Following on from the UK leg of the AI teacher exchange project in November, Mrs Eadon, Teacher of German, was delighted to visit Frau Rhode in Recklinghausen, Germany, last week and shares her experience below. 

The goal of the week was to refine the research questions for the classroom-based inquiry projects, identify potential research gaps, and adjust methodology and lesson planning. Another focus was to integrate the perspective of the German education system more effectively for participating teachers from the UK.

To fit in with the class topic of images, we chose the following research question: “To what extent can the comparison of real and AI-generated photos heighten pupils’ awareness and their ability to question the authenticity of AI-generated images?

A class poll showed AI awareness to be high at the start of the lesson, but after further examination of photos and discussion of strategies to distinguish AI-generated images, confidence levels in a second poll were lower.

During a second lesson, pupils worked with Fobizz to write a detailed prompt in English to create the most accurate representation of a photo. 

Pupils responded positively to the lessons, with comments such as, “I am really glad that we were taught about AI” and  “I hope that we‘ll have more lessons similar to this” but also recognised caution in that  “AI adds unnecessary things”, “AI also makes mistakes”and ”I learned that AI is not perfect, but sometimes it's really hard to decide whether it is real or not”.

Other highlights of the week in Nordrhein-Westfalen included joining a teacher trainee seminar, where we discussed differences in the German and Scottish education systems and observing and participating in lessons.

My stay was rounded off with presentations of our projects at the district government in Münster. Other presentation topics included talking in a foreign language to a real person or a chatbot, grammar learning via traditional methods or AI or.