"Luckily, I'll be retiring soon," is what some people think in light of technological progress. For children, that isn't an option. That makes it all the more important for digitalization, in all its facets, to have a place in the classroom. Telekom is also committed to this goal.
Fiona, Lisa, and Juno do not seem entirely convinced yet: Over the next three hours, they are supposed to program this little thing so that it simulates a self-driving car? That is exactly the task in the workshop "Künstliche Intelligenz programmieren mit Calliope." Christian Schiller from Telekom Technik and his colleague Simone Mayer-Masi lead the course. They are part of the Digital@School team: More than 650 Telekom employees volunteer their time to bring topics such as artificial intelligence, robotics, and programming into classrooms across Germany.
“Behind the AI buzzword is a foundational technology that has become indispensable. Whether in voice assistants like Siri and Alexa, a robotic lawn mower in the yard, or TikTok’s news feed, it’s everywhere. That’s why we visit schools and use our workshops to show how machine learning works,” explains Christian Schiller, who leads workshops about once or twice a quarter—now increasingly within Telekom as well. Teachers can also access a free, modular offering for middle and high school, which is now listed on the major teaching-materials platform “Lehrer online.” “In my view, it is extremely important that children not only use AI, but also understand what happens behind the scenes. This helps them learn how they can influence the algorithms that surround them everywhere,” says Christian Schiller. To demonstrate this, he equips participants with an understanding of machine learning, using the example of the “autonomen Autos.” He also brings along “Calli,” the affectionate name he gives the single-board computer.
Fiona, Lisa, and Juno are now also immersed in teaching "Calli" how to avoid a crash. First, they need to feed their AI data using Calliope's control panel. They play a racing game: a flashing red dot represents their own vehicle, while the others are additional vehicles or obstacles. Like in a video game, the girls guide their car past them at the press of a button. The idea is that Calli gathers data during these test drives. The AI then reviews it and learns from it. "If we could feed the AI every possible scenario, a car could drive autonomously perfectly," Juno concludes.
The girls quickly realize that if you drive the racing game like a maniac, the trained AI will drive like a maniac too. And the more information is available, the better the learning effect—and the better the result. During an earlier workshop, all the students once joined forces as one group so they could all draw from a larger data set, following the motto: "Let's build a super AI together."
Christian Schiller shares this wish: that schools place greater emphasis on stochastic programming. "So far, computer science classes have focused on traditional deterministic programming: an entered command always produces the same output—the computer does not learn anything new. Yet this is precisely what will play a much bigger role in the future, even though it represents a fundamental shift in how we program."
Fiona, Lisa, and Juno have completed their first learning unit on the subject. Successfully: "This was something entirely new. We didn't understand AI at all before, but now we do. It was really interesting to experience it through play—and to teach something to someone who isn't human. We had fun," was the shared view of the three students.
The "Digital@School" initiative was launched in 2017. So far, around 650 colleagues have volunteered to introduce more than 12,000 children to digital topics. Their goal: to prepare children for the future and empower them to actively and independently shape the digital world.
© 2026 Deutsche Telekom AG
