With the robot and human race walking hand in hand down the aisle of technology,the world is preparing for a technologically oriented future. With a digital future awaiting us, it has become very essential to adapt to these constant changes around us. Taking the current scenario into consideration, the CBSE board and Intel had joined their forces to organize a three day AI readiness workshop, AITHON in various cities of India.
We, Aparna S J and Navya Suresh from grade 8 CMR NPS and Manya Jain and Nav Singhal from Ekya School ITPL, were given an opportunity to attend an Artificial Intelligence workshop held on 19th, 20th and 21st of June in JSS School, HSR Layout.
On arriving at the venue on the first day, we were greeted to a welcome ceremony that included an inspiring speech by the principal. Then, we were asked to introduce ourselves- after which we were distributed into groups. We really liked this as it was quite enriching to be in a group of people from grades 8-10 of various schools. Two people had come to Bangalore all the way from Tamil Nadu! After the initial introductions, we were made to sit in groups of three and were given a laptop.
Our instructor, Mr Akshay Chawla introduced us to the concepts of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML) and Deep Learning (DL). We then played a game called Kahoot to check our existing knowledge of Python and AI. After that, we learnt what an AI Project Cycle was and each level of the cycle was explained clearly with the help of examples from identifying a problem to evaluating and deploying a model or the solution for that problem. We further delved into this by taking the case study: Rising price of Napa Cabbage in Korea. As the workshop was eight hours long, there were breaks of 15 minutes every two hours to allow our brain to process the information. We played various board games and also discussed the 17 SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals) launched by the UN.
After that, we started with Python. We were asked to solve a worksheet on Jupyter Notebook where we had to answer the questions by writing codes. The concepts involved arithmetic operations, for loop and lists. These tasks were quite simple as we had studied these concepts beforehand, in our previous grades. Once everyone was done with these worksheets, we discussed the answers and moved on to the next topic. We ended that day by training an AI using Rule based approach (where you give the AI rules and data and it gives you answers) using Google Machine.com. The time seemed to fly by, as it often does when one is truly enjoying something. The first day of the workshop proved to be interactive and informative. Being introduced to the issues faced by people from different parts of the world not only helped us to recognise the field’s resourcefulness but also enhanced our problem solving skills.
On the second day, we discussed the various realms of AI through games:
We are glad that our school gave us the opportunity of attending this workshop. This has also inspired us to research on AI. We truly enjoyed the workshop, along with the scrumptious snacks and lunch given to us on all the three days. Our instructors were supportive and the workshop, on the whole, was really interactive. We look forward to other workshops like this in the future.
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