Artificial Intelligence in our Lives

Author: Theodora Gkeniou

Artificial Intelligence has invaded our daily lives in more ways than we can imagine. Before the lockdown, we had carried out research about the benefits and dangers our society is facing due to AI proliferation. We presented our findings in an online meeting.

SHDA: Staying Human in the Digital Age

Artificial intelligence is something that we have all heard of but we actually know nothing about, although we seem to be experiencing it in our everyday lives. This is what we realized in my class, when we decided to do a research on this topic, as part of an eTwinning project, entitled SHDA: Staying Human in the Digital Age that we implemented with three more schools, located in France, the Netherlands and Poland.

AI: a friend or a foe?

Project logo

What is AI? How does it apply in everyday life? What changes has it brought forward in education, health, communication, transport, environment and many more domains? These were our main driving questions, which we addressed during our collaborative work in the time before the lockdown due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

To be more specific, the students worked in international teams depending on their chosen field of interest and conducted research to provide answers to the above-mentioned questions. In our national sub-groups, in Greece, the participating students, aged 17, at the second grade of senior high school, worked diligently by reading newspaper articles which reported the effects of artificial intelligence implementation in technological and digital innovation and made connections with their experiences. eTwinning provides a context whereby online collaboration and communication is the norm. Our students were, therefore, well-prepared to cope with the new situation.

AI and its impact on our lives

The event

After the research part was done, they prepared coherent presentations to report their findings. To this end, we had a web meeting on the 29th of April, on the Webex platform, which is provided by the Greek Ministry of Education, to discuss the findings, give comments, report on our work. As the students were acquainted with this mode of work, they were involved without experiencing technical problems. During the presentations, they made comments on the chatbox and posed their questions, for clarifications. They were immensely motivated and expressed their wish to continue their research. We would totally recommend engaging your students in a similar project since AI is having a major impact on our everyday lives and students are eager to explore it.

To be continued

The work goes on, since our groups are now active on a digital storytelling scheme, to give a humane dimension in the technological advancements. Despite the challenges posed by the lockdown, we are trying to put flesh and bone on stories, which are depicting the new era dawning in human relations. Stay tuned for our final results!