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On the way from the suburbs to the city, tree cover often decreases as skyscrapers rise. A group of students from the New England Innovation Academy wondered why this happens.
“Our friend Victoria noticed that where we live in Marlborough, there are a lot of trees in our own backyards. But if you drive just 30 minutes into Boston, there are almost no trees,” said Ileana Fournier, a high school student. “We were struck by that duality.”
This inspired Fournier and her classmates Victoria Leeth and Jessie Magenyi to create a prototype mobile app illustrating Massachusetts deforestation trends for ai Daya free, hands-on curriculum developed by MIT’s Responsible ai for Social Empowerment and Education (RAISE) initiative, based at the MIT Media Lab and in collaboration with the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing and MIT Open Learning. They were part of a group of 20 students from the New England Innovation Academy who shared their projects during ai Day 2024 Global celebration organized with the Museum of Science.
He ai Curriculum Day introduces elementary and middle school students to artificial intelligence. Now in its third year, ai Day empowers students to improve their communities and collaborate on larger global challenges using ai. Fournier, Leeth, and Magenyi's TreeSavers app is included in the Telling Climate Stories with Data module, one of the Four new lessons focused on climate change.
“We want them to be able to express themselves creatively to use ai to solve problems with critical thinking skills,” said Cynthia Breazeal, director of MIT RAISE, dean of digital learning at MIT Open Learning, and professor of media arts and sciences, during this year’s global ai Day celebration at the Science Museum. “We want them to have an ethical and responsible way of thinking about this really powerful, cool, exciting technology.”
Moving from understanding to action
ai Day invites students to examine the intersection of ai and diverse disciplines, including history, civics, computer science, mathematics, and climate change. With year-round curriculum available, more than 10,000 educators from 114 countries have brought ai Day activities into their classrooms and homes.
The curriculum gives students the ability to assess local problems and invent meaningful solutions. “We’re thinking about how to create tools that allow kids to have direct access to data and have a personal connection that intersects with their life experiences,” said Robert Parks, curriculum developer at MIT RAISE, at the global ai Day celebration.
Before this year, first-year Jeremie Kwampo said he knew very little about ai. “I was really intrigued by it,” he said. “I started experimenting with ChatGPT to see how it reacted. How close can I get to human emotions? What is ai’s knowledge compared to a human’s knowledge?”
In addition to helping students spark an interest in ai literacy, educators around the world have told MIT RAISE that they want to use data science lessons to engage students in conversations about climate change. So new hands-on Day of ai projects use weather and climate change to show students why it’s important to develop a critical understanding of the design and collection of datasets when observing the world around them.
“In everyday life, there is a gap between cause and effect,” Parks said. “Our goal is to demystify that and give kids access to data so they can take a long-term view of things.”
Tools like MIT App Inventor (which allows anyone to create a mobile app) help students understand what they can learn from the data. Fournier, Leeth, and Magenyi programmed TreeSavers in App Inventor to graph regional deforestation rates in Massachusetts, identify current trends using statistical models, and predict environmental impact. The students put that “long view” of climate change into practice by developing TreeSavers’ interactive maps. Users can toggle between Massachusetts’ current tree cover, historical data, and future high-risk areas.
While ai offers quick answers, it doesn’t necessarily offer equitable solutions, said David Sittenfeld, director of the Science Museum’s Center for the Environment. The ai Day program asks students to make decisions about data collection, ensure they are unbiased and think responsibly about how the findings might be used.
“There is an ethical concern about tracking people’s data,” said Ethan Jorda, a student at the New England Innovation Academy. His group used open-source data to program an app that helps users track and reduce their carbon footprint.
Christine Cunningham, senior vice president of STEM learning at the Science Museum, believes students are ready to use ai responsibly to make the world a better place. “They can see themselves shaping the world they live in,” Cunningham said. “By moving from understanding to action, kids will never look at a bridge or a piece of plastic lying on the ground the same way again.”
Deepening collaboration on Earth and beyond
ai Day 2024 speakers emphasized collaborative problem-solving at local, national, and global levels.
“Through different ideas and perspectives, we’re going to get better solutions,” Cunningham said. “How do we start young enough so that every child has the opportunity to understand the world around them and also move toward shaping the future?”
Presenters from MIT, the Science Museum, and NASA tackled this issue with a common goal: expanding STEM education to students of all ages and backgrounds.
“We were thrilled to partner with the MIT RAISE team to bring this year’s ai Day celebration to the Museum of Science,” said Meg Rosenburg, director of operations for the Museum of Science’s Centers for Public Science Learning. “This opportunity to highlight new climate modules for the curriculum not only aligns perfectly with the museum’s goals of focusing on climate and active hope throughout our Year of the Earthshot initiative, but it also allowed us to bring our teams together and develop a relationship that we are excited to continue to build on in the future.”
Rachel Connolly, Head of Systems Analysis and Integration for NASA Scientific Activation ProgramHe showed the power of collaboration by looking at how human understanding of Saturn's appearance has evolved. From Galileo's first telescope to the Cassini spacecraft, modern images of Saturn represent 400 years of science, technology and mathematics working together to advance knowledge.
“The technologies and the engineers who built them advance the questions we can ask and therefore what we can understand,” said Connolly, a research scientist at the MIT Media Lab.
Students at the New England Innovation Academy saw an opportunity for collaboration a little closer to home. Emmett Buck-Thompson, Jeff Cheng, and Max Hunt envisioned a social media app to connect volunteers with local charities. Their project was inspired by Buck-Thompson’s father’s struggles to find volunteer opportunities, Hunt’s role as president of the school’s Community Impact Club, and Cheng’s aspiration to reduce the amount of screen time social media users spend. Using MIT App Inventor, their combined ideas resulted in a prototype with the potential to make a real impact in their community.
The ai Day program teaches the mechanics of ai, ethical considerations and responsible uses, and interdisciplinary applications to different fields. It also empowers students to become creative problem solvers and engaged citizens in their communities and online. From supporting volunteer efforts to encouraging action on behalf of state forests and addressing the global challenge of climate change, today’s students are becoming tomorrow’s leaders with ai Day.
“We want you to know that this is a tool that you can use to improve your community and help the people around you with this technology,” Breazeal said.
Other ai Day speakers included Tim Ritchie, president of the Museum of Science; Michael Lawrence Evans, program director of the Boston Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics; Dava Newman, director of the MIT Media Lab; and Natalie Lao, executive director of the App Inventor Foundation.
