Ana Farič, May 27, 2026

Introducing Gairdin to Future Teachers

On our February tour, we discovered an effective approach that has since become one of our favorite learning sequences. We first give participants a hands-on task of sorting gnomes, which intuitively leads them toward the idea of a classification tree. We then make the concept more concrete by moving on to the Animal Tree activity. Using a computer, we gradually add new animal species and observe how the classification tree is built and how the classification process works. This approach not only leads to a strong conceptual understanding but also creates a highly engaging atmosphere: participants enjoy coming up with different animals, exploring ways to produce surprising outcomes, and even trying to trick the computer with animals it cannot yet classify correctly.

This time, we brought the challenge to future teachers – students at the University of Maribor. To inspire them to use these approaches in their own teaching practice, we introduced them to selected parts of several activities. We began with our well-tested sequence: sorting gnomes and building a classification tree for animals. One of the participants caught us off guard with her feature suggestions: constant body temperature and has spawn. Based on previous workshops, we had come to expect more “typical” features, such as flies, has wings, or produces milk. Everything made sense, however, when she explained that she is a biology teacher. :)

We also presented the Climate Zones activity, in which students grouped climatographs of Asian cities. We showed them how the Recommender System, Candy Computer and other activities look like. We introduced them to our Gairdin website and briefly explained about Orange that is behind the computer-based parts.

We are optimistic that these students will try some of these activities in their own classrooms in the coming years. During the workshop, they actively engaged with the tasks and already began thinking about how to adapt similar approaches to other subject, such as chemistry.