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Slovenia, 12th March 2024

The general idea behind the teacher training activities tested in the DALI4US project is to equip and empower teachers with the necessary skills and knowledge to integrate data exploration into different school subjects, so that they can successfully guide students in developing data literacy, with the help of Orange Data Mining as a hands-on tool.

In the first workshop tested with the international teachers in Laško, Janez Demšar showcased two learning scenarios focused on the machine learning technique of classification: the first activity fits into the school subject of Biology or Natural Sciences and is suitable for Grade 4 students (age 9-10), while the second one is suitable for Grade 6 or 7 students (age 11-12) and designed for Mathematics.

The activity loosely based on https://pumice.si/en/activities/zoo/ can be used for rounding up the learning about animal groups, as it gives students a thorough review of the characteristics of individual groups of animals, as well as those of individual animals. It demonstrates the workings of a basic machine learning algorithm, which helps students grasp the practical principles that underlie it.

In the second activity, based on https://pumice.si/en/activities/quadrilaterals/, the teachers tested a learning scenario designed for either revising or learning about different types of quadrilaterals and their different properties.

In the workshop, the teachers got familiar with Orange Data Mining and experimented in groups with data collection and preparation, data entry into an online form, building and explaining a decision tree with both correct and imperfect data, observing and analysing errors, pruning, and making predictions. They got to know how a simple algorithm is formed, and discussed the practical application of prediction models in fields such as medicine, marketing, pharmacy, and more.