Computing Education research seminars
Teaching about neural networks in junior high schools in Ghana
https://www.raspberrypi.org/research-impact/research/seminars

17:00–18:30 GMT / 12:00–13:30 ET / 9:00–10:30 PT / 18:00–19:30 CET

In this talk, Salomey Afua Addo will take you through her three-year PhD study exploring how to teach about AI in junior high schools in Ghana (learners aged 13–16). First, she will lay the foundation by describing the Ghanaian education system through the lens of her case study. Then, she will share how she created a role play and a board game to learn about the feedforward, evaluation, and backpropagation stages of training a single-layer neural network, using simple synthetic data based on a farming scenario.

​In addition, Salomey will explore how storytelling can be a useful and engaging tool for teaching about AI ethics in a relatable way for young learners. She will also explore the perspectives and real classroom experiences of teachers as they use unplugged tools in their AI lessons, as well as the elements of teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) required for teaching neural networks.