Abstract:

The field of artificial intelligence (AI) has entered into our everyday life. Robots that can play Go better than human champions, personal assistants that are helping us to perform better in time management and driving assistants that can prevent car accidents are just some of the well-known examples of AI usage. After long research and many pitfalls, AI is here to stay. We should look at artificial intelligence as a new tool that enables us to rethink information integration, data analysis, and extracting knowledge to transform our decision making and everyday life.

It is obvious that AI is becoming increasingly integrated into technology, but public understanding of these technologies is often lacking or limited. To prepare students for working careers educators must explore and integrate artificial intelligence into K-12 classrooms. If we fail to act now, children risk being left behind. If they don’t understand the basic concepts of AI we will put them in danger to think about AI as magic. Famous science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke’s quote, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” is usually used to point out the wonders, complexity and potential of technology. We as educators should not miss how humans have reacted to magic and those with arcane knowledge throughout history. Often they accused them of being witches and did deeply unpleasant things to them. Regardless of the fact that AI can help us in achieving our goals we as educators should emphasise the capabilities, risks and ethical questions related to using AI.

Artificial intelligence is included in computing curricula in higher education, and many countries around the world are creating K-12 informatics (computer science) curricula. There are a number of initiatives outside regular schools that are showing interest in integrating AI in K-12 education as extracurricular activities. Additionally, informatics teachers in K-12 are lacking and those that are part of the informatics educator body are struggling to integrate traditional computational thinking and programming into the school curriculum. Some researchers point out the need for the paradigm shift that will be required in order to successfully integrate AI into the broader K–12 computing curricula. They emphasize that we have to abandon the “traditional” programming as a central aspect and building block in developing next-generation computational thinking. In this paper, we describe the initiative to integrate AI literacy, at this moment as an extracurricular activity in K-12 education as a part of informatics education. We have conducted our research during the academic year 2020./2021. with the participation of eight elementary schools in Split-Dalmatia County, a central-southern Dalmatian county in Croatia. The AI literacy program objective was to introduce K-12 students to basic AI concepts through project-based learning. A total of 18 projects have successfully been presented by students. This paper presents our findings and plan for future research in integrating AI literacy into the compulsory informatics K-12 curriculum in Croatia.

Keywords:

AI, literacy, K-12, informatics, education, artificial intelligence.