Students in northeastern Connecticut will be getting the chance to be the first in the state to take a new course about machine learning and artificial intelligence.
Nicholas Bousquet, a computer science teacher at Plainfield High School, will be leading a course called “STEM – Introduction to Machine Learning and AI”.
He hopes the course will interest students in future careers, since they are already familiar with ways these technologies are used every day — from algorithms on social media platforms, like TikTok, to Netflix and other streaming services, and even chatbot systems, like ChatGPT.
Bousquet said the school has already received national recognition for how and who they are teaching in computer sciences.
“Huge strides that we took in growing proportional representation in our classes,” Bousquet said. “More female students, more BIPOC students, more students with disabilities, who perhaps just needed an open door to discover the empowerment and creativity that computer labs should offer to all.”
Cheri Bortleson, Excel education program manager at Microsoft, which developed open source material used for the course, said the specialized curriculum introduces students to new concepts — including “Farm Beats For Students” to explore how we can harness this technology to grow our food.
“How we can help solve, you know, say, food production and world hunger issues by thinking about how we can get smarter on our farms and with food production,” Bortleson said. “So, thinking about how we can really educate this generation to be the most positive users and very aware of societal impacts of AI.”
Connecticut requires computer science to be offered by schools. Bousquet decided to augment the school’s existing computer science course to prepare students for what he believes they will face in the future.
About a dozen students grades 10-12 will take his course in the fall. He said it will be light on traditional computer coding and instead emphasize finding and understanding the difference between good and bad data.
