The reason for this project is that I have been engaged in education in rural areas of Taiwan for fifteen years and have seen that the biggest problem for school children here is intergenerational care, with grandparents taking over the care of children from parents who work away from home for extended periods. This generational gap leads to a lack of communication between school children and their grandparents, which in turn affects the children's motivation to learn and their sense of self-worth. In Taiwan, more than 100,000 school children face the same problem, thus requiring a solution that can initiate dialogue between the two generations. This project was born out of this context. We use AI, interviews, and visual creation in our teaching, allowing grandparents of school children, who are half a century apart in age, to use their own growth experiences as stories. Through interviews and creations by students, they can understand the meaning of the passage of time, bridge the gap between the two generations, build a harmonious society, stimulate learning motivation, and make family education and intergenerational relationships more harmonious.
This project aims to facilitate intergenerational communication between school children and their grandparents by teaching students AI, interviewing, and publishing techniques. The goal is to achieve intergenerational co-creation, mend family relationships, and connect intergenerational dialogue through the completion of a life story book, thereby addressing the issue of school children in Taiwan who lose their motivation to learn due to a lack of family care. This innovative project allows school children to create their grandparents’ life stories through images, thereby bridging the gap between the two generations. In practical terms, school children must obtain photos of their grandparents when they were young 50 years ago, and take photos of their grandparents now through smartphones, and combine the two into the same image. The two images spanning half a century must be consistent with each other. interacted with. In addition to the creation of pictures, school children must learn the knowledge and abilities of digital applications through the processes of interviewing stories, writing stories, displaying results, publishing books, etc., and through this, they must understand that their grandparents were once young, and then realize the passage of life, meaning, and respect for the value of life.
This project received the Social Education Contribution Award from Taiwan's Ministry of Education and two major educational innovation awards in Taiwan, enabling over 20,000 educators across Taiwan to reference and utilize it, providing a model for improving intergenerational relationships among students. We also held exhibitions in schools and communities, inviting grandparents and students to participate, and disseminated the information to the public through Taiwan's largest online news media, "United Daily News." Furthermore, we conducted interviews and filming throughout the process on social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Line, sharing it with friends on online communities, garnering over 25,000 views. Finally, we also created an e-book of the "Stories of Fate," publishing it online for permanent distribution and providing it free of charge to other educators for reference.
With the advancements in AI over the past two years, I proposed using new AI language models such as Google Gemini, Grok, and ChatGPT for this solution. Compared to previous smartphone software, this significantly reduced the time students spent creating life stories and improved the aesthetics and realism of the visuals. Furthermore, we used an AI-powered app to create a function that allows students to generate life story articles simply by filling in information online. This has fully enabled students to learn how to apply AI in their studies and daily lives to solve problems.
To begin this project, basic skills in photography, interviewing, e-book publishing, and AI tool usage are required. Ideally, existing social connections are essential for organizing promotional events. The project can be completed by simply replicating the following steps: 1. Teach children to explain the project's purpose to their grandparents and invite them to participate, thus learning communication and dialogue skills. 2. Find grandparents with photos of themselves from their youth and collect their pictures. 3. Visit them to learn about their life stories. 4. Select photos and take pictures of grandparents interacting with the photos. 5. Combine the two photos. 6. Layout the images. 7. Output the presentation content and create an e-book. 8. Invite grandparents to share their life stories and have children share their creative process, training their expression skills and motivating their learning.
