The educational AI lab at TEACHERMANIA 2024

The TEACHERMANIA is the big teacher training festival at TU Dresden, which took place for the third time on June 6, 2024 at Weberplatz. Everyone who is interested in and committed to the future of education was cordially invited - whether as student teachers, experienced educators or lecturers at the university.

Under the motto "Professional Teachers", Christian Piwarz, Saxon State Minister of Education, representatives of Saxon schools and other stakeholders from school practice, among others, answered questions from prospective teachers. Numerous workshops were also offered to sensitize participants to important future topics in the field of education.

The team from the Chair of Primary Education / Mathematical Education (Prof. Sebastian Schorcht, Leonie Schlenkrich, Julian Kriegel) and the teams from BQL-Grundschule (Susan Böttcher, Claudia Hottas, Alexander Klippstein, Dr. Anja Mede-Schelenz, Dr. Melanie Wohlfahrt) and BQL.digital (Christin Nenner, Dagmar Oertel) jointly organized "Das pädagogische KI-Labor".

The educational AI lab was implemented as an open concept with several offers that could be selected according to prior knowledge and interests and consisted of various stations from the three areas of AI knowledge, AI practice and AI ethics.

The "AI knowledge" area gave participants a clear understanding of basic terms and current developments in the field of artificial intelligence. A digital writing discussion, an AI learning map and a term memory were available for interactive use.

In the "AI practice" area, participants were free to try out various AI chatbots. The team from the Chair of Primary Education / Mathematical Education provided two mathematics didactics activities. On the one hand, the mathematical capabilities of AI chatbots were examined. This involved using various prompting techniques to solve mathematical problems and comparing their effects on the quality of the AI's solutions. On the other hand, there was the opportunity to explore the extent to which so-called "AI agents" can modify mathematical tasks for use in the classroom and thus offer possible relief for teachers in everyday teaching.

The "AI ethics" section focused on the opportunities and challenges of AI technologies in general and for the education sector in particular. Visitors to the educational AI lab were able to classify theses on ethical issues and use a discourse timeline to assess current AI developments and their consequences from multiple perspectives.

Overall, the pedagogical AI lab opened up a variety of opportunities for exchange, practical testing and deepening knowledge about generative AI technologies in the field of education.

You can find more detailed information about the AI lab here .