Our team spent the days between the 13th to the 15th of March in Laško, Slovenia, where we tested our teacher training workshops with a group of teachers from Slovenia, Ireland, and Luxembourg. The workshops were part of the DALI4US Erasmus+ project, and were followed by project meetings.

The teachers got to know some basic methods of data exploration and machine learning: hierarchical clustering, classification trees, and logistic regression. We also gave them a brief overview of neural networks and how they are used to analyse images, along with some other related concepts.

The workshops were designed to actively engage the teachers. We intentionally organised them in such a way that they didn’t just sit back and listen to us speaking, but were asked to simultaneously test out what they were hearing. One segment was also arranged for the teachers to independendly study the material prepared for them in advance and answer related questions – which of course required them to not only understand what they had read, but to also know how to use the method they had just learned about. Quite a lot of new material was prepared for that activity. If you’re interested, you can find it at https://notes.biolab.si/series/dali4us-lasko.

The teachers also had to collect some data on their own – we introduced them to decision trees with an example of an activity that was based on the quadrilaterals lesson, while the last activity, which tied together all the previous ones, was illustrated with an example of a brand new lesson on the topic of typical traditional houses from different geographical regions of Slovenia. Up until the Laško workshop, we typically used Google forms to enter data, which turned out to not be the most user-friendly and practical solution. So, just before the workshop, we developed a new website, which teachers can now use to enter data in the various activities presented on Pumice.

Key takeaways? Optimistically-pessimistic. We’re happy to say we got positive feedback from the teachers. They liked the workshop – but on the other hand, a two-day workshop, no matter how intense, is simply not enough to provide teachers with enough autonomy and confidence to be able to start an activity like the ones presented here in class without anxiously worrying where the students’ questions will lead to and where the lesson will end up going. The essence of the activites we develop in this project is data exploration, which – by definition, is open-ended, leading students wherever the inquiry takes them. Therefore, it’s crucial that the teacher is adaptable, reacting to and engaging with the students’ questions, as well as being ready to steer the activity outside and beyond the initial plans or expectations envisioned the night before. That, however, requires a lot more than just two days of intense workshops. To avoid ending on too pessimistic a note: there is no doubt the teachers took away a lot, and we as facilitators were similarly filled with new creative energy and inspired with new ideas.