Team4Tech just concluded our second Experience AI cohort, engaging four nonprofits and two schools across the US in advancing their foundational understanding of artificial intelligence. An educational programme developed by the Raspberry Pi Foundation and Google DeepMind, Experience AI offers cutting-edge resources on artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) for teachers and students aged 11-14. In Team4Tech’s first Experience AI cohort, we brought together 20 educational nonprofit leaders serving learners in Ghana, India, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, and Uganda—it was exciting to engage US-based leaders in this latest peer learning opportunity.
Vetted Train-the-Trainer AI Learning Resources
Experience AI lesson plans and resources supported cohort participants in confidently delivering AI training to more teachers and students within their learning communities. The Experience AI resources are research-informed, collaboratively built with industry experts, and intentionally designed to be inclusive and representative of people from diverse backgrounds.
Six nonprofit organizations and schools participated in this cohort:
- Charlotte Secondary School
- Empower With AI
- Gearbox Labs
- Indigitize
- Presidio Knolls School
- StreetCode Academy
Collectively, participants from the cohort are expected to go on to train 272 teachers and 3,524 learners.
Building Foundational AI Literacy and Skills
Over the six-week cohort, Team4Tech engaged participants in a blended learning model:
- Team4Tech’s Community of Practice enabled participants to complete self-paced modules aligned to the Experience AI educator training in advance of live meeting sessions. These modules included core Experience AI content, discussion prompts, and check-for-understanding questions, preparing participants for synchronous sessions.
- Team4Tech’s expert facilitators led weekly, 60-minute virtual meetings for six weeks. During each meeting, participants collaborated to share their experiences using the learning materials as well as common challenges and solutions when rolling out Experience AI. Team4Tech facilitated live reviews of core AI topics, introduced Experience AI student activities, and guided participants through in-depth discussions of how to apply the learning content to their specific learning contexts.
Through this self-paced work and synchronous meeting sequence, participants explored AI fundamentals, ethical and responsible use of AI, how limited datasets can lead to bias in AI, and real-world applications of AI models.
Improved Confidence Leads to Implementation Plans
Team4Tech’s peer learning experience provided participants with implementation templates, helping them plan to introduce the Experience AI content into their own context and accommodate any necessary adaptations for their learners. The cohort culminated in each organizational leader presenting their proposed strategy for implementing cohort learnings within their own context.
This US cohort gave participants access to:
- Structured coursework and research-informed learning resources from Experience AI
- Ready-to-use materials to implement with their teachers and learners
- Ongoing mentorship and support from Team4Tech staff
- Opportunities to collaborate with the other nonprofit and school leaders in the cohort
- Shared learnings about proposed implementation plans from each organization
Through the Experience AI US Cohort, organizations have identified key components of the curriculum that they plan to adopt and adapt within their own contexts. In particular, hands-on learning experiences and ethics-centered content emerged as especially impactful. Participants consistently called out the following Experience AI activities in their positive feedback: Bias in AI, Supermarket AI Classification Exercise (an activity introducing the concept of machine learning classification through identifying different images of apples and tomatoes), and Fairness, Accountability, Transparency, Privacy, and Security (FATPS):
- “The Supermarket AI activity translates directly to our coding curriculum. Students can build simple classifiers and see ML as something they can create, not just consume.”
- “Bias in AI is essential content for communities we serve. Facial recognition accuracy gaps and biased hiring algorithms directly affect our students’ futures.”
- “FATPS gives students a reusable, ethical framework. We plan to embed it as a student-facing tool for evaluating every AI system that we encounter in class and in daily life.”
Other cohort feedback emphasized the importance of building a strong conceptual foundation of understanding what AI is before discussing how to use it. Participants also highlighted the importance of adapting materials to reflect local context, cultural relevance, and the lived experiences of their learners.
Looking ahead, organizations have outlined actionable plans to implement and scale their learnings over the next year. These efforts include integrating Experience AI content into existing courses, like critical thinking and coding programs, as well as expanding reach through educator training, communities of practice, and peer-led teaching models. Many participants are also prioritizing project-based approaches, including student-led AI policy development and applying AI to real-world challenges relevant to their communities.
100% of participants in this peer learning cohort reported a substantial improvement in their understanding of foundational AI concepts and ML knowledge as a result of participating in the cohort training sessions. In addition to AI content, a core learning outcome of the Experience AI educator training is also increased confidence in delivering AI lessons and training to students and teachers. As a result of the cohort, participant attitudes shifted significantly, with 100% reporting substantial improvement in their confidence in delivering AI lessons and training.
Looking to the Future with AI Literacy
We are proud to partner with the Raspberry Pi Foundation on this initiative and celebrate the commitment of this cohort towards AI literacy. Team4Tech will follow up with participating nonprofits and school leaders in the next six months to gather updates on the number of additional students and teachers trained, as well as the implementation of cohort resources shared.
This project is one of Team4Tech’s many AI capacity-building initiatives, accelerating the impact of community-based organizations worldwide. Explore our accelerator programming to learn more.