While many
students were anticipating the last day of final exams on November 22, 2023,
Nancy Shiba Primary School grade 5 and 6 students virtually participated in the
Microsoft Africa Minecraft Hour of Code event to learn about Artificial
Intelligence(AI) through the Minecraft Coding game and Scratch Coding.
Ms. Nomusa
Keninda, eLearning Specialist and Founder of the Mpumalanga ICT Club, and Ms
Samukelisiwe Hlomuka from J Kananda Primary School, an award winner for the ICT
in Education with Ms Beyanca Struwig of Microsoft South Africa, carefully
arranged the event. This event is part of the global celebration of the Hour of
Code, in which learners are exposed to computer science education through the
use of code.org resources to teach Coding and Robotics in schools.
“We were
learning too, because AI is a new technology that is starting to affect all of
us” according to Keninda. We discovered that AI still has many biases. In one
of the exercises given, the AI robot did not recognize the diversity of
learners who were receiving food from the AI robot, which was supposed to serve
learners, because some learners were shorter and had darker complexion than
what the AI was programmed to detect. During the exercises, students observed
how to debug the AI software to accept diversity and inclusiveness.
Samukelisiwe Hlomuka
When Ms
Hlomuka inquired if they were familiar with the coding game, one child replied,
“I know about Minecraft because I play it on my phone.” What was most
intriguing about Minecraft in this session was that the learners were given the
option to create their own game by coding it from start rather than consuming computer
games.
Following
the Minecraft AI class, learners had fun creating their own game using the
Scratch Coding environment. The pleasure of having a tablet on their desks was
demonstrated by their brave listening during the coding sessions as they
followed instructions led by Keninda and Hlomuka. Other classes were taught by
Glenda Maselesele and Duduzile Mashinini who are Tangible Africa coding evangelists.
“Since I came
from America on a leadership and Mentorship program, I can see there is a lot
of demand for learners to learn computer science, I can relate from what I
learnt from San Francisco.” Keninda stated.
Published by Witbank News on 01 December 2023
