Stefania Druga
Date:
Speaker
Stefania Druga is currently a third-year Ph.D. candidate at the University of Washington Information School where she is advised by Professor Amy J. Ko. Her research focuses on AI Literacy and the design of new creative coding platforms for children and parents. She also enjoys designing and building future smart toys and games. She was previously a LEGO Papert Fellow during her time as a master’s student at MIT researching with Professor Mitch Resnick and the Scratch team. For more information, please have a look at her projects, papers, or resume.
Abstract
Children are now growing up with AI and we are slowly transitioning from a digital generation to an AI generation. Since 2017 Stefania has conducted research to explore how children interact with and make sense of the growing collection of “smart” inter-connected playthings in the world around them. Her findings uncover how children, as they play with these new devices, develop new ways of thinking about intelligence, emotion, and social interaction. She and her co-researchers also proposed guidelines and curriculum for teachers and parents to best support youth to engage in creative coding with AI. In this talk, Stefania will be findings from the most recent international studies they conducted and also presented their open-source education tools such as Cognimates and curriculum.
Papers covered during the talk
- How do children’s perceptions of machine intelligence change when training and coding smart programs? Druga, Stefania, and Ko, Amy J. Interaction Design for Children ACM 2021. (PDF)
- Family as a Third Space for AI Literacies: How do children and parents learn about AI together? Druga, Stefania, Christoph, Fee, and Ko, Amy J. CHI ’22: ACM Conference on Computer-Human Interaction 2022 (PDF)