Artificial intelligence (AI) has very quickly spread into every part of modern life, and perhaps most of all into education.
At “9. maj” High School in Niš, the arrival of AI tools was met with scepticism and mistrust, says Anica Tričković, who teaches computer science subjects at the school. To make artificial intelligence easier to understand for her colleagues and students, she designed the project “AI in the Air”, carried out through eTwinning, a European Commission programme that is part of Erasmus+. The Niš school worked with schools from Portugal, Türkiye, Georgia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Working in international teams, students researched what artificial intelligence is and where it can be found, and presented their findings using digital tools.
“Once the students realised that artificial intelligence was being used to suggest new content or friends on platforms like YouTube, they already felt better about it. They saw there was nothing scary about it and that trying it out would not bring about the end of the world.”
The project received national and European quality labels and was named the best national eTwinning project in the secondary school category in Serbia for 2022/2023.
In the same school year, the school ran “Smart Cities” with partners from Portugal, Türkiye, Armenia, Georgia, Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. The question was what makes a city smart, which cities around the world really are smart, and whether our cities meet those criteria. The result was a digital magazine, and the project also received a national quality label.
The third project, “Be well with AI”, brought together schools from nine European countries and shifted the focus from technology to the students themselves. It explored whether artificial intelligence can help students feel better and improve their mental health.
Students created avatars from text descriptions, put together a glossary of emotions with examples from art, used AI to rework famous artworks so they convey a different emotion, made infographics on mental health and coping with stress, built chatbots on wellbeing and STEAM subjects, and set up virtual poster galleries. The project left behind digital galleries, chatbots and an e-magazine, as well as national and European quality labels.
That same year, “9. maj” High School was also awarded the eTwinning School Label, which is given to a whole school rather than a single project. As Anica Tričković explains, it cannot be won through the work of one teacher alone.
“You get it after filling in a questionnaire and preparing documentation showing that we use the most modern teaching methods, that we work together, that we bring innovation into the school, and that we take care of the ethical side of using technology in general, not just artificial intelligence.”
In everyday teaching, this is most visible in assessment. Criteria are set in advance, and artificial intelligence can be used for advice on the topic of a paper and the direction of the research, but not to write the paper.
“The rest has to come from the student,” she says. “They must put the results of their research into their own words, and in group work they must explain what it is about with solid arguments, so it is clear they haven’t just copied ideas and sentences.” Students accept these new criteria without resistance, she adds.
According to her, students are not particularly excited about any of this.
“I think they’re already used to it. They are growing up with artificial intelligence, it’s all around them. Unlike us, for whom this is a new reality, for them it’s the reality they already live in.”
eTwinning is part of the Erasmus+ programme and is run by the European Commission. Serbia has taken part since 2015, coordinated by the Tempus Foundation.
Find out more on the EU Mogućnosti platform.