Piloting Diversity and Inclusion Workshops in Artificial Intelligence and Robotics for Children

TL;DR

This paper reports on a pilot workshop designed to teach AI and robotics to children in developing countries, emphasizing diversity and inclusion using open-source resources, with positive engagement from participants and stakeholders.

Contribution

It introduces a novel pilot workshop curriculum promoting diversity and inclusion in AI and robotics education for children in resource-scarce settings.

Findings

Participants and stakeholders engaged well in the workshop

Challenges identified in resource availability for developing countries

Resources for reproduction are publicly available

Abstract

In this paper, we present preliminary work from a pilot workshop that aimed to promote diversity and inclusion for fundamentals of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics for Children (air4children) in the context of developing countries. Considering the scarcity of funding and the little to none availability of specialised professionals to teach AI and robotics in developing countries, we present resources based on free open-source hardware and software, open educational resources, and alternative education programs. That said, the contribution of this work is the pilot workshop of four lessons that promote diversity and inclusion on teaching AI and Robotics for children to a small gender-balanced sample of 14 children of an average age of 7.64 years old. We conclude that participant, instructors, coordinators and parents engaged well in the pilot workshop noting the various challenges of having the right resources for the workshops in developing countries and posing future work. The resources to reproduce this work are available at https://github.com/air4children/hri2022.