---
title: "Planting the Seeds of AI: Datawhale's Volunteer Classes with Stepping Stones and Jiuqian"
authors: ["苏鹏","王瑞楠"]
language: "en"
archiveYear: "2024"
dateNote: "2024 volunteer education notes"
canonical: "https://www.darren-su.com/en/blog/ai-for-good-youth-classes"
description: "How Datawhale, Stepping Stones, and Jiuqian came together to offer six AI classes for young people, and what the experience taught us about unequal access to information and learning resources."
tags: ["AI for Good","Youth Education","Datawhale","Community"]
---

# Planting the Seeds of AI: Datawhale's Volunteer Classes with Stepping Stones and Jiuqian

How Datawhale, Stepping Stones, and Jiuqian came together to offer six AI classes for young people, and what the experience taught us about unequal access to information and learning resources.

*English translation of [the Chinese original](https://www.darren-su.com/zh/blog/ai-for-good-youth-classes).*

Datawhale is an open-source learning community focused on AI. Having worked with more than 40 universities, it has built up a wealth of high-quality learning materials. **Datawhale is now extending that mission to younger learners, helping resources reach them and sparking their interest in AI. If you would like to get involved, see the invitation at the end.**

By Su Peng and Wang Ruinan, members of Datawhale.

## How It Began

One day in July, I read a report about a volunteer teaching program. It made me wonder: with so much good AI content at Datawhale, could we also help younger students? I reached out to **Juepei**, whom I had met at the Pingxing Yuzhou conference. He had long been involved in accessibility and had started a project called Cishi Wushen (此时舞身), bringing people with and without disabilities together to learn and dance. He also knew many people working to help others.

![A conversation with Juepei about introducing AI to young learners](https://www.darren-su.com/blog/ai-for-good-youth-classes/image-01.png)

He immediately said yes and brought together a group of friends who were doing similar work.

![Partners forming a group to collaborate on AI and digital education](https://www.darren-su.com/blog/ai-for-good-youth-classes/image-02.png)

That was how I met Teddy from Stepping Stones (铺路石) and many wonderful teachers from different fields. Juepei, Teddy, and I met at Wu'ai Lixiang Tavern to talk about what we could do. Teddy mentioned that he was teaching students at Jiuqian and needed people with the right expertise to help with AI classes. We began preparing the course.

![A WeChat Moments post about meeting Teddy to discuss volunteer AI education](https://www.darren-su.com/blog/ai-for-good-youth-classes/image-03.png)

## Preparing and Teaching the Classes

We already had some introductory teaching materials, so we could build on those and add what this course needed. I posted a call for volunteers in Datawhale's Shanghai group, and several people quickly got in touch to say they wanted to help.

![A call for volunteer AI teachers in the Datawhale Shanghai group](https://www.darren-su.com/blog/ai-for-good-youth-classes/image-04.png)

We got to work. Yuqi, who would teach the first classes, put an enormous amount of effort into preparing **more than 10,000 Chinese characters of teaching material. 🤣**

![Yuqi sharing teaching materials and discussing the course outline](https://www.darren-su.com/blog/ai-for-good-youth-classes/image-05.png)

In the first few classes, Yuqi started with neurons. The children listened attentively and asked plenty of questions we had not expected.

![A teacher introducing AI to students gathered around a classroom table](https://www.darren-su.com/blog/ai-for-good-youth-classes/image-06.png)

In later sessions, Ruinan introduced the mathematics behind AI, using ideas from games to help the children understand.

![Explaining the mathematics behind AI through examples from games](https://www.darren-su.com/blog/ai-for-good-youth-classes/image-07.png)

Jiatong explained reinforcement learning and how AI had beaten the world's top Go player.

![A classroom introduction to how modern AI models work](https://www.darren-su.com/blog/ai-for-good-youth-classes/image-08.png)

I wrapped up the course by asking the students to work in groups to create a short story with AI, make an illustration for each part, and then tell their story to the class.

![Students presenting the stories and illustrations they created with AI](https://www.darren-su.com/blog/ai-for-good-youth-classes/image-09.png)

---

Much of what we covered was material the students would not normally encounter at school. In the first class, I asked whether they knew what a large AI model was and how many had used a product powered by one. Only two students raised their hands. It made me reflect on my own information bubble and the gap between my assumptions and reality. It also brought home just how unequal access to information and resources can be.

Some of the biology, mathematics, and reinforcement learning concepts we introduced would appear in their classes in later years. Others would not be covered at all during compulsory schooling. We hoped that encountering them early would make complicated ideas feel less intimidating when they came up in formal lessons, and perhaps give the students an encouraging sense of familiarity. Could that help them stay with their studies longer, or even discover something they truly loved?

## After the Course

The course is over. Just six short sessions. Can that really change anything? Can it make a difference for every student who attended? I do not know.

Perhaps, as with so much of Datawhale's work, **planting a seed in one person's mind is enough to hope for**. We wanted the children to see that the tools they use and the things they encounter in daily life are built on this knowledge.

![A partner's hopes for the future impact of the volunteer AI classes](https://www.darren-su.com/blog/ai-for-good-youth-classes/image-10.png)

I hope Wenrui's words come true, too. Do what is good, without demanding certainty about where it will lead.

My heartfelt thanks to Yuqi, Ruinan, and Jiatong for giving their time to prepare and teach these classes, and to Juepei and Teddy from Stepping Stones for bringing us together. I also have enormous respect for Jiuqian's founder, Zhang Yichao, whose work has changed the lives of so many students.

We plan to develop courses in AI literacy, AI programming, hands-on Coze projects, and AI robotics. We also intend to open-source the materials and combine online study groups, recorded lessons, and in-person classes to reach more people.

We are taking this opportunity to launch the **Datawhale Volunteer Group**. We welcome nonprofit organizations, volunteer teaching teams, schools, and individual volunteers to get in touch if you need AI course materials or teaching support.

Contact: Su Peng. WeChat: subranium.

---

The Chinese text was archived in full from the author's [public mdnice copy](https://www.mdnice.com/writing/652656e3b1114c018aa7065cc1b970a1), preserving the account, plans, and invitations as they stood when it was written. The original publication date has not been confirmed. The public copy's publication date reflects this archiving process, not when the article was written or first published. The archival changes were limited to heading levels, paragraph formatting, and image storage locations.