A decade on – Estonia’s ProgeTiger is gearing up to teach AI to students

August 15, 2023

by Justin Petrone

For ten years, an Estonian program called ProgeTiger has taught students from the earliest ages about programming and robotics while nurturing a cadre of educators to help them along the way. Though technology has changed rapidly over the past decade, program leaders and associates maintain that they are constantly making improvements that will see ProgeTiger achieve its objectives for years to come.

“Artificial intelligence is here to stay, and the education system must adapt accordingly,” says Kirke Kasari, ProgeTiger’s program manager. 

She notes that AI has been included in the program’s educational materials for several years, and relevant topics have been discussed in program workshops. Since AI has received more attention over the past year, it has been focused on more in ProgeTiger.

Starting this fall, Kasari said that ProgeTiger would organise several “bite-sized learning materials,” such as videos with interactive elements, for students around AI, centred around topics such as how AI is changing education, how artificial intelligence helps scientists and the ethical dilemmas of artificial intelligence. 

“The goal of both the educational materials created by us and the education system, in general, should be to explain the risks of artificial intelligence to students,” says Kasari, “but at the same time guide them to coexist with AI successfully.”

Constant development

ProgeTiger has existed since 2012 and has always familiarised Estonian students with new technology, from kindergarten through high school. Fostering a network of educators who could teach compellingly programming, robotics, and associated topics to children has also been a goal. The program has prepared curriculum materials from the get-go and sought to teach programming using Blue-Bot, LEGO, Dash and Dot, and other robots. The program has been a success, but it quickly outgrew its narrow focus on creating instructional materials. 

For the past five years, for example, ProgeTiger has organised a student event to raise interest in technology. In these annual events, students can challenge themselves by solving tasks on programming, robotics, digital art, and safety during their studies or in an extracurricular hobby group. 

More than 50,000 students have participated in these events since their inception, and as of 2023, almost all educational institutions have participated in ProgeTiger’s activities. With such widespread adoption, there is a great responsibility to deliver, Kasari notes, and ProgeTiger has worked to build up a network of educators, universities, and other organizations that can pool expertise to improve the program.

This has led to improvements in program materials and outreach and a more deeply informed effort. “In technology education, it is especially important always to be one or two steps ahead,” says Kasari. 

Customised solutions 

In the future, ProgeTiger would also like to create materials tailored to different educational groups.

“If technology education is dealt with in schools today at a very different level, we hope that in the future, every student, regardless of their location, will have access to high-quality IT education,” says Kasari.

Since its inception, ProgeTiger has been financed through the Ministry of Education and Research and the EU via the European Social Fund. According to Kasari, the current financing period for the program is drawing to a close, and ProgeTiger will now begin a second period. The program has also ordered an impact study to understand its impact on IT education and knowledge, which it will use to inform future activities. This fall, ProgeTiger will continue its work to direct students toward an IT education.

“We are ending the current program while preparing for a new one,” remarks Kasari. “Our financial model will change next year, but our activities will continue.”

The trajectory only seems to be up. Kasari notes that the COVID-19 pandemic also impacted how ProgeTiger was received by Estonian educators. While some teachers were sceptical about the need for IT education for young students — who already spent perhaps too much time engaging with smartphones, for example — the pandemic proved that having IT skills in an era of remote work and education was necessary. 

Building on this increased interest, Kasari hopes that IT education will be mandated in schools in a few years. She also hopes that more informatics and physics teachers will enter the workforce and join the ProgeTiger network.

Teaching critical thinking hand in hand with technology

Kristi Salum is an educational technologist at Gustav Adolf Grammar School in Tallinn and previously served as a program manager for ProgeTiger. She has seen the program develop over the past decade and, like Kasari, has been impressed by its growth in scope. 

“At the start, this program was a kind of coincidence,” Salum says. “There was an idea to work with some teachers and schools and to develop materials for programming and robotics,” she says. But this under-the-radar effort didn’t stay quiet for long, and international media soon feasted on the idea of Estonia teaching programming to kindergartners. With the rise in profile, there came an equivalent rise in ambition. 

“We have reached the point that most teachers or schools are somehow connected to the program,” comments Salum. 

Teaching children technology, she notes, can be in some ways easier than teaching adults. Children are not afraid of such topics in the way that some teachers are. So reaching and better educating teachers is also a continued goal, as is keeping up with constant technological change. Teaching methods and strategies have also changed over the past decade, Salum points out, though teaching about technology also has to be fun and inspiring to succeed. There are also more willing pupils these days. 

“At first, it just attracted people who were first adopters,” Salum says about ProgeTiger. “It has changed positively.”

And as for any challenges posed by AI, Salum is confident that if children can feel comfortable with technology from an early age, they will not be afraid of new technologies, including artificial intelligence. 

“By supporting them in developing critical thinking, we can also help them cope better,” Salum suggests. “You don’t have to be afraid of the new, but a technology-savvy young person can use its best opportunities, create new solutions themselves, and, if necessary, critically evaluate everything happening around them,” she says.

According to Salum, ProgeTiger has provided a good base for dealing with AI, and the program will also come in handy for teachers in relating to artificial intelligence, enabling them to guide students to take advantage of the opportunities that AI provides, as well as to assess the risks associated with it.

Recouse: e-estonia

University of Tartu spearheads excellence in digital bioengineering and personalised medicin

August 23, 2023

by Piret Ehrenpreis and Karoliina Kruusmaa

On September 11th, the University of Tartu, Estonia’s leading research institution, will launch two internationally influential projects to bring new quality to life sciences, biotechnology and personalised medicine. The European Commission supports the projects with €30 million over six years, with another €30 million invested by the Estonian state.

The plan to curb climate change and mitigate its effects by reducing the consumption of fossil raw materials, reducing the environmental impact of agriculture and fostering the growth of the circular economy will increasingly focus efforts on bioengineering. It is a line of research that investigates processes at the cellular level and applies genetic engineering to design cells with useful functions. Engineered cells can be used for environmentally sustainable bioproduction of essential chemical building blocks for polymers or ingredients of pharmaceutical, cosmetics and food industries, for example. Such technologies significantly reduce our need for petrochemicals and mitigate these industries’ environmental impact. New bioproduction methods also make it possible to valorise currently low-value waste, be it waste gases or biomass left over from the food and forestry industries.

The Centre for Digitalised Bioengineering (DigiBio), being developed in parallel with a newly established Institute of Bioengineering at the University of Tartu, applies digitisation, big data analysis and machine learning methods for genetic designs of such cells. It will offer a new quality for life science research and the bio-industry, significantly accelerating the discovery of important cellular mutations and the creation of designer cells with specific functions.

Together with partners from the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Biosustainability of the Technical University of Denmark and Tallinn Technical University, an automated experimental unit for the digitalised design and engineering of cells – a biofoundry – will be established in Tartu, which will be unique in the Baltic region. According to Mart Loog, Professor of Molecular Systems Biology at the University of Tartu and the project leader, the Danish partners have a unique experience in the digitisation of biology, making the opportunity to learn from them invaluable. The aim is to connect the Estonian biofoundry to the international Global Biofoundry Alliance network to benefit from international experience and open new horizons for the local research community and the biotech industry. “Engineering biology using such a high-throughput approach helps us to meet global challenges ranging from sustainable bioeconomy to fighting pandemics and diseases,” said Loog.

International centre of excellence in personalised medicine

Thanks to advances in science and technology, the field of medicine is going through a breakthrough, which can be summed up by the term ‘personalised medicine’. Increasingly, there are opportunities to look at health and disease more individually than ever before, considering a person’s genetic background, lifestyle, and environmental influences, among other factors. Largely thanks to the valuable database of the Tartu University Estonian Biobank, which over 200,000 Estonians have joined, Estonia has become one of the most advanced countries in personalised medicine. A national IT infrastructure for personalised medicine, unique in the world, has also recently been completed, enabling the secure integration of genetic data into doctors’ daily work.

Progress so far has been noted. The University of Tartu and Tartu University Hospital recently received a historic research grant from the European Commission to establish an international research and development centre for personalised medicine in Estonia. The creation of the region’s most influential centre of expertise will allow taking the next steps to bring genetics-based healthcare services into practice.

The work of the consortium establishing the centre is led by Professor Mait Metspalu, Director of the University of Tartu Institute of Genomics, according to whom the centre will enable closer collaboration between different scientific disciplines, from clinical medicine and public health to social and data sciences to study all stages of the implementation of personalised medicine. The consortium’s research will include developing new scientific methods, tools, and clinical trials to study and validate the created applications in cooperation with patients. It is also important to assess the impact of personalised medicine services on society, the economy and public health.

Digital usability of health data

Another aim of the consortium is to improve the digital usability of people’s health data in Estonia. Even though Estonia is a strong e-state, some electronic data is still unstructured and in a free-text format. Besides enabling better use of data for prevention and treatment, a well-organised health data infrastructure will also boost health technology start-ups, which in turn will accelerate the flow of research into society.

Partners include, in addition to local researchers and experts, the University of Helsinki and the Erasmus University Medical Center, which are among Europe’s leading centres for personalised medicine. This means the consortium can use the world’s top expertise and share its experiences and discoveries internationally.

Both projects are supported by the Teaming for Excellence action under the sub-programme “Widening participation and spreading excellence” of the European Commission’s research and innovation funding programme Horizon Europe. The programme supports collaborative projects between European research institutions to deliver cutting-edge research and better integrate it into society and the economy.

Resouce: e-estonia

How to digitalise local governments?

August 22, 2023

by Peeter Vihma

Regarding digitalisation, central governments seem to get most of the praise. Bigger cities are not doing poorly, either. What about smaller municipalities, though? Being the “closest” government to its constituents, they play a vital role in providing services and keeping in touch with the citizens and could benefit greatly from digitalisation. However, a recent study of the digital services of Estonian municipalities, commissioned by the Association of Estonian Cities and Rural Municipalities and conducted by Proud Engineers, found that there is room for improvement. Out of 79 municipalities in Estonia, 13 have no digital services and only 4 are highly developed. But why?

The wicked circle of market-based efficiency

Local governments’ role in digitalisation varies from country to country, depending on the administrative structure, finances, digital proficiency, and other factors.

Generally, since local governments are “custom made” reflecting local needs and peculiarities, the digital services they provide should also be customised. However, this creates a systematic problem that the software market cannot easily resolve. Small local governments have difficulty amassing enough resources and competencies to produce or procure quality software development.

Especially in Estonia, where local government reform in 2017 reduced the number of municipalities by joining smaller ones. The reform aimed to create more efficiency in public administration. By reducing the overall administrative costs, however, it resulted in adverse effects of digitalisation.

According to the study, the strive for efficiency created two wicked circles: limited finances decreased the competencies of the local governments, reducing further investments into, and control over, digital services. Then, as the local government’s control over its services diminishes, the software developers gain more power in deciding how and what services should be developed, further decreasing local governments’ willingness to invest and competencies.

Since the shortcomings are systematic, the study suggests that simply increasing financing would not improve the situation significantly. Rather, more profound steps should be taken.

Two suggestions for improving local government digitalisation: centralisation and collaboration

The first solution that the study suggests would involve centralisation. One possibility is to create a central legal body that would essentially take over the contracts of local governments with service providers and represent them technically, legally and organisationally in relations with the state and service providers. The priority should be to achieve substantive competencies in service provision and not so much technical competence. The task of the organisation would be to gather the functional needs of local governments and discuss them with service providers and coordinate the implementation of changes resulting from changes in legislation but also make joint decisions to change service providers and conduct joint procurements.

Such a structure would help to create a clear boundary between the local governments and the outside world, both at the organisational, legal and technical levels, and to achieve greater control of the local governments over their information systems, and on the other hand, to create a strong partner for the state for dialogue in fulfilling national requirements from open data to information security.

This solution requires a necessary other step to be taken, namely improved collaboration between local governments. Collaboration should include both organisational and technical dimensions.

Organisationally, instead of five local governments hiring five people to fulfil five different roles, five specialists are hired to fulfil the roles required by five local governments. In this way, it would be possible to ensure a higher level of competence, create better cooperation between local governments, simplify the creation of sectoral networks and create a mechanism by which it is possible to better centrally motivate or develop the performance of one or another role.

Technically, cooperation should result in a library of centrally coordinated standard solutions. Estonian central government has benefitted from creating such solutions, for example, forms for public procurement. The study suggests that local governments could standardise contracts with special service providers, job descriptions for compliance and other roles, descriptions of standard business processes (e.g. family operations or operations related to land management) and similar items.

It should be noted that this kind of library should not be viewed as a final product but rather as a constantly evolving and improving process.

The Association of Estonian Cities and Rural Municipalities is keen to take necessary steps to improve digital service provision in Estonian municipalities. Hopefully, lessons from highly digitalised Estonia could also be useful for other countries

Resouce: e-estinia