Through her work with Adelaide University, Dr Caty Morris – with the Maths in Schools team – ran two workshops at the STEM Aboriginal Learner Congress in Adelaide this week. Taking place on Kaurna Country, the Congress is Australia’s biggest STEM event for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander learners! The workshops showcased First Nations Ranger groups across Australia, with a focus on Martu rangers caring for Country (used with the kind permission of, and acknowledging, Martu and Kanyirninpa Jukurrpa as IP and copyright owners of information used in the workshops) using a combination of Aboriginal knowledge and science, Western science, and cutting-edge technologies. In the workshop, students investigated data from animal observations recorded by a video camera. They took on the role of junior First Nations Rangers and researchers/scientists investigating an endangered Australian marsupial, the bilby, and used AI tools to represent data and to contribute their own ideas.
Image credit: Lyn Dyer and Toni Falusi, Maths in Schools project, Computer Science Education Research Group, Adelaide University