In its efforts to create an AI ecosystem in the schools, CBSE had introduced AI as a skill subject for children studying in grade VIII and IX in March 2019. While 883 schools applied to start this subject in their schools, eight schools such as Delhi Public School, Bangalore East; ITL Public School, Dwarka; Royale Concorde International School, Bangalore,
Salwan Public School
, Gurgaon, among others, were selected on a fast track mode to study the impact well in advance.
The 2-year curriculum for which CBSE has collaborated with Intel's AI4Youth initiative, was covered in six months as part of the pilot in which 100 students learnt the ropes of
machine learning
. They created 15 projects based on computer vision, data and NLP to help solve day to day problems. As part of the initiative, around 450 teachers were also trained through workshops.
"CBSE's AI journey began quite inadvertently at a
NITI Aayog
meet when it was stated that India may have already missed the bus in AI. This gave us the impetus to start AI curriculum in schools. The children completing the curriculum have learnt coding and core competency skills such as problem solving, creative thinking and self-reflection. Their AI journey also gave them the courage to take risks," said Anita Karwal, chairperson CBSE, while felicitating the children at the Board's 'Celebrating AI readiness' event held in New Delhi recently.
She further informed that CBSE will be launching an AI-integrated pedagogy manual which could help the teachers across streams become more AI-enabled.
Talking about the showcase and the need to initiate AI learning along with regular curriculum transaction,
Biswajit Saha
, director, Skill Education and Training, CBSE said, "The projects-based approach gave the children the platform to solve real-world problems. Presently, the Board has plans to patent some of these projects."
With children post the programme wanting to become AI ethics lawyers or building their own tech startups, the focus has been to leverage the power of AI to help the youth move towards a digital India, said Shweta Khurana, director, corporate affairs, Intel India.
Some of the AI projects by CBSE students:
Happiness Guru:
Created by students of Salwan Girls Senior Secondary School, the project's
AI model can predict the onset of depression among school children and notify the same to teachers and guardians. "We conducted a mental health survey on 700 students across five schools to track the mental health problems through questionnaires and quiz," Sania Saini, class X student who put together the project along with teammates Teena Sahu and Harshita Rachhoya.
Ride Rater:
Class VIII students John Seegler and Aryan Mishra of Royale Concorde International School, Bangalore, developed a tracking system to keep a tab on school bus drivers' to check the speeding habits, frequency of sudden halts, how they drive around potholes, etc. The system provides analysed data for school management enabling them to take corrective actions. "We have created a system to classify and rate the driving quality along with a feedback mechanism to address safety issues of school children," says Aryan.
Cyber Detective:
This system developed by class IX students Rahul Jaikrishna and Khusagra Ajmera of Delhi Public School, Bangalore East, can detect improper posts on social media and flag them instantly. "With over 36% Indian children subjected to online bullying every year, we decided to tackle the problem head-on," say the duo. They used ML algorithms and wrote over 2000 lines of codes for the project.
Source-Google
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