Workshop for teachers at the Informatics Day 2022 in Vienna

Every day, students use AI-supported applications; automatically generated images and texts flood the Internet. Accordingly, conveying AI competencies in school lessons is becoming more and more relevant and is also increasingly finding its way into the curricula.

Within the scope of the Informatics Day for teachers 2022, a TrainDL workshop for computer science teachers was held. The event took place at the Faculty of Computer Science of the Vienna University of Technology on September 29. The event was held following the ISSEP 2022 (15th International Conference on Informatics in Schools), where the Austrian Computer Society had already given a short presentation on the TrainDL project.

In the workshop, the topics covered were the introduction to AI and Data Literacy in Austrian schools and reinforcement learning. In 1.5 hours, the participants had the opportunity to test materials and methods that aim to convey AI skills in school education. For instance, they played pawn chess, a didactically reduced variant of the royal game, and defined both a classical and a self-learning AI. The 13 computer science teachers who took part in the intervention gave positive feedback on the workshop and its materials. In the aftermath of the event, the workshop was evaluated and its results were used in the formulation of policy recommendations.

The workshop was conducted by Till Zoppke from the TrainDL partner Freie Universität Berlin, who also used the workshop to spread the word about the upcoming intervention for computer science teachers that will be held on January 31, 2023 in Vienna.