The Rural Hub has delivered it’s AI Lesson Plans and Activities in local schools in Cavan!

The testing of the Generation-AI Programme for Primary School students took place with 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th class students during a Science Day education fair in the Convent of Mercy National School in Belturbet, County Cavan, on Tuesday, 31st May 2022. In total, we reached approximately 35 – 40 students on this day. For these workshops, the teachers and trainers from The Rural Hub specifically tested our module on Communication and Collaboration. As this testing was completed with students in upper primary school classes, we tested Lesson Plan 2 for students aged between 9 and 11 years. As part of this event, The Rural Hub hosted over 80 students in the school hall and presented the Generation-AI project before splitting students into smaller groups where they tested different science and STEAM projects that the Rural Hub is a partner in. At this event, we promoted careers for girls in STEAM, the use of robotics in education and the Generation-AI Programme for students (IO3). Throughout this day of activities, trainers from The Rural Hub, and teachers from the Convent of Mercy National School hosted small workshop sessions with students to test the different lesson plans and activities developed by the Gen-AI project team. The students and teachers from these workshops completed a written evaluation form and provided verbal feedback on the day. Most students on the day reported that they really enjoyed the workshops and feel that it is important to bring these types of ‘modern technologies’ into education because this is how we live our lives, and everyone should be able to learn through new technologies and more engaging methods. The challenge with the pizza toppings received very positive feedback with most students saying how interactive it was and commenting that this was more fun to learn by completing this challenge than reading about it or learning like in a ‘normal classroom’. Students overall responded enthusiastically to the workshop and commented that it would help to have more workshops like this in the school Curriculum, especially for teaching about science and technology. The workshops closed at the end of the school day, with the staff from The Rural Hub thanking all students for their participation and thanking the teachers for hosting them.