December 14, 2018

Artificial Intelligence

33 minutes

Artificial Intelligence 314

Artificial Intelligence is something we are all aware of and either it is with excitement or fear!

Thanks to today’s sponsored interview – ReadyAI.org — and the featured product is All-In-A-Box home package! You can try it for free for thirty-days in your own home. Visit this special homeschool page here for more information.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) why is this important?

This is an investment every parent should make:

As parents and teachers, we do have an important obligation to prepare our children so they can use AI and big data effectively, so our children can understand the inherent limitations, and build better platforms and intelligent systems. Today’s elementary education needs significant upgrades to adjust for the current realities and be equipped to prepare the next generation.

As Artificial Intelligence (AI) is taking over repetitive work and frankly most manual tasks in the workplace, we must continue to teach and insist our children on qualities that genuinely distinguish human from AI such as; creativity, adaptability, and interpersonal skills. Too often we do not focus on issues that encourage problems solving and teaching kids how to work cooperatively in teams.

ReadyAI we observed first hand there is tremendous interest in inquiry-based or project-based learning at K-12 in the as related to AI. Furthermore, through AI education at K-12, we have the opportunity to focus on values and ethics that deserves far more awareness and recognition in classrooms and in our communities and neighborhoods.

Many parents, teachers, and colleagues ask me if we started ReadyAI because we are obsessed about teaching programming and coding to children. Although it is okay to do so, if children enjoy it, of course, we believe programming is something children can actually learn later on in their education path. It is not smart nor reasonable for parents to develop the sentiment that we don’t need to worry at all about learning to code and Artificial Intelligence (AI) concepts are very much confusing and complex.

Our world is becoming increasingly digital. It is not hidden that computer science is something that is vital in arts and sciences as writing and math are. Teaching Artificial Intelligence (AI) early on is not to urge or pressure children to become roboticists or computer scientists, we believe AI education is something that will help children do more in whatever field they choose and play a more impactful role in their profession of choice in the future.

At ReadyAI we learned quickly that it is critical to upgrade how we teach skills of the 21st century in AI to children. In STEM, STEAM or STREAM education, we frequently teach as if still are in the 90s, details of coding and really boring stuff. Usually, parents believe if their children can work through programing language details like Python, they might learn something, but it is still a big slog – we believe it shouldn’t be that way. We believe AI education for K-12 is more of a creative activity, so developing a programming course that is fun and exciting is not only doable but much more effective. For example in the first every World Artificial Intelligence Competition for Youth we implemented project-based learning and brought the fun aspects of programming to the kids.

One of the major difficulties is that our communities and schools suffer from a severe shortage of teachers who are trained to teach AI at K-12. That is why we have built an AI learning community so AI enthusiasts, parents, teachers, and community members have a chance to learn and spread the knowledge throughout the community. We believe we need thousands of educators teaching millions of students around the world and we are ready to be part of it. We believe in order to move forward we need constant and solid commitment.

Questions I asked:

Are the competitions every year? Are they open to homeschoolers?

Answer: They can go to ReadyAI.org or for Parents they can to the Parents section where we have very cool resources in terms of how they can get involved and learn. WAICY which is the World Artificial Intelligence Competition is once a year in the Summer and the next one in July 2019 in Pittsburgh. However, there is much regional and local competition and I encourage every region to run its own. We provide supporting materials to conduct a competition at every level. And absolutely, WAICY is open to homeschoolers and it would be great to have them participate.

What if a parent wants a kit – they can purchase them directly on the website?

Answer: Yes parents can purchase a box on our website. We can provide a discount for your participants, we will call it homeschooling. [Podcaster note: please check to see if this offer is still available.

A Kindle comes with the robot – does it have the ability to be used for other things, or is it just for the robot?

Answer: Yes Kindle can be used for a variety of activities.

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