Mission: Save your Leisure Time!

In a playful and child-friendly way, the principles and modes of operation of highly complex digital technologies are conveyed and future possibilities made tangible. The concept for the new exhibition is based on the everyday-worlds of elementary school children and is entitled: "Mission: Save your leisure time!". Three digital experiment stations form the core of the new Future Workshop. The 3-D printer and the workbenches were taken over and integrated from the previous exhibition. The three new stations each explain a key topic of digitalization in several phases. The "Kid's Room Tidy-up" is primarily about machine learning, a preliminary stage of artificial intelligence. The "School Route Finder" is all about Big Data. And at the "My Smart Home" station, the focus is on the Internet of Things.

Machine learning is about adaptive systems that are trained with examples and recognize patterns and regularities in the learning data. These systems are one of the foundations for the development of AI. In the game "My Kid´s Room Tidy-up", the learning process of such a computer is simulated. Here, children come to understand that the computer first has to be fed a lot of information and then tested until it can actually do the work for humans - in this case, tidying up the kids' rooms.

Big data and apps use large amounts of data from various sources to make predictions as accurately as possible. The game "My School Route Finder" shows children how apps use information in the background: in this case, data from weather stations and traffic monitoring. In addition to a map and the location, the navigation app also needs information from road traffic - for example, to show a new safe route in the event of a dangerous spot ahead of the children. But apps also send information about their users to the web. Kids should therefore consider what information they want to share when they play.

The children's future will be dominated by smart and networked objects - the "Internet of Things" is increasingly shaping everyday life. In years to come, tiny computer chips will be integrated into even more everyday objects: the trash can will report when it's full, and the refrigerator will independently reorder food when something is empty. The goal of a smart home is to make our lives more convenient and energy-efficient. This is where "My Smart Home" begins: In the game, the children learn to network their home smartly in order to enjoy a cool movie night with popcorn.