Reported By: Emily Zou
On August 18th, AYLUS Main Line hosted a free Day of AI camp at Tredyffrin Public Library. A total of five volunteer student tutors engaged 17 middle schoolers (Grades 5-8) across three districts in AI-based activities and programming lessons. The program ran from 9:30 AM to 4:30 PM and consisted of team-building activities, introductory lessons on AI, algorithms, datasets, data science and machine learning, experimentation with interactive AI applications, introductory lessons on Python and Google Colab, and two live machine learning model code demos. The goal for this program was to provide a gentle, yet high-level introduction to AI for the next generation for free and to supply the community with essential technical skills such as programming, debugging, critical thinking, and logical reasoning.
Preparation for this camp began a week before its inception, with in-person planning sessions taking place on August 12th and 15th and one virtual planning session on August 17th. 40% of the resources were supplied by MIT RAISE (Responsible AI for Social Empowerment and Education), and the other 60%, which consisted of hard coding and data science techniques such as Linear Regression, Random Forest and Artificial Neural Networks, was developed by the student tutors. This teaching experience was transformative for our student volunteers as they learned the virtues of compassion, patience, leadership, and initiative.
Volunteer Hours:
8/11: Emily Zou (3 hrs)
8/12: Emily Zou (2 hrs), Melissa Fan (2 hrs), Andrew Yao (2 hrs)
8/15: Emily Zou (2 hrs), Lily Jiang (2 hrs)
8/17: Emily Zou (2 hrs), Melissa Fan (2 hrs), Andrew Yao (2 hrs), Lily Jiang (2 hrs), Calvin Lai (1 hr)
8/18: Emily Zou (7 hrs), Lily Jiang (6 hrs), Melissa Fan (4 hrs), Andrew Yao (4 hrs), Calvin Lai (2 hrs)
Total Volunteer Hours:
Emily Zou (16 hrs), Lily Jiang (10 hrs), Melissa Fan (8 hrs), Andrew Yao (8 hrs), Calvin Lai (3 hrs)
