Artificial intelligence education in Georgia middle schools

Abstract

In a partnership between four universities, the Georgia Department of Education, and nine Georgia school districts, we developed a 9-week middle school elective called “Living and Working with Artificial Intelligence,” and a professional development (PD) program for prospective middle school AI teachers. To ensure that our curriculum could meet the needs of all learners, we recruited a diverse set of districts that included rural districts serving mainly White students, urban districts that were majority African American, and suburban districts serving a mix of Hispanic and African American students. Now in its fourth year, our “AI for Georgia” project (AI4GA) has provided PD to 20 teachers and AI education to over 1600 students. The AI4GA curriculum does more than foster AI literacy: It empowers students to view themselves as creators of AI-powered technology and to think about future career options that involve the use of AI. The project is now expanding to schools in Texas and Florida. In this article, we review the history of the project, discuss our co-design process with our teachers, and present results from studies of teacher PD and student learning.