dale lane

Two years ago, I made a video demo of Machine Learning for Kids. It still gets a lot of views by teachers (either individually or as part of CPD sessions) and volunteers (preparing for running a code club).

It has been looking increasingly out of date as the site has changed a bit in the last couple of years! So I’ve recorded a new walkthrough:

In the video, I show a variety of AI projects that school children have made, and discuss how they reacted to them and what I think they learned.

Machine Learning for Kids has been running for nearly a year now (originally as a closed beta until Oct 29th 2017, but I first shared it widely in early August 2017).

It’s evolved and grown in the last year, but from the start my idea was to provide schools and code clubs with:

• a child-friendly tool for training a variety of types of machine learning model
• tight integration with the Scratch visual programming language to allow kids to make AI powered games and projects
• a set of worksheets that explain real-world uses of artificial intelligence by giving step-by-step instructions to make simple examples

The anniversary feels like a good time to look at some of the ways the tool has been used. It’s been amazing to see it being picked up and used in so many different ways, not just in the schools and code clubs near to me but all around the world. I’ve used Wakelet to collect some examples of what people have done with the site.

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