User:Dr Gilad Shamir/sandbox

Early Life and Education
Dr. Gilad Shamir is a distinguished researcher and consultant whose work in Technological Education focuses on advancing Artificial Intelligence and Computational Thinking in the educational sector. He was born in Israel on March 17th, 1972, and spent part of his childhood in the United States.

While working as a software engineer at one of the leading semiconductor companies in Israel, Dr. Shamir devoted time to volunteering as a teacher in an underprivileged students' school. Teaching children to program is where his passion for Technology education began.

When Dr. Shamir faced the different levels of his student's progress, he began developing learning materials for them to work on at their own pace in the classroom setting. This enabled him to assist those who required the most assistance. He called the educational material he developed U IN GAME because he created an initial game where children added their image to the main character. Over time, additional hi-tech volunteers were trained by Gilad and started using the U IN GAME materials and pedagogy.

Educational Background
He pursued his higher education journey with great determination. He completed his Bachelor's degree in Computer Science from the Open University of Israel in 2004, then his MBA from Haifa University in 2010, and later his Ph.D. from the Tel Aviv University in 2023 with the dissertation titled “Introducing Machine Learning in K-12 Education for the advancement of Computational Thinking”. There, he demonstrated an exceptional aptitude for students' problem-solving competencies, specifically Computational Thinking and the skills required to design technological systems based on Machine Learning, a form of Artificial Intelligence. This foundational education laid the groundwork for his future endeavors.

Career and Contributions
In parallel to his academic pursuits, he embarked on a fulfilling career path within the realm of Technological Education. He steadily established himself as an expert in the field, recognized for his innovative approaches to combining computational thinking in every subject taught in schools and assimilating AI into education. Accordingly, he was appointed the lead expert in the Computational Thinking Lab, created by the Ministry of Education of Israel, and invited to participate in numerous boards shaping the future of education in Israel. Among them are the following national boards: Reshaping Electronics Education in 2018, forming a new national curriculum for Hi-tech related subjects in 2021, and writing the first national educational AI policy in 2021.

Gilad Shamir's expertise has significantly contributed to the academic field through his four-year research project titled Exploring a Practical Implementation of Teaching Machine Learning in Elementary Schools. He developed a learning and research framework on computational thinking and machine learning alongside Prof. Ilya Levin who is a senior researcher at the Department of Mathematics, Science and Technology Education at Tel Aviv University and a member of the World ORT Academic Advisory Committee.

The framework pioneers a taxonomy for computational concepts, practices, and perspectives students learn when constructing artificial intelligence systems.

His work has enriched the academic landscape and impacted content learned in schools and educational policy.

Current Work and Impact
As of 2024, Gilad Shamir continues to be actively involved in technology education research and practice. He is a researcher at the Practical AI Research Institute, Ministry of Education, working on the national AI Policy. In addition, he is the manager of technology and innovation in the education department of the city of Nes Ziona. He manages the national space Olympiad of the Israeli space agency and continues to lead the advancement of the U IN GAME learning platform which served over the years over 20,000 students.

Publications
Shamir, G., & Levin, I. (2022). Teaching machine learning in elementary school. International Journal of Child-Computer Interaction, 31, 100415.‏

Shamir, G., & Levin, I. (2021). Neural Network Construction Practices in Elementary School. KI-Künstliche Intelligenz, 1-9.‏

Shamir, G., Wellner, G., & Levin, I. (2022). Postphenomenological studies of machine learning education in elementary school. In EDULEARN22 Proceedings (pp. 2704-2713). IATED.‏

Shamir, G., & Levin, I. (2021). Fostering Computational Thinking in Remote Learning Settings. In EDULEARN21 Proceedings (pp. 7565-7573). IATED.‏

Shamir, G., & Levin, I. (2020). Transformations of computational thinking practices in elementary school on the base of artificial intelligence technologies. In Proceedings of EDULEARN20 Conference (Vol. 6, p. 7th).‏

Shamir, G., Tsybulsky, D., & Levin, I. (2019). Introducing Computational Thinking Practices in Learning Science of Elementary Schools. InSITE 2019: Informing Science+ IT Education Conferences: Jerusalem (pp. 187-205).‏

Authorship of policy papers

Shamir G., et al., (2021). Recommendation for an artificial intelligence policy in education, Ministry of Education of Israel (Hebrew)

Shamir G., et al., (2021). Recommendation for a digital assessment policy in education, Ministry of Education of Israel (Hebrew)

Shamir G., et al., (2022). Artificial intelligence in education lab end of year summary, R&D department of the Ministry of Education of Israel (Hebrew)

PhD dissertation: Shamir G., (2023). Introducing machine learning in k-12 education for the advancement of Computational thinking. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.26482.68802

MA thesis: Shamir G., (2017). White box minds – a computational perspective assessment of 3rd grade students in a city-wide computational thinking project. DOI:  10.13140/RG.2.2.13690.06083