New Day of AI curricula brings climate change into the AI conversation with K-12 students

Developed by MIT RAISE, lessons and activities are focused on the intersection of data science and climate change.

Teachers around the globe are interested in bringing climate change content into the conversation about artificial intelligence (AI). That’s why MIT Responsible AI for Social Empowerment and Education (RAISE) developed three new curricula for Day of AI focused on the intersection of data science and climate change.

Day of AI offers curricula and activities for elementary, middle school, and high school students intersecting with multiple content areas including history, civics, computer science, and math. The program is completely free and accessible to students and teachers of all backgrounds and abilities. In 2023, more than 7,500 educators across 50 U.S. states and 114 different countries brought Day of AI to their classrooms asynchronously.

Check out the new Day of AI curricula combining data science and climate change.

Making Sense of our Surroundings

• Ages: 8–18
• Description: This curriculum introduces students to basic concepts of data literacy through the lens of weather, and climate change. Using their basic external senses, students observe the natural world around them and graph their data for basic analysis and comparison.
• Prerequisites: N/A

Ecobit Explorers

• Ages: 11–18
• Description: Students learn the fundamentals of collection, analysis, and visualization of data collected from the environment. They collect weather data using Micro:bits, and then create an app to visualize collected data using MIT AppInventor.
• Prerequisites: N/A

Telling Climate Stories with Data

• Ages: 14–18
• Description: In this module, students use a data analysis pipeline and machine learning to work with global data sets to “tell a story” of the localized, human impacts of climate change. Students will begin by learning the basics of Pandas (a Python library for data analysis), before exploring how data is collected, cleaned, and prepared.
• Prerequisites: Basic Python knowledge (variables, lists, dictionaries, how to call functions)

RAISE, part of MIT Open Learning, developed these courses for two reasons:

1. The RAISE team heard from many teachers about their desire to bring climate change as a content area into the conversation about AI.
2. The RAISE team wanted to highlight the importance of having a critical understanding of dataset design and collection as part of AI literacy.

Educators and students can access these courses and the rest of the Day of AI curriculum at any time. Follow @MIT_RAISE on Instagram and share your own AI education ideas and classroom projects using #DayofAI. Join MIT RAISE for its Day of AI global celebration on May 13.

RAISE is an MIT-wide initiative headquartered in the MIT Media Lab and in collaboration with the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing and MIT Open Learning. In the face of accelerating change, RAISE’s research and impact mission is to advance equity in learning, education and computational action to rethink and innovate how to holistically and equitably prepare diverse K-12 students, an inclusive workforce, and lifelong learners to be successful, responsible, and engaged in an increasingly AI-powered society.

Adapted from the article originally published at https://dayofai.org.

New Day of AI curricula brings climate change into the AI conversation with K-12 students was originally published in MIT Open Learning on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.