Kerala includes Artificial Intelligence (AI) in school textbooks. With the introduction of AI learning in the Information & Communication Technology ( ICT ) textbook of Class 7, over 4 lakh students in Kerala will become familiar with AI in the upcoming academic year.

One of the activities in the 'Computer Vision' chapter will involve students creating their own AI program that can recognize human facial expressions. This program will identify up to seven emotions on a person's face. It is the first time in India that all students in a class are getting an opportunity to learn AI uniformly.

The new Academic Year, which starts on June 3rd, 2024, will see new ICT textbooks for Classes 1, 3, 5, and 7 in Malayalam, English, Tamil, and Kannada. The curriculum framework emphasizes the development of children's critical thinking, analytical skills, and problem-solving abilities, which are essential for their holistic development. In this context, particular emphasis has been placed on developing logical thinking and programming skills in the ICT textbooks for the primary level.

"In Kerala, ICT is mandatory from classes 1 to 10. We integrate ICT skills with other subjects in the ICT textbooks to facilitate ICT-enabled education. Areas like cybersecurity, cyber laws, fake news, and fact-checking are also part of our ICT textbooks. The introduction of AI in Class 7 this year will help us delve deeper into these areas when we revise the ICT textbooks for classes 8, 9, and 10 in the coming year," says K.Anvar Sadath, the Chairman of the ICT Textbook Committee and also the CEO of KITE.

The textbooks introduce students to the PictoBlox package and the Scratch software, which teaches visual programming. It allows them to practice programming, artificial intelligence, robotics, etc. Kerala Infrastructure and Technology for Education (KITE), the technology arm of the Department of General Education, will make all the essential software for this available on the laptops deployed in schools.

The new ICT textbooks for Classes 1 and 3 include FOSS (Free and Open-Source Software) based educational applications such as GCompris, eduActiv8, OmniTux, and TuxPaint, which cover drawing, reading, language learning, numeracy, operations, and rhythm. In addition to these, applications developed by KITE, such as Traffic Signal, through which children learn about traffic rules, and Waste Challenge, which teaches waste disposal through gaming mode, are also included in the ICT textbook. Further, language labs will also be featured in the new books.

“The new ICT textbooks present practical ICT activities that nurture life skills while also helping in studying other subjects and providing guidance on cyber safety and fake news identification”, says K.Anvar Sadath.  

Furthermore, V.Sivankutty, Minister for General Education Dept, has already issued instructions to provide training to all Primary school teachers on the new ICT textbooks from June onwards. New ICT textbooks will be introduced for Classes 2, 4, 6, 8, 9, and 10 next academic year.

Source: KITE Kerala

Image source: COPILOT