Vienna Elementary School\u2019s Vienna.i.Lab is transforming education by introducing students to AI and advanced technology. <\/p>\n
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Elementary students are learning the ‘how’ behind AI<\/p>\n
David Lee Reynolds, Jr. spent two decades working as a music teacher before transitioning to teach technology.<\/p>\n
When he made the switch, Vienna Elementary School didn\u2019t have a Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Math, or STEAM, lab. To best set students up for success, he knew the Northern Virginia campus needed one.<\/p>\n
That thought came around the same time the first large language models were debuting, and artificial intelligence was becoming more mainstream. So he knew once a lab was put together, it would have to be advanced. A traditional STEAM lab would come later.<\/p>\n
Eventually, Reynolds created the Vienna.i.Lab with the goal of helping students understand how the tech works, all so they\u2019re set up to use it more effectively.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is the new stuff, and it\u2019s here to stay,\u201d Reynolds said. \u201cBut if you don\u2019t know what it is, then it\u2019s not helpful to you. So let\u2019s fix that.\u201d<\/p>\n
To do it, Reynolds collaborated with the school\u2019s parent-teacher association, which helped raise money so students could use new tools instead of traditional laptops.<\/p>\n
During a lesson on Friday afternoon, a group of first graders used KaiBots. They scanned a card with a code describing how the robot should move, and watched it either follow the instructions or identify an error.<\/p>\n
Even for some of the school\u2019s youngest students, Reynolds said the lesson revealed the \u201cbuilding blocks of where you would eventually get to learning about machine learning, learning about large language models, learning about how ChatGPT works.\u201d<\/p>\n
One student, Nora Vazeen, said the activity is different from what she does in most classes, and \u201cIt\u2019s silly.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another student, Callum, echoed that sentiment, saying, \u201cThe robot does silly stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n
But, once a week during their technology special, students from kindergarten to sixth grade participate in hands-on activities. While the younger kids use KaiBots, the older students are programming drones.<\/p>\n
The work emphasizes problem solving skills, collaboration and coding skills, Reynolds said.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor kids, if they understand how the tool works, they can do amazing things with the tool,\u201d he said. \u201cBut if they don\u2019t, they\u2019re going to use the tool like it\u2019s a search feature, and the next thing you know, they\u2019re doing things that are wrong and they\u2019re learning things that are incorrect.\u201d<\/p>\n
While the AI lab is largely the tech cart Reynolds oversees in the corner of the school\u2019s library, he\u2019s hoping one day it can evolve into an innovative space.<\/p>\n
\u201cLet\u2019s build it in a green way,\u201d Reynolds said. \u201cLet\u2019s build it underground. Let\u2019s use geothermal heating and cooling. Let\u2019s build a space, when you walk into it, you\u2019re inspired to go and create.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Vienna Elementary School\u2019s Vienna.i.Lab is transforming education by introducing students to AI and advanced technology. This page contains…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":400512,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[182,181,507,40985,30627,40523,193323,36532,172,74,193324],"class_list":["post-400511","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-coding","tag-fairfax-county","tag-scott-gelman","tag-steam-lab","tag-teacher","tag-tech","tag-technology","tag-vienna-i-lab"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400511","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=400511"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400511\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/400512"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=400511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=400511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=400511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}