VBS News Net: In eighth grade AI class, teachers from three different subjects conducted an innovative inter-disciplinary teaching to break the boundaries among subjects and develop creative thinking. Themed on 'speech recognition - how machines could recognise', teachers led students to explore the field of speech recognition.

Co-designed by AI teacher Ms Wu, Chinese teacher Ms Glora and Mathematics teacher Mr He, this inter-disciplinary lesson focused on core ideas such as 'integration', 'front-end', 'practice', 'experience' and turned abstract speech recognition analogy into the interactive games as students got to know the principles as they played the game. Students also had the chance to practise using the algorithms based on Python in Open AI MPU to ensure students could apply. 

Prior to the class, three teachers did extensive research on theses on 'speech recognition' before analysing and dissecting them. They also conducted discussions and preparation for every theory taught in the inter-disciplinary class in order to allow students to grasp mathematical principles behind speech recognition. 

'In this game, every single one of you will act as a phoneme...' guided by Ms Glora, students were excited to start the game 'guess whom I am'. Followed the guidance, students finished writing characteristics, guessing the personnel, reading phonemes and finding characters.

The game was fun but students had no clues about the reason behind it. Mr He explained the complex principles immediately after students had played all the game. He went through the game sections one by one and explored four procedures for speech recognition - characteristics retrieval, acoustic model, dictionary and language model. With the game experience, students could perceive these principles which were complicated at the first glance. 

Mr He also recommended the reading 'the beauty of Mathematics' which introduced the principles of AI. He concluded the lesson with learning technique - analogy, principles behind speech recognition and the significance of Mathematics in the AI era. 

Finally students also tried iFlytek speech recognition function online and used Python algorithms to apply it on Open AI MPU. 

Ms Wu also recommended neural networks application reading after the class on speech recognition since the algorithms could become more complex. But they had adequate knowledge to perceive traditional speech recognition process at the current level. 

Based on the philosophy 'Let our children experience the future', VBS initiated the compulsory elective AI class which had just been awarded the First Prize at the provincial level to conduct inter-disciplinary classes. This aimed to develop students' thinking, IT and creativity capabilities. This was just one of the innovations VBS had done and more curriculum innovation could be expected in future.

Students' reflections after the class 

Zeng Siyang: I was excited to have such classes last time as it offered variety to me which was fascinating. I could understand some complex ideas and learned a lot. 

Dou Weiwei: I had a better understanding on programmes and did not expect that we could do it too. This meant a lot to me and I wished I could have more lessons on this. Thanks teachers, I would work harder. 

Lai Junhong: In future, we would always apply past learning into real life in an inter-disciplinary method. VBS AI class had already achieved this step.

Shang Ziyang: In this learning, I understood the principles how computers searched key words and the strucuture of sound models. 

Xie Huiyi: It was a nice set up, the content was great. 

Wen Sihan: It was interesting to have an inter-disciplinary AI class which included question analysis from the perspectives of characters in Chinese and digits in Mathematics to computers dissecting sound. 

Author: Glora

Editor: Linda

Formatting: Judy

Translated by DC Lai