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Growing up with AI

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Re: Growing up with AI

#31

Post by sandov »

jpk wrote: post #28
Jun8 wrote: post #10

This is a great project but I can't help say it: I don't like Scratch (and similar block-based languages). They are limited, in some cases by design (e.g. opening files in Scratch) but usually by their very nature. I very much prefer the safety wheel way of learning to ride a bike: use the real thing with addons until you don't need them. Maybe I'm wrong, any thoughts from people who worked with kids? I can give anec…

I've worked with kids from elementary to high school age. One of the obstacles for getting nearly any kid into coding is conditioning their response to things like syntax errors and the other obtuse-looking things compilers and interpreters like to spit out. For example, a kid can spend an hour adding a tree of dialogue to their text-based dungeon crawler, only to get a compilation error they've never seen before. Th…

When I learned to program (I was ~13 years old) using Small Basic I had no issues whatsoever with the errors the interpreter gave me, even though they weren't even in my native language. It was pretty obvious to me that I had committed a mistake at some point of my code.

For kids younger than that, maybe it's better to learn scratch, but I wouldn't trade Small Basic, it's a great language to learn, the only bad thing is that it's made by Microsoft and only runs on Windows.

Re: Growing up with AI

#32

Post by jpk »

sandov wrote: post #31
jpk wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've worked with kids from elementary to high school age. One of the obstacles for getting nearly any kid into coding is conditioning their response to things like syntax errors and the other obtuse-looking things compilers and interpreters like to spit out. For example, a kid can spend an hour adding a tree of dialogue to their text-based dungeon crawler, only to get a compilation error they've never seen before. Th…

When I learned to program (I was ~13 years old) using Small Basic I had no issues whatsoever with the errors the interpreter gave me, even though they weren't even in my native language. It was pretty obvious to me that I had committed a mistake at some point of my code. For kids younger than that, maybe it's better to learn scratch, but I wouldn't trade Small Basic, it's a great language to learn, the only bad thing…

Yeah, in my experience teenagers (especially those that are highly self-motivated) can see stack traces and stuff as just another part of the puzzle. It's the younger and less motivated kids that tend to get frustrated.

Edit: I'll also point out this:

> It was pretty obvious to me that I had committed a mistake at some point of my code.

How a student handles this is also often a sticking point. "Oh no, another error, I'm bad at this, maybe this isn't for me." Is an attitude that I've had to turn around. It goes a long way to convince a kid that it's actually the computer's fault because it isn't smart enough to understand what you're trying to tell it. So you have to be really specific in how you write to it. Then suddenly error messages are informative clues on the way to making your program work, rather than the computer scolding you for being a bad coder.

Re: Growing up with AI

#33

Post by thorell »

jpk wrote: post #28
Jun8 wrote: post #10

This is a great project but I can't help say it: I don't like Scratch (and similar block-based languages). They are limited, in some cases by design (e.g. opening files in Scratch) but usually by their very nature. I very much prefer the safety wheel way of learning to ride a bike: use the real thing with addons until you don't need them. Maybe I'm wrong, any thoughts from people who worked with kids? I can give anec…

I've worked with kids from elementary to high school age. One of the obstacles for getting nearly any kid into coding is conditioning their response to things like syntax errors and the other obtuse-looking things compilers and interpreters like to spit out. For example, a kid can spend an hour adding a tree of dialogue to their text-based dungeon crawler, only to get a compilation error they've never seen before. Th…

In my experience, kids recognize the brightly-colored sanitized tools as "not real" programming. The moment they hit the overwhelming UI or unfriendly error messages of many environments, they feel under-prepared for "real" programming and take a hit to their confidence.

I tentatively agree with them. If I can take a stab at what "real" programming is, it's when you can't expect everything to just work out of the box. You can screw it up in unexpected ways. Sure, that's demoralizing. But you either win or you learn, and I wonder if winning too much, too early prevents cultivating the mental ruggedness it takes to really program.

Re: Growing up with AI

#34

Post by arbitrary_name »

GuiA wrote: post #8

One point that is not raised or discussed, which I think is important, is that these learning platforms are not “the real thing”. They’re just artificial environments with building blocks designed for making toy projects, but no engineer would ever use them to build something of significance. This is not to take away from the work - I’m a big fan of Cynthia Breazal’s group and the work her graduate students have done…

Who's giving real hammers to 7 yo carpentry apprentices?

Re: Growing up with AI

#35

Post by soared »

matte_black wrote: post #14
zawerf wrote: post #12

I am really jealous of what the more creative/motivated kids growing up today have access to. When I was a teenager not long ago, I was mostly motivated by cheating in games which got me learning basic scripting for keyboard/mouse macros which then led me to increasingly complicated stuff for botting. But there are so many more motivating factors for learning how to code today, and they have never been more accessibl…

Jesus, I would have hoped they would achieve more noble pursuits instead of jumping straight into artificial child porn.

Kids are not into noble pursuits.. I learned html/css and webhosting stuff by making phishing sites of for my favorite video game.

Re: Growing up with AI

#36

Post by clamprecht »

matte_black wrote: post #14
zawerf wrote: post #12

I am really jealous of what the more creative/motivated kids growing up today have access to. When I was a teenager not long ago, I was mostly motivated by cheating in games which got me learning basic scripting for keyboard/mouse macros which then led me to increasingly complicated stuff for botting. But there are so many more motivating factors for learning how to code today, and they have never been more accessibl…

Jesus, I would have hoped they would achieve more noble pursuits instead of jumping straight into artificial child porn.

How much of civilization is built because of the desire to reproduce? I'll bet a lot.

And when you're 16 it's normal to be attracted to other 16 year olds.

Re: Growing up with AI

#37

Post by thisrod »

matte_black wrote: post #14
zawerf wrote: post #12

I am really jealous of what the more creative/motivated kids growing up today have access to. When I was a teenager not long ago, I was mostly motivated by cheating in games which got me learning basic scripting for keyboard/mouse macros which then led me to increasingly complicated stuff for botting. But there are so many more motivating factors for learning how to code today, and they have never been more accessibl…

Jesus, I would have hoped they would achieve more noble pursuits instead of jumping straight into artificial child porn.

When I was 13, and the major problem in my life was that all the other boys in my class were straight, I used to daydream about AI and animatronic solutions. The obvious social engineering approach wasn't obvious to me at the time.

Re: Growing up with AI

#38

Post by matte_black »

soared wrote: post #35
matte_black wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jesus, I would have hoped they would achieve more noble pursuits instead of jumping straight into artificial child porn.

Kids are not into noble pursuits.. I learned html/css and webhosting stuff by making phishing sites of for my favorite video game.

When I was younger I was into noble pursuits. I loved to study programming and would talk about ways I would want to help the world with my future skills.

That's all gone now... At some point I started to get darker and more cynical, and began to see technology not as a way to improve the world, but rather as a way to take what is mine. It started as a few disappointments here and there, then into short bouts of anger, then expanding into a constant simmering rage. Don't know if I'll ever recover.

What happened...

Re: Growing up with AI

#39

Post by jjcm »

Jun8 wrote: post #10

This is a great project but I can't help say it: I don't like Scratch (and similar block-based languages). They are limited, in some cases by design (e.g. opening files in Scratch) but usually by their very nature. I very much prefer the safety wheel way of learning to ride a bike: use the real thing with addons until you don't need them. Maybe I'm wrong, any thoughts from people who worked with kids? I can give anec…

I taught years 3 - 6 kids scratch for about 3 months. While I wouldn't say that Scratch taught them how to code, what it did do was teach them two things: thinking like a coder, and to be excited about coding.

Critical thinking and problem solving is something that seems like it's slowly fading away in modern education. So much of it is pure memorization for fill-in-the-bubble style tests. Letting kids at an early age tackle a problem that requires them to use separate steps and pieces of logic to complete seemed very developmental to me. Even over that short time span I noticed a huge difference in the mentality of how the kids approached problems after the course was finished.

As far as being excited about coding, I can't say just how important this is. Especially at a young age, as long as they feel like they have the capability to use the tools, almost 95% of the students I taught were fully engaged in playing with Scratch. I've taught adults js for a while now, and I usually get about a 30% engagement in any course, so those numbers were crazy to me. The problem though is when they get stuck, it has to be intuitive enough for them to figure out how to solve without being able to pour through stackoverflow posts. Kids don't use SO, they use Youtube to figure things out. Youtube had great scratch tutorials for them to follow, and so it was easy for them to get past things in a way they were comfortable with.

Overall while I think it isn't something that should be invested in heavily by kids, it's a great lauchpad to get them excited for coding in general. I see it as something akin to lego - it's there to fuel creativity and interest, not necessarily to replace architecture or engineering.

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