{"id":1003616,"date":"2022-04-21T06:35:37","date_gmt":"2022-04-21T10:35:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/?p=1003616"},"modified":"2022-04-21T06:35:37","modified_gmt":"2022-04-21T10:35:37","slug":"ai-literacy-research-children-and-families-working-together-around-smart-devices","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/?p=1003616","title":{"rendered":"AI literacy research: Children and families working together around smart devices"},"content":{"rendered":"

Between September 2021 and March 2022, we\u2019ve been partnering with The Alan Turing Institute to host a series of free research seminars<\/a> about how to young people about AI and data science.<\/p>\n

In the final seminar of the series, we were excited to hear from Stefania Druga from the University of Washington, who presented on the topic of AI literacy for families. Stefania\u2019s talk highlighted the importance of families in supporting children to develop AI literacy. Her talk was a perfect conclusion to the series and very well-received by our audience.<\/p>\n

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\"Stefania
Stefania Druga, University of Washington<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Stefania is a third-year PhD student who has been working on AI literacy in families, and since 2017 she has conducted a series of studies that she presented in her seminar talk. She presented some new work to us that was to be formally shared at the HCI conference in April, and we were very pleased to have a sneak preview of these results. It was a fascinating talk about the ways in which the interactions between parents and children using AI-based devices in the home, and the discussions they have while learning together, can facilitate an appreciation of the affordances of AI systems. You\u2019ll find my summary as well as the seminar recording below.<\/p>\n

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\u201cAI literacy practices and skills led some families to consider making meaningful use of AI devices they already have in their homes and redesign their interactions with them. These findings suggest that family has the potential to act as a third space for AI learning.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2013 Stefania Druga<\/cite><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

AI literacy: Growing up with AI systems, growing used to them<\/h2>\n

Back in 2017, interest in Alexa and other so-called \u2018smart\u2019, AI-based devices was just developing in the public, and such devices would have been very novel to most people. That year, Stefania and colleagues conducted a first pilot study of children\u2019s and their parents\u2019 interactions with \u2018smart\u2019 devices, including robots, talking dolls, and the sort of voice assistants we are used to now.<\/p>\n

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\"A<\/a>
A slide from Stefania\u2019s AI literacy seminar. Click to enlarge.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Working directly with families, the researchers explored the level of understanding that children had about \u2018smart\u2019 devices, and were surprised by the level of insight very young children had into the potential of this type of technology.<\/p>\n

In this AI literacy pilot study, Stefania and her colleagues found that:<\/p>\n