specific technology, but rather a collection of tools and techniques.  Imagine a toolbox filled with different ways for computers to be smart.  Some AI systems are good at reacting to their environment, like a chess-playing computer. Others can analyze massive amounts of data to find patterns, which is useful for things like recommending movies or predicting traffic flow.

There's even AI that can understand and respond to language, like the chatbots you might encounter online.  While AI is still rapidly developing, it's already playing a big role in many aspects of our lives.

AI is going nowhere! - The aim at Aldwyn Primary School is to give children a good understanding of how AI works, what it can and can not do and how they can children can make best use of it - not as a tool to cheat, but as a tool to ehance learning and creativity.

🧠Why do children need to know about AI⌨️

At Aldwyn Primary School we know children are growing up in a world shaped by AI, from the apps they use to the toys they play with. Here's why understanding AI is important for them:

Knowing about AI empowers children to not just use this technology, but to help shape its future for the better.

🧠Google's Teachable Machine⌨️

After looking at how AI learns, we wanted children to be able to experience programming their own custom learning machine. Luckily, Google provide a free AI teachable machine that is a safe way for children to generate data, train an AI model then judge how accurate that model works.

Teachable Machine is a web-based GUI tool for creating custom machine learning (ML) classification models without specialised technical expertise, it's ideal for children to get their first tastes of training their own AI model.  It was created to help students, teachers, designers, and others learn about ML by creating and using their own classification models.

One thing the Teachable machine did show is how important accuracy is and the more data you can provide to train the AI model, the better it performs.

Children really enjoyed this lesson and Teachable Machine is a safe and engaging way for children to take their first steps into the exciting world of AI!

There are several reasons why Teachable Machine is a great tool for children to explore AI:

The AI we Used & Why

Google Gemini
Children used this for a variety of tasks, from helping with scripts for podcast to research. Children llso had a great time having a chat and using it has a friendly chatbot and teaching assistant. 

perplexity.ai
This has now been added as a Google Chrome extension. A very useful tool to summarize large amounts of text such as pages from Wikipedia, PDF's and web pages.

Canva
Not AI as in the traditional sense, but Canva can be a great way to introduce AI image editing to children. Boy, did they love creating all type of images and changing the way pictures look.  See out Canva page.

immersity.ai
A very clever AI model that creates 3D and animation from photographs. Children loved testing out different types of animations on photographs taken on a recent field trip.

Google teachable machine
WoW - a brilliant introduction to AI allowing children to train their own own custom learning machine. Very easy to use and total safe. A real experience of AI.

Suno
If you want to mix music, poetry with computing then Suno is the way to go. A simply brilliant music generator that can turn your poems into full music tracks.

Blockage  labs 360
If you have a lesson covering Virtual Reality then Blockade Laps 360 is for you. Allows children to create limitless AI-generated 3D worlds from text prompts. See example below.

Mubert
A text to music generator. Not as good as SUNO but it does allow AI to generate music and there is a lot of royalty free tracks covering many genres available for download.

ideogram.ai
Not as well know as Adobe Firefly or Leonardo but this simple to use AI app is very easy to use and has lots of options. 10 pictures a day - try the graffiti model.

Adobe Firefly
A brilliant text to image generator. Can used as a standalone of part of Adobe Express. Firefly will generate stunning images from a text prompt.

leonardo AI
Leonardo AI uses cutting-edge artificial intelligence to empower users to generate high-quality art, images, and videos. You will need to sign in, but it can create stunning images.

google  quick draw
Quick, Draw! is an online guessing game developed by Google. It challenges players to draw a picture of an object. AI learns from each drawing, improving its ability to guess correctly in the future.

Using AI - Some of Our Work

AI Canva Slideshow

Variations on a Theme

Children used AI to make changes to the same picture. It was simply amazing how many different ways the picture could be edited and changed. Orginal picture below.

Give them a minute to load

These have been produced on Blockage  labs 360 and it allows children to create virtual worlds from text prompts. We will be using this app in our 3D / VR sessions.