This week, we focus on the proposal to introduce digital technology literacy as a compulsory subject in primary and lower secondary schools. With the advent of artificial intelligence and other digital technologies, it has become more critical that students understand the increasingly important role of technology in our society. This requires a general education subject that can equip students with the necessary digital competencies and enable them to relate critically to the knowledge and technologies they encounter daily.
When we become wiser about technologies and their possibilities in teaching, it will also be easier to navigate and apply them where it makes sense.
Consultation on digital technology literacy
Last week, the Danish Ministry of Children and Education and the Committee for Digitalisation held a hearing at Christiansborg, where Professor Ole Sejer Iversen and Dean Jakob Aagaard Harder participated. Their message was clear: digital technology literacy should be introduced as a compulsory teaching subject in primary schools.
One of the main challenges of the current draft is that it is proposed to be introduced as an elective. This will likely result in boys primarily interested in technology choosing the subject, which may create an A and B class where some students do not get the opportunity to work with digital technology understanding.
Jakob Aagaard Harder also pointed out the need for massive in-service training of teachers to handle the task but stressed that it is not impossible.
Malte Von Sehested from the IT Rope has gathered the most essential points from the consultation:
- The Minister of Children and Education, Mattias Tesfaye, stressed that our children must be equipped to navigate this landscape in a world where digitalization is ubiquitous.
- The pilot program has shown positive results. Students engage with it, experience relevant teaching, and understand technology’s place in the real world.
- Whether a new subject should be independent or part of existing courses is still debatable. There are advantages to both approaches, but the most important thing is that all students, regardless of which method is chosen, are allowed to understand and work with technology.
- We can’t talk about technology without also addressing the lack of diversity. Girls, in particular, need to be more involved in technology-related subjects. It’s about more than just fairness; it ensures a broad and versatile understanding of technology.
- Implementing technology literacy in primary school is not a quick fix. This requires a strategic approach, time, investment in education, and the development of teacher competencies.
The entire hearing can be revisited on the Danish Parliament’s website, and it is worth a visit.
Below, we have gathered several sources on the subject:
ChatGPT-4 becomes multimodal
OpenAI has just updated ChatGPT-4 to now be multimodal. This means one no longer has to switch between functions such as data analysis, image generation, or web searches.
With this update, the tools are integrated so that, for example, you can ask ChatGPT to do image analysis, then search for additional information on the web and generate new images based on this further information. At the same time, it has also become possible to upload multiple document types and multiple documents at a time.
We have additionally noticed that ChatGPT has been updated with new data, and it appears that the latest data is from April 2023.
New article on viden.ai
Christian and Niels have written an article examining OpenAI’s proposal for using the language model in teaching. They have adaptedhe it to a Danish context, which has resulted in a pretty nice article.
In particular, we recommend that you try out the prompt they have developed yourself, as it contains a method to get ChatGPT to ask questions and collect information that it needs to process.
Read their exciting article here:
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Scientific Articles
In our research, we often come across new scientific articles and would like to highlight the most interesting ones.
This Week’s Recommendation
This week, we recommend listening to AI Denmark’s podcast, “Is AI a Climate Sinner?”
AI Denmark writes about the episode:
Therefore, we must, of course, focus on how we can streamline and save energy and reduce CO2 emissions as well – and this also applies to the Internet and the current explosion in the use of generative artificial intelligence.
It isn't easy to get exact figures without making a lot of estimates and assumptions. Still, despite the challenges, fortunately, many try to analyze the power consumption – hoping that it can also help to start streamlining and optimizing the large language models.
I have visited the studio of Kasper Groes Albin Ludvigsen, who has written several articles with estimates of how much electricity and CO2 the major language models cost.
Listen to the podcast here: