Using digital story writing as a pedagogy to develop AI literacy among primary students

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Artificial intelligence (AI) literacy is widely recognized as a new set of competencies that people use AI effectively and ethically in everyday life. In K-12 education, educators have started to employ different pedagogical strategies to foster students' AI literacy. Using digital story writing (DSW) in the classroom is an effective inquiry-based pedagogical approach to address literacy development by improving language and technological abilities across disciplines. This study recruited 82 primary students in Hong Kong to attend a three-month DSW journey to learn AI and completed a knowledge test at the end of the program. Among the students, 16 best-achieving students were further invited to participate in artefact-based interviews, and we further analysed their work to understand how they formulate AI understandings. It is found that the participating students were able to propose an authentic scenario, apply their new knowledge of AI and think up meaningful AI-driven solutions in their digital stories. Furthermore, we examined students' DSW process in terms of inquiry-based pedagogical cycle (orientation, conceptualization, investigation, conclusion, discussion) to demonstrate how they learn AI. Overall, DSW as an inquiry could effectively foster students' AI literacy in using and applying AI knowledge to solve real-life problems, far beyond merely knowing and understanding related concepts. We suggest that using DSW as a pedagogy has the potential to support students to scaffold students’ AI understanding, particularly for young children.