Five Design Recommendations for Teaching Teenagers’ about

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

Marie-Monique Schaper Mariana Aki Tamashiro Rachel Charlotte Smith
mmschaper@cc.au.dk mariana@cc.au.dk rsmith@cc.au.dk
Aarhus University Aarhus University Aarhus University
Aarhus, Denmark Aarhus, Denmark Aarhus, Denmark

Maarten van Mechelen Ole Sejer Iversen

mvanmechelen@cc.au.dk oiversen@cc.au.dk
Aarhus University Aarhus University
Aarhus, Denmark Aarhus, Denmark

Figure 1: Workshop sessions: a) Intelligence Rating activity; b) Hands-on activity with a digital tool; c) Fictional Storyboard
activity
ABSTRACT
Technologies based on AI/ML are playing an increasingly promi-
nent role in teenagers’ everyday lives. Mirroring this trend is a con-
comitant interest in teaching young people about intelligent tech-
nologies. Whereas previous research in the field of Child–Computer
Interaction has proposed curriculum and learning activities that
describe what teenagers need to learn about AI/ML, there is still a
shortage of studies which specifically address teenager-centered
perspectives in the teaching of AI/ML. This paper presents a study
of teenagers’ everyday understanding of AI/ML technologies. Using
a thematic analysis of the teenagers’ own explanations during a
series of workshops, we present a conceptual map of the teenagers’
understandings of these technologies. We go on to propose five
general recommendations for the teaching of AI/ML to teenagers
through the lens of Computational Empowerment. Taken together,
these recommendations serve as a teenage-centered starting point
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https://doi.org/10.1145/3585088.3589366
for teaching young people about intelligent technologies, an ap-
proach that can be implemented in future research interventions
with similar objectives.
CCS CONCEPTS
• Human-centered computing → Empirical studies in HCI.
KEYWORDS
Machine Learning; Artificial Intelligence; Technology Education;
Learning Activities; Learning Tools; Participatory Design; Teenagers;
Computational Empowerment
ACM Reference Format:
Marie-Monique Schaper, Mariana Aki Tamashiro, Rachel Charlotte Smith,
Maarten van Mechelen, and Ole Sejer Iversen. 2023. Five Design Recommen-
dations for Teaching Teenagers’ about Artificial Intelligence and Machine
Learning. In Interaction Design and Children (IDC ’23), June 19–23, 2023,
Chicago, IL, USA. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 12 pages. https://doi.org/10.
1145/3585088.3589366
1 INTRODUCTION
This paper describes what it means to be a teenager in a digi-
tized world. Taking a teenager-centered perspective, we present
and illustrate teenagers’ understandings of and assumptions about
intelligent technologies. The intelligent technologies Artificial In-
telligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) are part of teenagers’

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IDC ’23, June 19–23, 2023, Chicago, IL, USA
everyday lives. Teenagers, in common with all users of these tech-
nologies, are using algorithms that process sensor data from our
devices and support advanced features of commonly used services.
It is of the greatest importance, however, that people understand
these technologies so that they can remain in control of the decision-
making processes related to their development, implementation,
and use. To achieve this, both adults and young people need to
become empowered through “being able to understand how the
technology may affect them, trust it and feel in control” [2]. In
recent years, international organizations that focus on children’s
rights, such as UNICEF [44] and the United Nations’ International
Telecommunication Union, have started to examine the ethical con-
siderations affecting young users of these intelligent technologies.
Policymakers have provided guidelines highlighting the impor-
tance of promoting children’s competencies in AI literacy, compe-
tencies capable of providing young people with meaningful skills
and experience in understanding AI systems, user interactions, and
outcomes. Further to this, the European Union’s ongoing Digital
Action Plan (2021–2027) foresees integrating AI and data-related
skills into the European Digital Competence Framework, with the
aim of empowering citizens to obtain a basic understanding of
emerging technologies and to enable them “to engage confidently,
critically and safely with them” [1].
This understanding of the urgency of empowerment has sparked
a growing interest in the field of technology education, in par-
ticular in teaching children and young people about intelligent
technologies [12, 32, 36, 47–49]. A new research field has opened
up in this area, comprising two main strands. First, a large body
of research is focused on supporting students’ understanding of
technical aspects of AI/ML with the aim of preparing students for
graduate studies and for work in the future computing industry
[3]. Second, Child–Computer Interaction (CCI) scholars have called
for research, as part of the agenda in K–12 education, on how to
engage students with the ethical considerations and societal im-
pact of intelligent technologies [8]. In this regard, Van Mechelen
et al.’s comprehensive literature review [47] recently highlighted
the shortage of research on the societal and ethical implications of
emerging technologies as a learning objective.
Starting from this research gap, we believe the first step to design-
ing learning activities for students is to develop an understanding
of students’ everyday conceptualization of intelligent technolo-
gies. Such an understanding would allow researchers and educators
to explore a number of different entry paths for learning and un-
derstanding which contextual aspects impact students’ learning
processes. Although some previous research has already explored
children’s attitudes to and opinions of various types of intelligent
technologies such as voice assistants [13, 14, 46], drones [20], social
robots [30, 33, 52] and educational robotics [28], most of these stud-
ies have focused on children’s general perceptions of the technical
features of intelligent technologies (e.g. [14, 53] and their attitudes
and opinions during their interaction with them (e.g. [30, 52]). A
few studies have limited their scope by focusing on specific con-
cerns around AI (e.g. children’s fears and hopes [28, 33]), while
some others have investigated children’s beliefs about the intelli-
gent technologies they are exposed to in everyday situations (e.g.
[20]). Even fewer of the research studies in this field have focused
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Schaper et al.
specifically on teenagers (i.e. 13- to 19-year-olds) and their under-
standing of the technical aspects and ethical-societal considerations
of intelligent technologies [16, 28]. Starting from this perspective,
our research aims to investigate how we can scaffold teenagers’
learning about AI/ML by building on their everyday understanding
of these technologies.
We present a series of workshops undertaken as part of a larger
research project on intelligent technologies in education [5, 36, 41].
This study engaged eleven Danish teenagers aged between 14 and
15 years in exploring their understanding of AI/ML technologies
through the lens of computational empowerment [24]. The goal of
the study was to use insights gained in the workshops to integrate
the teenagers’ perspectives and to address their knowledge gaps in
the development of learning activities and tools in formal education
contexts. We drew on our intention to scaffold Computational Em-
powerment in practice [36] to support children and young people
in making informed decisions about the role of technology in their
lives [24]. During the workshops, we employed several different
educational activities, namely (I) Semi-Structured Interviews; (II)
Rapid-Prototyping Future Devices; (III) Intelligence Rating; (IV)
Fictional Storyboarding.
Our analysis focused on the students’ utterances as expressed
during the workshop activities. This allowed us both to identify the
teenagers’ understanding of and to identify challenges in support-
ing their learning about intelligent technologies – their learning
not only about technological features, but also about the ethical
and societal implications of AI/ML technologies. On the basis of our
thematic analysis, we developed five general recommendations for
teaching AI/ML to teenagers: (1) Diversity in learning paths about
intelligent technologies; (2) Human intelligence as an entry point for
artificial intelligence; (3) Accessible technology as an opportunity
for sustainable engagement; (4) Empowerment of action-taking in a
digitalized society; (5) Reflection upon real-world dilemmas of intelli-
gent technologies as wicked problems. Based on these outcomes, we
provide two main contributions in this paper:
• A conceptual map of the teenagers’ everyday understanding
of AI/ML technologies
• Five design recommendations for learning activities and
tools of AI/ML technologies that can be implemented in
future research interventions with similar objectives
2 RELATED WORK
Our literature review in this section focuses on three research areas:
(1) the role of AI/ML technologies in students’ lives and education;
(2) researchers’ design recommendations for AI/ML learning activi-
ties and (3) exploring children’s understanding of AI/ML. Intelligent
technologies now permeate so many aspects of society that the need
to educate children about these technologies has become urgent
on the agenda of the K–12 school curriculum [43]. Technologies
such as AI and ML are predicted to have a profound impact on
society and our labor market, with close to half of society’s current
jobs in danger of radical transformation [25]. Numerous initiatives
have attempted to teach students about intelligent technologies,
but most have focused on how the technology works [47], rather
than (e.g. [5, 11, 35, 40, 41, 50] discussing with students how tech-
nology impacts the individual and society. Despite the importance
Five Design Recommendations for Teaching Teenagers’ about Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning
of these matters, van Mechelen et al. [47] stress that most of the
research studies in the field of technology education seem to add
humanistic reflections upon emerging technologies as merely an
“afterthought”, rather than making them an integral part of the
teaching activity.
There are a number of reasons for the paucity of initiatives
that attempt to address the ethical and societal implications of
intelligent technologies. First, most of the existing resources and
curricula focus on computational-driven learning goals [47], which
tends to influence educators to replicate those types of content and
goals. Second, the discussion of humanistic aspects of intelligent
technologies in educational contexts seems to be fairly new [47],
which means that not only teachers, but also researchers tend to
be unfamiliar with the strategies, themes, or vocabulary to sup-
port students’ understanding of emerging technologies [36]. Third,
increasing technological complexity and the non-transparency of
intelligent technologies make it harder for young people to grasp
their inner workings and their wider impact. This complexity and
difficulty may prevent young people from becoming empowered
agents in a data-driven society [10, 24]. These challenges highlight
the need for design recommendations for AI/ML learning activities
in K-12 education that are capable of integrating both technical and
humanistic aspects of intelligent technologies.
Design Recommendations for AI/ML learning activities
Several scholars have recently presented design recommendations
and guidelines for learning activities for AI/ML. Several of these
recommendations are distilled from literature reviews. For instance,
Long and Magerko’s [27] suggested several design considerations to
support AI developers and educators in generating learner-centered
AI. These design considerations were organized in a conceptual
framework based on five key concepts, namely What is AI?; What
can AI do?; How does AI work?; How should AI be used?; and How
do people perceive AI? Tedre et al. [42] highlighted potentials and
pitfalls in teaching about ML. Sanusi and Oyelere [34] proposed
strategies for teaching about ML based on active, participatory, and
design-oriented learning.
Other studies have presented exemplary learning activities and
tools that target teenagers. For instance, based on several years of
research, Clarke [9] proposed an AI curriculum for high-school stu-
dents to demystify the topic of AI, support students’ development of
topic-specific vocabulary, and feature discussions of moral and eth-
ical impacts of AI systems and usage. Vachovsky et al. [45] carried
out an AI Summer Program with tenth-grade female high-school
students, which focused on project-based learning. The program
combined the application of AI technical skills with humanitarian
purposes (e.g. health sector, natural disaster prevention). Wan et
al. [49] developed the SmileyCluster tool, a hands-on and collabo-
rative learning environment to support learning opportunities for
ML for high-school students (15–17y) with widely differing STEM
skills. Sperling and Lickerman [39] adapted academic material into
a software engineering curriculum specialized in ML/AI to meet
the needs of twelfth-grade high-school students.
A few scholars have worked with participatory approaches to
define learning activities for AI/ML. For instance, Touretzky et al.
[43] collaborated with AI experts to develop guidelines for learning
about AI in formal education, organizing them into four grade spans
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(K–2, 3–5, 6–8, and 9–12). Lin and Van Brummelen [26] organized
co-design workshops with teachers (6th to 12th grade) to identify
opportunities to integrate AI education into the K-12 curriculum.
Based on participatory practices conducted with teachers and re-
searchers, Schaper et al. [36] presented four educational principles
(Closeness, Embodied Learning, Design Process, Decoding) as a means
to scaffold teenagers’ development of Computational Empower-
ment. However, although some general recommendations have been
presented for teaching AI in K–12 education, most of these recom-
mendations do not take the age-specific needs and understanding of
teenagers into account. At the same time, it seems that exemplary
educational activities and tools for teenagers rarely include learning
content that focuses on the ethical and societal aspects of intelligent
technologies (e.g. [39, 49]). We argue that exploring teenagers’ under-
standings, misconceptions, and imaginaries can address these gaps
and can inform the design of education activities to address these
important themes.
Exploring children’s understanding of AI/ML Previous re-
search in the field of CCI has focused on understanding children’s
conceptualizations, with the goal of proposing design recommen-
dations for intelligent interfaces [53], voice assistants[53], voice-
assistants [13, 14, 46], smart toys [15], drones [20] and social robots
[33]. Many of these recommendations have focused on the design
characteristics of intelligent technologies for young users. For in-
stance, Woodward et al. [53] proposed design recommendations for
error detection and correction in speech, gesture, and writing, with
the aim of improving children’s (7–12y) user experience. Druga et
al. [14] analyzed children’s understanding (aged 3–10y) of voice as-
sistants, and suggested design considerations for future child–agent
interactions centering on around voice and prosody, interactive
engagement, and facilitating understanding. Other research studies
focused on the impact of social situations and relationships related
to intelligent technologies. In this regard, Gamboa [20] presented
design opportunities and took a critical stance on child-drone inter-
action based on her personal experience living with her family and
several intelligent devices during one year. Further, Rubegni et al.
[33] investigated how children’s (8–14y) hopes and fears with refer-
ence to social robots depended on social interactions and contextual
configurations.
Alternatively, some scholars have compared age-dependent dif-
ferences in conceptualizing intelligent technologies. For instance,
Druga et al. [15] investigated the differences between children’s
(4–10y) and parents’ interaction with smart devices, based on asking
them to make assumptions about the intelligence of mice, robots,
and their own intelligence in a maze-solving activity. In particular,
the children focused more often on sensory abilities and social-
emotional characteristics for the mouse and robot, referenced cog-
nitive abilities less often than their parents did, and tended to over-
estimate the capacity of the robot. Nguyen [29] observed that differ-
ent age groups have different perceptions of conversational agents.
Younger participants (12–13y) mostly perceived the agent as “more
competent, trustworthy, and sociable,” while older students (14–15y)
based their expectations on prior experience with these devices and
expected them to be knowledgeable about many diverse topics and
skills that went beyond the activity.
IDC ’23, June 19–23, 2023, Chicago, IL, USA
A further strand of research has focused on exploring children’s
conceptualizations of intelligent technologies in order to guide the
design of learning experiences that relate to their understanding.
For instance, Druga et al. [13] investigated children’s imaginaries
(7–12y) across four different countries (the United States, Germany,
Denmark, and Sweden) around smart devices and toys of the future
and their understanding of current AI technologies. Further, Druga
et al. [12] in their 4As framework, promoted a critical understand-
ing of AI by proposing a new approach to AI literacy for designers
and educators, with the goal of helping families to develop a critical
understanding of AI systems and their use. The framework con-
sidered how differently children (5–11y) perceived AI bias from
adults, and addressed the need for future tools and curricula related
to algorithmic justice to take this into account. Evangelista [17]
conducted a short survey with high-school students (14–17y) to
explore their conceptions of ML. The insights gained were used
to formulate a proposal for an introductory workshop to learn
about ML and to discuss the ethical issues involved, such as data
collection and privacy, transparency, manipulation, or failures. In
this regard, the authors emphasized the importance of addressing
the similarities and differences between ML and human learning.
Schaper and Ruiz [36] suggested design recommendations for in-
volving at-risk students (11-12y) in learning about AI in remote
contexts. Malinverni et al. [28] used the creation of stories and the
realization of audiovisual narratives to highlight differences in nu-
ances between the children’s (10–11y) and the teenagers’ (13–14y)
ways of constructing meaning for the notion “what a robot is and
what it can do”. Malinverni et al. also focused on the role of an-
thropomorphization of robots, on gender stereotypes, and on the
relationship between robots and violence. These studies provide
interesting insights that can help to guide children’s learning pro-
cess about AI/ML technologies. But there is still very little research
that investigates understandings of these intelligent technologies
among teenagers [17, 28, 29]. To address these challenges, our re-
search focused on participatory approaches to developing novel ways
of teaching and learning about intelligent technologies through the
lens of Computational Empowerment. Our study engaged a group of
Danish teenagers (14–15y) in exploring their everyday understanding
of AI/ML technologies. Our principal goal was to use the insights
gained as a starting point to develop the students’ understandings
of AI/ML technologies as they expressed them during the learning
activities.
3 METHOD
This study forms part of a larger research project called Computa-
tional Empowerment in Emerging Technology Education (CEED),
which focuses on investigating how to develop teaching activities
about emerging technologies for K–12 education. Using a partici-
patory design approach, working with teachers and students, we
have developed novel ways of teaching about emerging technolo-
gies. The project is a five-year ongoing collaboration involving
32 pioneer teachers and 52 schools in Aarhus municipalities in
Denmark. The smaller study presented in this paper feeds into the
larger research project by working with teenagers through the use
of participatory design techniques in the context of workshops. To
this end, the participatory techniques employed in this study were
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chosen as a means to research not only what to teach teenagers
about intelligent technologies, but also to define how they might
learn about these technologies. Thus, we used the activities as “a
different way of knowing” [19], expanding the research space by
engaging specifically with the teenagers’ own understanding of
these technologies. In this study, we conducted a series of work-
shops with eleven eighth-grade students aged 14–15 years (f=6;
m=5) from a Danish secondary school located in an urban area of
the city of Aarhus with a majority of high socio-economic families.
Each workshop lasted for two sessions and involved three to four
students. The students came from three different classes and were
recruited in collaboration with their teachers. The participating
students signed up for the workshops on a voluntary basis. Half
of the students had a special interest in learning about technology,
and all of them felt comfortable communicating in English with
the two primary researchers. Both the students and their parents
were provided with a consent form informing them about and ask-
ing for their agreement on data collection and dissemination. We
acknowledge that in this study we engaged only a small number
of participants in our workshop series. However, our goal was to
use the findings of the study as stepping stones to define design
recommendations for developing learning activities and tools in
future interventions within our over-arching research project. The
outcomes will lead to iterative refinements of the design recom-
mendations.
Procedure in Workshop Series The workshop series explored
the students’ everyday experiences and understanding of AI/ML
technologies by introducing them to basic technical features and
providing them with different ways of expression, e.g. verbal ex-
pression through writing, drawings, and the creation of physical
artifacts. The workshops took place in the school library and were
facilitated by the first two authors (f=2). The activities took place
in two sessions and were organized as follows.
The goals of session 1 were (I) to understand the imaginaries that
the students attributed to intelligent technologies; (II) to co-explore
students’ understanding through teaching them about the basic
technology fundamentals of intelligent technologies; (III) to under-
stand how they imagined the role of technology in their future lives.
The session lasted 90 minutes in total. Session 1 was structured into
three main parts, beginning with a semi-structured interview with
the students (10 minutes) about their general ideas related to the
concept of “intelligent technologies.” Here, we prompted students
with questions like Which kinds of technologies do you use? What
do you have at home or at school? We then showed the students
pictures of various different technologies and asked them to guess
if they represented an intelligent device/application, encouraging
them to explain the reasoning behind their answers. In the second
part of the session, we instructed the students in the activity AI
Bingo [31] (40 min) to start a conversation about what kind of AI
systems they use in their everyday lives. We aimed to provide them
with basic technical vocabulary about intelligent technologies, with
the aim of supporting their ability to describe their technical fea-
tures. To do this, we explained to them the difference between the
concepts of a data set, a learning algorithm, and prediction. We
then shared with them a sheet of A3 paper that showed a bingo
table with various concrete examples of data sets, algorithms, and
Five Design Recommendations for Teaching Teenagers’ about Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning
predictions. The students were asked to identify the prediction the
system was trying to make, along with the dataset it might use
to make that prediction. The final activity was a hands-on design
process about how the students might imagine future technologies
(40 minutes), with the aim of understanding which potential oppor-
tunities and risks the students associated with AI/ML. We, therefore,
provided them with low-tech crafting materials. The students were
instructed to first brainstorm and document their ideas through
drawings, then to create a rapid prototype. The students worked in
pairs. At the end of the session, each group briefly presented their
idea to the researchers.
The goals of session 2 were (I) to investigate how students con-
ceptualize the notion of “intelligent technologies”; (II) to deepen
the students’ understanding of intelligent technologies by explor-
ing a web-based ML tool; (III) to investigate their fears and hopes
about the impact of intelligent technologies in their everyday lives.
The session lasted for 80 minutes. First, we showed the students
printouts of pictures of various different technologies. The pur-
pose here was to establish which of these technologies (including
social robots, smart toys, and voice assistants) they had been in
contact with in their everyday lives. We asked them to arrange
the pictures on a horizontal scale from less (left) to most (right)
intelligent (Figure 1, left). and when they finished, we asked them
to explain the reasoning behind their choices. The activity took
20 minutes. Second, we introduced the students to the Teachable
Machine tool [21], a web application that allows the creation of
ML models, specifically image classifiers, without coding (40 min-
utes). We encouraged the students, in pairs, to explore the different
functionalities of the tool, using objects, drawings, or gestures as
input for the learning algorithms (Figure 1, middle). Each pair had
a laptop which they could use to run the software. At the end of
the activity, each pair explained what strategies they had used and
how the tool worked in relation to deciding on the input, training
the machine learning model, and checking the model’s prediction.
Third, we asked the students to imagine a future case scenario in
which birthday parties would be mediated by technology. We then
asked each of the pairs to produce one fictional storyboard (20
minutes) to represent their idea (Figure 1, right). The first pair was
instructed to describe a best-case scenario of the use of intelligent
technologies in everyday life, and the second pair focused on an
alternative worst-case scenario. Finally, each pair was encouraged
to explain their drawing.
Data Collection and Analysis Process We employed a the-
matic analysis to identify how the teenagers conceptualized the
AI/ML technologies. Specifically, we wanted to capture their un-
derstanding of their everyday interaction with these technologies,
their awareness of related societal and ethical implications, and
their future imaginaries. To this end, we analyzed the students’ ver-
bal expressions during the following activities: (I) Semi-Structured
Interviews; (II) Rapid-Prototyping Future Devices; (III) Intelligence
Rating; (IV) Fictional Storyboards carried out during three differ-
ent workshops with eleven (age=14–15y; f=6; m=5) teenagers. We
decided to focus on this selection of activities because each one
allowed the students to engage with the topics by expressing their
thoughts in various different ways (e.g. through verbal expressions,
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through drawing, through sorting images). In this regard, we as-
sumed that each activity might prompt a different range of aspects
of their understanding of intelligent technologies. Thematic anal-
ysis was used to interpret the qualitative data, as described by
Braun and Clarke [7] . First, to familiarize themselves with the
data, the authors transcribed the video recordings, read through
the transcripts, and noted down initial ideas. Second, the first and
second authors discussed the initial ideas and then coded all the
transcripts by applying one or more inductive conceptual categories
(e.g. student knowledge, misconceptions, fears and hopes) to the
data. To distinguish parts of the data, one or a few sentences were
coded in relation to the inductive categories. The coding process
was iterative and in ongoing dialog to the point where a common
agreement was defined on the categories and the corresponding
examples. Third, the first and second authors collated categories
into potential themes. Based on the research focus of how AI/ML
needs to be taught from the teenagers’ own perspectives, we induc-
tively identified ten individual codes, which we combined into four
core themes as follows: (1) Teenagers’ everyday interaction with
intelligent technologies; (2) Teenagers’ conceptualization of the
technical features of intelligent technologies; (3) Teenagers’ future
imaginaries about the use of intelligent technologies; (4) Teenagers’
awareness of ethical considerations and societal implications. These
themes were documented in a shared codebook. We synchronized
the extracted verbal expressions into one document and elaborated
a summary. Subsequently, we developed a conceptual map (Figure
2) which represents an overview of our findings.
4 RESULTS
The thematic analysis identified four core themes in the teenagers’
everyday experiences with intelligent technologies. In this section,
we first present an overview of the conceptual map that we devel-
oped based on our analysis. We then discuss each individual theme
and how it is supported by our data. The conceptual map illustrates
the details that follow. The boxes are the core themes and the sub-
lists in each box are the individual themes. We used these concepts,
based on the teenagers’ verbal expressions, to identify links and
relationships between the themes. In our data, the students talked
about their everyday interaction (T1) with AI/ML technologies.
We observed that topics close to teenagers’ everyday experiences
shaped their future imaginaries (T3) towards positive technology
views, and that these topics seem to support their learning about
ethical and societal impacts (T4). Specifically, the teenagers cre-
ated future imaginaries about AI/ML technologies that influenced
their understanding of societal risks. The teenagers’ conceptualiza-
tion (T2) of AI/ML technologies was based on two inputs – their
everyday interactions with these technologies, and the hands-on
activities that we employed during the study, which helped them
to better understand the nuances of technical features. The data
also showed that a lack of knowledge about the technical features
of these technologies influenced the teenagers’ understanding of
negative views of AI/ML technologies and their notion of intelli-
gence. In what follows, we discuss each core theme and subtheme
of the conceptual map in detail, with examples from our workshop
sessions.
IDC ’23, June 19–23, 2023, Chicago, IL, USA
Figure 2: A conceptual map about students’ understanding of AI/ML technologies
T1) Everyday interaction with intelligent technologies:
During the workshops, we aimed to understand teenagers’ everyday
interactions with intelligent technologies. This implied considering
the role of intelligent technologies in teenagers’ daily lives, their
motivation to use these technologies, and their accessibility. Role
in daily lives: The findings indicated that all students had their
own smartphone and computer at home, which they used to do
their homework and to play games. One female student explained
that she had an educational robot at home, but the family barely
used it. Most of the teenagers frequently used Google services and
social media platforms (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat,
TikTok). Further, they mentioned that they used social media plat-
forms in different ways. One student explained: “I think Instagram
is more serious. It’s more like selfies and coffees and stuff like that.
Well, TikTok, it’s for jokes. We just post like dances and random
stuff.” Two male students reported that they were “not on social
media” because they were conscious of the risk of misuse of their
private data. Some students were not familiar with the use of voice
assistants (e.g. Amazon Alexa) and smart toys (e.g. Hello Barbie).
Motivation to use: The teenagers’ motivation for using social
media platforms was driven by the desire to obtain information
about others (e.g. in Spotify, another peer’s taste in music). One stu-
dent stated that he would take a part in an online survey and provide
his private data if he received a financial reward. Two other female
students highlighted that they particularly enjoyed creative activi-
ties and tools that allowed them to create their own ideas. Three
male students stressed that they were very interested in coding,
and frequently explored different programming languages/tools
such as Scratch, Unity and Python.
Accessibility for learning: The students highlighted that some
technologies are often only accessible in school or in installations
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Schaper et al.
set up by educational collaborators (e.g. FabLabs, universities, com-
panies). These technologies are too expensive to buy for private use.
At the beginning of our workshop, one student mentioned her con-
cern that using these technologies would require specific training.
However, after the Teachable Machine activity, a web-based tool to
create machine learning models, most of the students reported pos-
itively on their experience. One of the girls stressed: “I don’t know
super much about computers, and I was very glad that you didn’t
make it really hard to understand because I was a little afraid that
you would just talk about how to program a game or something.”
Another boy said: “I personally now discovered this new program
(...) I found that it was easy to set up, and how fast it was. I thought
it would be something that would take ages, but it was not.” One
of the male students asked for further information to build on the
learning activities featured in the workshop. Specifically, he was in-
terested in exploring the software Adacraft, a program that would
recognize gestures and allow for combining them with Scratch-
based programming blocks. We had briefly mentioned this program
during our discussions with the students. Our findings suggest that
intelligent technologies, particularly social media platforms, play an
important role in the teenagers’ everyday lives. However, there are
technologies that they use less frequently (e.g. voice assistants, Hello
Barbie). The students reported differing preferences for engaging in
learning about these technologies, which spanned a wide range from
creative activities to in-depth coding activities. Interestingly, two of
the male students who were engaged in coding practices had made a
conscious decision not to use social media, because they did not want
other people to access their private data or have personal information
about them. Our attempt to engage the less experienced students with
an easily accessible “off-the-shelf” tool such as the Teachable Machine
triggered their interest and gave them self-confidence in their ability
Five Design Recommendations for Teaching Teenagers’ about Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning
to learn more about intelligent technologies.
T2) Conceptualization of technical features: One of our
goals for the workshops was to teach the teenagers about the tech-
nical features of intelligent technologies so as to convey an under-
standing of “what these technologies can do.” We focused in this
regard on the notion of the intelligence of technological devices and
applications, on the students’ knowledge about technical features,
and on their misconceptions about the functionality of intelligent
technologies. Notion of Intelligence: During the rating activity,
we observed three major trends related to the students’ notion of in-
telligence. First, the students rated technologies as more intelligent
according to the number of their components, because “we need
more AI to be able to control all the components. (...) The hospital
robot (...) has a lot of these features, it has the screen, it has voice
recognition and I think it has face recognition and it can recognize
walls.” In comparison, they regarded as less intelligent those tech-
nologies that were designed for small children with simple features,
as well as devices with simple built-in input and output systems
(e.g. a 3D printer, Microbits, robotic vacuum cleaners). For instance,
one student commented about a 3D printer: “I think it’s probably
not as smart as you think, because when you 3D print something
(...) you already made a 3D model. So it’s actually just like a printer,
but more advanced.”
Second, a further criterion for intelligence seemed to be if the
technology had human-like capabilities, e.g. if it used voice recogni-
tion and was able to control other devices. For instance, one group
considered Siri and Alexa as the most advanced. In this regard,
one student mentioned: “They can both recognize your voice, and
they can turn on lights in your house. I also think they can turn on
the oven. (...) And they have access to the entire internet, you can
say nearly anything to them and they will have an answer.” At the
same time, some students were not familiar with voice assistants
(e.g. Amazon Alexa) or smart toys (e.g. Hello Barbie). Therefore,
in the first round of the Intelligent Rating Activity, the students
placed these two technologies in the category of less intelligent
technologies. After we had explained their technical features, they
corrected their choices and placed “Hello Barbie” in the middle
of the rating meter and Amazon Alexa on the side of the highly
intelligent technologies.
Third, some students ranked Google and YouTube as less intelli-
gent than Siri, because they thought that these platforms could only
offer searching for content by text input, allowing communication
with others, and playing video content. Other students described
Pokemon Go, Snapchat and YouTube as “not so complicated” since
they did not use an algorithm to process data. Other students even
perceived microcontrollers as more intelligent than social media
platforms. For instance, one student stated: “We have a micro:bit
and this Mindstorm (...) They’re both pretty similar (...) they can
both be coded and the reason why it’s higher than Google, I would
say is because it needs to recognize what input you’re using, and it
can.” This example shows that the students’ notion of intelligence
related to technologies can be determined both by their everyday
experiences and by their knowledge of their functioning. Particu-
larly, technologies that they had used in maker activities in school
(e.g. microcontrollers, 3D printers) seemed to be easier for them to
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“decode” than those that they used in their everyday lives. Specifi-
cally, social media platforms have many hidden functions that were
not obvious to the students.
Knowledge about technical features: Three students had a
very deep understanding of the technical features of the technolo-
gies presented. Once again, these were those with a special interest
in programming. They were aware of the existence of algorithms in
social media platforms. In this regard, one student stated: “YouTube
and Google (...) have an algorithm that knows the things you search
for, like if you search for (...) or watch something on YouTube, it
chooses some videos to pop up on your front page that are recom-
mended for you.” Another student in the same group described the
functioning of intelligent AR technologies as follows: “Snapchat
and Pokemon (...) both use GPS and (...) put an overlay on your
screen/your camera.” They also used terms that showed some ad-
ditional knowledge: for instance, one student stressed that “the
micro:bit is not as powerful as a Raspberry Pie.” Before engaging
in the hands-on activities, the other students showed a very basic
understanding of what intelligent technologies can do (e.g. robots
can measure blood pressure). After the hands-on activities, they
expressed a more nuanced understanding of the functionalities of
technical features. For instance, after the Teachable Machine ac-
tivity, several students were able to troubleshoot technical issues
and improve their dataset for the model. One student said: “It could
recognize my hand, my face, or both. But it didn’t really work, be-
cause I had two different backgrounds.” Similarly, three girls looked
for a smooth surface in the room in order to reproduce the same
background to train their data set.
Misconceptions about technical features: During the Case
Scenario Drawing, several students showed misconceptions related
to the understanding of which technologies use ML. One student
assumed that every robot would use ML. He specifically described
it as “something that has mechanics in it.” One girl concluded that
devices connected to a computer (e.g. a surveillance camera) also
use the internet, and consequently ML algorithms. Three students
proposed a “CO2 converter” that could separate atoms by AI. They
explained that this would take away the need for humans “to do
anything”. In other words, they reduced the intelligent function
of the technology to automation processes. Our findings suggest
that the students ranked the intelligent technologies according to the
number of their components and the existence of human-like features.
Moreover, students with prior technology interests seemed to have a
deeper knowledge of the technical features of the technologies that we
discussed with them. The other students were quickly able to grasp
specific aspects of AI through the proposed hands-on activity, but they
presented general misconceptions about the difference between intelli-
gent and non-intelligent technologies. Intelligent technologies were
associated with the existence of mechanical components, computer
software, and automatization processes.
T3) Future Imaginaries: We also investigated the teenagers’ fu-
ture imaginaries about the use of intelligent technologies. To do
this we focused specifically on the utopian and dystopian views of
technology that the students expressed, and the hopes and fears
that were embedded in these scenarios.
Utopian View: Two groups presented a utopian view of tech-
nology when they explained their best-case scenario using the
IDC ’23, June 19–23, 2023, Chicago, IL, USA
Figure 3: Case Scenario Drawing activity: Storyboard portraying the best-and worst-case scenarios of the use of intelligent
technologies.
storyboard. The first example substituted a human interviewer
with a robot. The student made this choice with the idea that robots
should be installed in as many places as possible and that the num-
ber of survey participants should be increased accordingly. The
second group described how intelligent technologies could be used
to prevent climate change. As previously described, the group pro-
posed a CO2 converter into oxygen. The students explained: “All
the polar bears are now saved and they don’t die of drowning (...)
because it can split the particles from each other by AI, so we don’t
need to do anything.” Both examples illustrate how intelligent tech-
nologies can be used to undertake tasks that usually imply human
labor. Dystopian View: During the case scenario drawing activity,
two female students proposed a story about hackers who got ac-
cess to the security cameras of a house with the intent to kidnap
someone. They said: “The drawing shows a security camera which
was hacked by some guy, it could be like a kidnapper (...) then he
can track this girl and find out where she is (...) her exact position
through the security cameras (...) and then kidnap her.” Another
group described a story inspired by the case of Edward Snowden
(Figure 3, right): “I saw a movie about a CIA agent who discov-
ered that the people in the CIA could technically watch people
through the cameras. And here we have an example of a random
girl watching YouTube and a boy watching TV. Then we have this
guy watching through the webcam to see what they’re doing and
he tells it to somebody else, and gives some personal information
to other people.” Both examples point to the students’ dystopian
views of how intelligent technologies could be misused to obtain
sensitive data and information about others.
Hopes and Fears: Students’ hopes of intelligent technologies
were connected to the potential opportunities that they saw in them.
For instance, they hoped that authorities such as the police could
use people’s private data to track down criminals (Figure 3, left).
At the same time, they believed that robots and intelligent tech-
nologies could substitute and perform human tasks, which would
make processes faster and more efficient. In contrast, the students
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expressed several fears about how intelligent technologies could
impact their own or others’ lives. These fears were mainly related
to the lack of privacy and the misuse of data. For instance, one stu-
dent explained: “I think it’s kind of scary that Snapchat and other
devices can see where you are at all times if you have them on you.
Sometimes you think, okay I’m alone now, but you really aren’t. ”
Another student said: “It’s very scary that Siri is listening to you
when you’re not saying Siri. And I heard that the government is
recording from Siri. Like if in a situation that happens, and they
have to record what you’re saying, they’re using Siri to record.”
These comments illustrated that the students had the feeling of
being surveilled all the time. It also caused them anxiety that they
had no control over who could “listen to them” and access their pri-
vate data. Other students mentioned specific technical deficiencies
of intelligent technologies that would make their use unsecured.
For instance, one student explained: “If I had facial recognition
on my phone, and I had glasses then if another person took them
on, they would probably not come into my phone, but it would
put the percentage way higher than if he didn’t have my glasses
on.” Another fear among the students was that someone might be
accidentally identified as a murderer because of misinterpretations
of facial-recognition systems. Our findings show that the teenagers
expressed utopian views and hopes about how intelligent technologies
could help to detect criminals, connect people, and improve the effi-
ciency of technical processes. In contrast, the students’ dystopian views
and fears of intelligent technologies were related to public surveillance,
lack of privacy, and misuse of the technology.
T4) Awareness of ethical and societal implications: Another
goal of the workshops was to promote teenagers’ awareness of
the ethical considerations and societal implications of intelligent
technologies. We focused specifically on the risks and opportunities
of how intelligent technologies can impact society. We also doc-
umented whether the students discussed conflicts of interest and
ethical dilemmas provoked by one specific intelligent technology.
Five Design Recommendations for Teaching Teenagers’ about Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning
Risks of intelligent technologies: The students mentioned sev-
eral negative views of how intelligent technologies might negatively
impact society. One theme was the collection of private data. For
instance, one student highlighted: “Siri and Alexa are collecting the
voice and everything you say. Record everything, and when you’re
carrying your phone it has Siri on it.” Another student pointed out
risks in the social media tool Snapchat: “If the company wants to, it
can get most of the people on Snapchat, they have their birthdays
on there, their personal emails. And some people even use the same
password on most of their things, most of their accounts. So if they
wanted to, they could try to get into maybe a Google account, an
email. And then maybe they could see a lot of personal information
on that.” One student stated that he decided not to use any social
media platforms because he was aware of the implications for his
private data. In contrast, another student stated that he was aware
of the possible loss of privacy in relation to social media, but that
he would not go so far as to change his behavior. He explained: “I
don’t like being recorded and all of that. But I won’t give up social
media because of it. (...) I already think that they know so much
about me, so it doesn’t make any sense to stop.” This example may
point toward teenagers’ feelings of “being powerless” in a digitized
society and their lack of tools and abilities to protect their own
private data from misuse. In addition, two students changed their
perspective on the use of “Hello Barbie” when they were informed
about its features. After the explanation, they stated that they found
it “scary” that their private data was recorded and that they would
never consider playing with it. These examples highlight that the
students were conscious of the ethical and societal implications
related to social media platforms and voice assistants, but to a lesser
extent with regard to devices they were not familiar with (e.g. smart
toys). Several students also showed critical reflections on the im-
plications for themselves, as well as reluctance to use devices that
would record their personal data.
Opportunities for intelligent technologies: Several students
highlighted positive opportunities or ways in which intelligent
technologies could impact society. During the prototyping activity,
several students presented ideas for intelligent vehicles and devices
(e.g. drones, flying cars) and stressed how products and people
could be transported faster with those. Further, in the fictional sto-
ryboard, one group proposed an AI system that could contribute
to preventing climate change. Another group stressed that voice
recordings from Alexa could be used to prevent domestic violence.
Other students mentioned the potential of intelligent technologies
to connect people. During the prototyping activity, they designed
an intelligent pin that could be used at parties to socialize with
other teenagers with the same interests. In this regard, a student
explained: “It really depends on your situation, or what you want
to do with this information. Because when I date the person then
sure, it’s good to know what their favorite music is, yeah, but if you
like to tag them, it could also be useful.” This example highlights
how the provision of personal information and the scope for con-
necting people offered by social media platforms are very relevant
to teenagers’ everyday lives.
Awareness of Dilemmas: During the Fictional Storyboard activity,
one group proposed a story in which Alexa “witnessed” a crime
and the police could use the recording as evidence. This example
touched on a real-world dilemma – the legal and ethical debate on
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the use of private data from smart speakers – and on the teenagers’
beliefs on how their own data should be used. In another group,
the students described a story in which users received financial
remuneration for giving away their private data. The student ex-
plained: “It is about a guy and he just walks somewhere. And he
sees this ATM where it says free cash. And then an intelligent robot
appears which says ‘Hello, I am RG1O2 and I am going to give you
free cash. First, you need to answer my questions.’ So it is like a
robot asking you a question and then you have to answer it. For
example, a company that made a quiz or something doing research
and then they give out free cash.” This story shows the potential
conflict of interest between technology users and other stakehold-
ers. Further discussion of both examples revealed that the students
were not conscious of the dilemmas and that deeper engagement
would be required to support their capacity to critically reflect upon
the conflict of interests between stakeholders. Our findings show
that the students were capable of articulating both potential risks and
opportunities for intelligent technologies. They also showed signs of
ability to critically reflect upon the ethical and societal implications of
those intelligent technologies they were familiar with. In contrast, we
observed that the students were not able to detect ethical dilemmas.
Some students also seemed to lack strategies or tools to protect their
private data against technology companies.
5 DISCUSSION
This study aimed to investigate how we can scaffold teenagers’
learning about AI/ML by building on their everyday understanding
of these technologies. Consistent with prior research, our study
confirms that teenagers build their understanding of AI/ML on their
existing knowledge of technical features and the implications for
people [36]. We also observed a tendency to understand intelligent
technologies through an anthropomorphic perspective [28, 33, 51],
and that the students’ fears and hopes related were dependent on
situated contexts [33]. Our study goes beyond prior work by iden-
tifying relationships in the conceptual map and illustrating how an
interplay of these aspects influenced the teenagers’ understanding
of AI/ML technologies (Figure 2). In addition, we propose five de-
sign recommendations for learning activities and tools for AI/ML
technologies. These recommendations were developed based on
the themes described in the results. These recommendations are
intended to support teenagers’ critical reflection about technical
features and their societal implications, and to empower them in
becoming informed and responsible users in a digitized society [24].
Our findings point towards the need for educational strategies that
embrace (1) Diversity in learning paths about intelligent technologies
(2) Human intelligence as an entry point for artificial intelligence; (3)
Accessible technology as an opportunity for sustainable engagement;
(4) Empowerment of action-taking in a digitalized society; and (5)
Reflection upon real-world dilemmas of intelligent technologies as
wicked problems. We focus our discussion on these five design
recommendations for education activities and possible future direc-
tions. To illustrate how the recommendations unfolded through the
thematic analysis, we also refer in the descriptions to the theme
numbers (T1–4) and to the subtheme titles.
1) Diversity in learning paths about intelligent technologies:
IDC ’23, June 19–23, 2023, Chicago, IL, USA
The first design recommendation focuses on the need to provide stu-
dents with a spectrum of different types of activities, ranging from
creative exploration to concrete exercises intended to foster learn-
ing about the technical features of AI/ML. Our findings revealed
that whereas several students were keen on coding and exploring
different programming languages and digital, other teenagers par-
ticularly enjoyed creative activities and tools that allowed them
to create their own ideas (T1: Motivation to use). In this regard,
Wan et al. [49] called for more learning opportunities about ML for
students with diverse STEM skills. Similarly, Smith at al. [38] recom-
mended that scholars and educational practitioners should explore
new educational strategies to engage students who initially seem
less motivated or interested in learning about digital technology
and its implications, suggesting that such students might quickly
become engaged. Interestingly, prior work often seems to focus
on exploring new educational strategies in diverse contexts, for
example as part of after-school activities or involving students who
are interested in technology per se (e.g. [45, 54]). We would argue,
however, that rather than concentrating on technology-interested
students, future research needs to explore inclusive approaches in
education that embrace a broader spectrum of students’ learning
paths in formal education.
2) Human intelligence as an entry point for artificial intel-
ligence: The second design recommendation focuses on the need to
introduce the notion of intelligence from a humanistic perspective,
e.g. to discuss different types of intelligence and their differences,
before introducing the technical features. In our study, we observed
that the teenagers rated as highly intelligent those technologies
with human-like abilities of speech, voice recognition, and the abil-
ity to control other devices (T2: Notion of intelligence). However,
even though human-like aspects can sometimes be a proxy for
intelligence (e.g.: humanoid robots like Nadine and Sophia), the
correlation is not reliable in all cases, and this may be confusing to
some students. Therefore, using a more familiar concept (human
intelligence) and comparing it to a more unfamiliar one (artificial
intelligence) may be a promising strategy for avoiding student
misconceptions regarding intelligent technologies. For some other
students, the notion of intelligence was also associated with a larger
number of features and higher complexity of the devices. These
results indicate that the teenagers focused on technical features
when ranking the degree of intelligence of the various technologies.
This finding is consistent with approaches in previous work aiming
to investigate children’s understanding of intelligent technologies
[28, 33, 51]. Further, Wan et al. [49] stressed how a basic under-
standing of how ML works may make teenagers more attentive to
the ethical aspects of AI. Other scholars have stressed that students
particularly need to learn about the limitations of ML algorithms
in comparison to human learning [16]. Despite the relevance of
such prior work, many research projects still primarily focus on the
technical features of intelligent technologies [47]. Future directions
need to have a stronger focus on human-centered approaches to
intelligent technologies. Inspirational examples can be found in
learning activities and tools related to ethical dilemmas and tech-
nologies [6, 11, 35].
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3) Accessible technology as an opportunity for sustain-
able engagement: The third design recommendation concerns
the need to provide learning materials that are sustainable over
time and that can promote a long-term engagement of the students
with these technologies. In our study, the students reported that
the technologies used in school, such as projects with collaborat-
ing partners (e.g. FabLab maker spaces, the university, companies,
etc.), were not accessible to them outside the school context (T1:
Accessibilityfor learning ). Much previous work has discussed the
need for sustainable practices to maintain and scale [18, 23, 37]
teaching approaches through the creation of suitable resources and
infrastructures. We believe that the sustainability of student engage-
ment needs to go beyond the classroom setting. Learning activities
need to be engaging for students just as they are, i.e. they need to
motivate them to explore AI/ML technologies. One possible way
of addressing this challenge could be to use “off-the-shelf,” open-
ended technologies, i.e. tools that are easily available to students
in out-of-the-classroom contexts and that support the exploration
of different technological features in multiple ways. For instance,
during our study, we introduced the Teachable Machine tool and
gave students the freedom to use any kind of material to test out
image-recognition features (T2: Knowledge about technical features).
After some time, the students started exploring the tool with the
materials they had in hand. The students’ exploration turned into
a lively music performance, using candies, faces, and gestures as
inputs and sounds as outputs. At the end of the workshop, several
students reported that using the digital tool was easier than they
had expected and asked for additional information about using
“off-the-shelf” technologies in their spare time. This example shows
how open-ended activity with free accessible tools (e.g. Teachable
Machine, Dance with AI, Adacraft, Scratch Lab) may allow students
to engage with intelligent technologies in their own ways and mo-
tivate them for further use.
4) Empowerment of action-taking in a digitalized world:
The fourth design recommendation focuses on the need to support
teenagers’ ability to take action against the misuse of their personal
data. In our study, most of the students were aware that social
media platforms collected and stored their personal data. In this
regard, they expressed fears about privacy issues, misuse of data,
and the technical deficiencies of intelligent technologies (T4: hopes
and fears). One student in particular stressed being “powerless”
against those companies which hold on to his data (T3: risks of in-
telligent technologies). In this regard, the agenda of Computational
Empowerment foresees the development of students’ digital design
literacy to promote active citizenship for all children [24]. This goal
not only addresses providing students with knowledge about intel-
ligent technologies, but also addresses providing them with tools to
take responsible action in a digitized society. For instance, Yu et al.
[54] proposed civic programs to engage young people in cases of
socio-political injustice. In addition, several scholars have reported
on legal and conceptual approaches to protect privacy in a data-
driven society [22]. These, however, mainly target adults, which
points to a research gap in age-appropriate tools for teenagers and
in enabling them to protect their individual rights as users and
consumers of intelligent technologies.
Five Design Recommendations for Teaching Teenagers’ about Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning
5) Reflection on real-world dilemmas of intelligent tech-
nologies as wicked problems: The fifth design recommendation
focuses on the need to support teenagers’ reflections upon the real-
world dilemmas of intelligent technologies as conflicts of interest
between stakeholders. In this regard, we specifically focus on the
concept of wicked problems, i.e. conflicts of interest with many
interdependent factors which probably make them unsolvable. Our
findings showed that the students were not conscious of the poten-
tial dilemmas inherent in what they presented in their storyboards
– for instance, of the legal and individual rights of data collected
by voice assistants (T3: awareness of dilemmas). Previous research
has presented the use of activities and tools to support a critical
reflection upon conflict of interests between different stakeholders,
e.g. cards [4, 6, 36], cultural traditions as prompts [35] and matrix
exercises [11] to support a critical reflection upon conflict of inter-
ests between different stakeholders. However, previous work has
shown challenges in addressing teenagers’ knowledge gaps about
which are the potential technology stakeholders [36] and nuances
in ethical decision-making (i.e. who will benefit or be harmed by
the system) [11]. Future research may investigate suitable examples
of dilemmas that teenagers find easy to understand and are close
to their everyday experiences with intelligent technologies.
Summarizing, we argue that implementing these five design
recommendations in conjunction can lead to the unfolding of the
full potential of educational activities and tools that can support
teenagers’ learning experiences of AI/ML technologies in formal
education. Specifically, we believe that the design recommenda-
tions can open the path for Computational Empowerment [24] of
teenagers by building up their understanding of intelligent tech-
nologies and of their own agency in a digitized society. Together,
the recommendations serve as a teenage-centered starting point
for engaging young people in learning about intelligent technolo-
gies. However, it is important to acknowledge that our study was
conducted in a school context involving families from high socio-
economic backgrounds. Further, we looked only at the specific age
range of teenagers aged between 14 and 15. In future work, we will
employ, iterate and refine these design recommendations in the con-
text of multiple research interventions. We encourage researchers
in the IDC community to explore these design recommendations
to guide the development of learning activities for teenagers in
diverse socio-economic contexts, with different age ranges, and
across cultures.
6 SELECTION AND PARTICIPATION OF
CHILDREN
This study forms part of a larger research project which is a part of
a five-year ongoing collaboration involving 32 pioneer teachers and
52 schools in Denmark. Through workshop sessions with school
teachers and students, we developed teaching activities with the
aim of educating teenagers about emerging technologies from a
teenage-centered perspective as well as from the perspectives of
their teachers. The students in this study came from three different
classes of Danish public schools and were recruited in collaboration
with their teachers. Both students and their parents were provided
with a consent form informing them about and asking for their
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agreement on data collection and dissemination. The participating
students signed up for the workshops on a voluntary basis.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This work is part of a five-year research project called CEED (Com-
putational Empowerment for Emerging Technologies in Education),
exploring and building new practices of computational empower-
ment for emerging technologies in Danish secondary education
through a cross-disciplinary approach between computer science,
humanities, and engineering. The CEED project is funded by the
Villum Foundation under grant number 28831.
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