Our work in the Internet of Things has evolved organically in to interests in Data Science, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. 

Although we could anticipate this, we were - and remain - wary of falling in to what seem to be pervasively default conceptions of this field. To be blunt, Data Science and AI / Machine Learning (ML) are typically seen as the domain of mathematicians and (computer) scientists, despite the growing significance of digital humanities as a field. Likewise, at the school (K-12) level, Data Science and AI are often characterised as tools for analyzing student behaviour and performance. 

We are not satisfied with such characterisations.

In November 2023, i was invited as a panelist at Empowering Minds: A Round Table on Generative AI and Education in Asia-Pacific. The round table was organized by the UNESCO Multisectoral Regional Office in Bangkok (UNESCO Bangkok), in collaboration with The Southeast Asian Ministers of Education Organization (SEAMEO).

In 2021, we worked with some of our students to extend the conversation around Data Science, AI and Machine Learning further. We have tried to focus on potential applications for Data Science and AI to be used as tools for teaching and learning in the classroom, drawing on specific examples from the field of Humanities.

One of our projects is an idea for a History lesson (conceptualized by a student-teacher in History at the National Institute of Education, Singapore) in which a dataset of historical commercial voyages is visualised using the R programming language, in order to show the extent to which Singapore as a trading post in the 19th century was connected to other parts of the world. The student-teacher in question did not have a prior background in coding when she worked on this project.

A second example is an idea for poverty mapping in which several years of satellite imagery is analysed using trained Machine Learning models in order to identify patterns of development across regions and countries in Southeast Asia. This idea is being explored as a research project by a pair of Junior College (Senior High-level) students in Singapore, with a view towards making connections to the local Geography syllabus.

Third and fourth examples are elaborated upon here and here.

A fifth example is described in the video below.