As part of the event series “DST Culture” Christopher Koska visited the German School in Toulouse. On April 2, he held an evening lecture on the topic “Ways to knowledge (in the Web)” and on April 3, he attended the classes 10-12 to discuss the opportunities and challenges of digital innovations in the field of education. Here, we included a hands-on-approach via the EEXCESS prototype.
After a brief introduction in the EU project, the students installed the chrome browser extension on the laptops, which were provided by their school. Step by step, technologies were discussed, which are necessary for a recommender system to provide context-sensitive educational content. To begin, we focused in particular on the opt-in for the collection of user data, which is often “clicked away” relatively carefree during the installation of commercial apps. We took a look at the active algorithm of the federated recommender that manages the content delivery of the different data sources and we explored the user interface which allows various settings to protect privacy.
In the final discussion issues were discussed, which had been prepared by the students with their class teachers. Many questions illustrated that the digital revolution is connected to legitimate fears that are not negotiable under the sign of effectiveness and efficiency.
We would like to thank Ms Diesterheft, Ms Self-Prédhumeau, Ms Bollin, Mr Merono, Mr Lenz, and all class teachers and students for the invitation and the fruitful exchange with the German School in Toulouse. We look forward to extending the exchange with schools to improve digital education, to define and sharpen media ethics issues, but also the value of cultural innovations.