I choose AI for Oceans for grades 3+ because I was interested in how they would provide information on coding for younger students. The activity asked the participant to categorize fish based on different criteria to program the AI. The AI then should be able to recognize the fish that would meet the outcome based on the programming. There were also videos that provided information about AI in between each level of activity. I liked the point that Snelling made about how not everyone will be a computer programmer but that it is important for them to understand the basics (Snelling, 2018). I think the lessons included in the activity about bias, data and how opinions can affect programming can be very important to students.
On the first level, I didn’t quit understand how it was going to pull the coding lesson together. In between the activity, it shared ocean pollution facts as well as coding/AI facts which I thought was cool but also a little confusing. I think it would have been easier for me to just focus on the coding facts. I thought the coding facts were very helpful in tying the lesson together.
The next level it started to make more sense and really connected the fact that computers know what we tell them and that we have to program them to get something out of it. I also liked that the activity taught kids at a very basic level the importance of data and how the amount and type of data provided can affect the outcome. In Moen’s article she states that “proponents see that computer coding helps develop critical thinking and problem-solving skills, and these are at the core of our professional mission: to help people understand how to solve problems using information effectively, which are skills that support people as lifelong learners.” This activity did provide critical thinking skills and problem-solving skills, in that the participants had to make decisions of what to tell the AI and then could see the results of the inputted data. A participant had the option of adding more data, or fixing the data if they entered it incorrectly. The activity although simple to implement did require thought behind the choices the participant made specifically in the last round. In the last round, I was asked to choose and emotion (happy, sad, scary, awesome, etc.) and teach the AI which fish showed that emotion. This really required thought and decision-making skills. It also made the participants think about how they interrupt information.
Overall, I felt like sometimes the activity used words that might be a little hard for the 3rd grade level to understand but it was really a fun and easy introduction to data and coding. I think the articles both share succinctly how a coding activity like this one can fit into a library program as both shared that libraries are more than just books. Libraries teach students about finding sources, solving problems, using data and utilizing sources in any mode to gather the information needed (Moen, 2016; Snelling, 2018).
Work Cited
Code.org. (2021). Hour of Code Activities. Retrieved from Code: https://code.org/learn
Moen, M. (2016, September 30). Computer Coding and Literacy: Librarians Lead the Connection. International Literacy Association. Retrieved from https://www.literacyworldwide.org/blog/literacy-now/2016/09/30/computer-coding-and-literacy-librarians-lead-the-connection
Snelling, J. (2018, April 3). Don’t Stress About Coding: Focus Shifts To Teaching Problem Solving Not Computer Skills. School Library Journal. Retrieved from https://www.slj.com/?detailStory=dont-stress-coding-focus-shifts-teaching-problem-solving-not-computer-skills
It sounds like you learned some valuable basics through the program! Along with the fish, were there any numbers or codes included, or were the fish entirely representative of everything? Either way, what a neat way for developers to introduce basic concepts in a fun way for kids.