Artificial Intelligence in Middle School Education
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Goals | Resources | Meet the Team | Shewey Fund | Application
The Applications of Artificial Intelligence in Middle School Education (AAIMSE) project is an ongoing research study focusing on middle school teachers at the P.K. Yonge Developmental Research School, affiliated with the University of Florida.
Middle school teachers are introduced into the growing field of artificial intelligence (AI), understanding the fundamental concepts of AI along with how it can be integrated into their classroom environment.
Topics of discussion include statistical and algorithmic techniques associated with AI, systems/computational thinking, and machine learning fundamentals.
Goals
Building a collaborative community at UF and beyond
There are short and long term goals associated with the AAIMSE project.
Short-Term Goals
- Establish an AI-focused Professional Learning Community (PLC) with middle school teachers, technology integration specialists at P.K. Yonge, and UF faculty members and doctoral students
- Develop principles and standards for AI in middle school education, primarily in terms of content and information literacy.
- Collaborate with middle school instructors to aid in the creation of AI-generated, developmentally appropriate educational lessons.
- Work with middle school teachers to develop, deploy, and refine an AI literacy assessment that focuses on how well students understand AI
- Expand, along with the middle school teachers of PKY, the project to implement a summer institute for Alachua County Public School and Northeast Florida Educational Consortium (NEFEC) middle school teachers that will focus on further developing the lessons and resources established at PKY.
Long-Term Goals
- Apply the information and data acquired from the initial study to a sequence of online AI resources.
- Use the information acquired from the study to apply for external funding from the National Science Foundation (i.e., ITEST or DRK-12 programs).
Resources
Developing informational materials for learning/integrating AI
How to Gain Access?
At this time, resources developed from the AAIMSE project are not publicly available to everyone.
Please contact [Insert Person Here] to request access to our resources.
Meet the team
Meet the University of Florida faculty members and doctoral students who are collaborating with P.K. Yonge’s middle school teachers to understand and introduce the usage of AI in the middle school curriculum.
More information about the team members, including the middle school instructors or “Shewey Scholars” can be found on the “Meet the Team” page.
Shewey Grant
Purpose
- The Shewey Foundation Endowment Fund is designed to help in the development of teaching/research programs that will further improve middle school education.
- The Shewey Fund places a strong emphasis on ensuring a collaboration between the University of Florida’s College of Education faculty and middle school educators (also known as Shewey Scholars).
- The Applications of Artificial Intelligence in Middle School Education (AAIMSE) project places a strong emphasis on building a collaborative community between faculty and teachers that aids in the integration of AI into the classroom.
- The funding received for the AAIMSE spans two years (i.e. 2023 to 2025).
Interested? Apply Today!
On June 5 – 6, 2024, we will have a professional development workshop on AI in middle school education. The workshop will focus on enhancing and refining the lessons and resources initially established at PKY, ensuring that the benefits of AI in education can be shared with a broader audience of middle school teachers.
Each middle school team must include three people: 1) a teacher leader from the school, 2) an administrator from the school (curricular leader), and 3) a technology integration specialist from the school.
Each participant will be provided with a $250 stipend for their participation. We have space for up to 18 participants or six teams from middle schools. Participants must apply by May 3, 2024. The event will be hosted on the UF Campus. Acceptance decisions will be made by May 17, 2024.
If you are a middle school teacher at Alachua County Public Schools or the Northeast Florida Educational Consortium and are interested in joining the summer workshop, please visit the application page.
