{"id":4716,"date":"2022-11-20T15:11:41","date_gmt":"2022-11-20T15:11:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/?p=4716"},"modified":"2022-11-20T15:14:18","modified_gmt":"2022-11-20T15:14:18","slug":"machine-learning-hasnt-replaced-the-need-to-learn-to-code","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/?p=4716","title":{"rendered":"Machine learning hasn&#8217;t replaced the need to learn to code"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>This post was written for <a href=\"https:\/\/machinelearningforkids.co.uk\/stories\">MachineLearningForKids.co.uk\/stories<\/a>: a series of stories I wrote to describe student experiences of artificial intelligence and machine learning, that I&#8217;ve seen from time I spend volunteering in schools and code clubs.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I like to introduce students to building with machine learning by allowing them to play with <a href=\"https:\/\/machinelearningforkids.co.uk\/pretrained\">pretrained models<\/a> &#8211; a range of new blocks that can be added to the Scratch palette to represent a variety of powerful machine learning models.<\/p>\n<p>For example, imagenet: a model that can recognise the object in a photo that you give it. It can recognise over a thousand different things.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"border: thin black solid;\" width=\"450\" height=\"253\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/RTEqH03w3co\" title=\"YouTube video player\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>With just a few Scratch blocks, students can start building projects that do remarkably powerful and impressive things.<\/p>\n<p><!--more-->Another example is the face detection model: a model that can identify different parts of a face (e.g. eyes, nose, ears, etc.) in a picture or webcam view.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"border: thin black solid;\" width=\"450\" height=\"253\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/OSVEelf9Ksk\" title=\"YouTube video player\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>With just a few Scratch blocks, students can make a fun face filter with animated sprites that follow their face.<\/p>\n<p>These are very simple projects to build, but they offer a lot of opportunity for experimentation and creativity.<\/p>\n<p>Learning about machine learning in a sandbox that students are already familiar with (rather than learn about AI\/ML in a new AI-specific tool or platform) sends a clear message to students.<\/p>\n<p>Students shouldn&#8217;t think that what they already learn about coding isn&#8217;t useful any more. They shouldn&#8217;t get the impression that learning to code is somehow less valuable because machine learning models will just magically do stuff for them in the future.<\/p>\n<p>Instead, students see that machine learning adds new tools to their existing toolbox. They see that what they&#8217;ve been learning about coding is still important and valuable, and that machine learning expands the types of things they&#8217;re able to build.<\/p>\n<blockquote style=\"font-size: 1.3em; line-height: 1.3em; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif;\"><p>Building with machine learning in an existing sandbox like Scratch makes it clear that ML isn&#8217;t separate to, or a replacement for, coding.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<hr \/>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"border: thin black solid;\" width=\"450\" height=\"253\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/34G1Fd3XDyM\" title=\"YouTube video player\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This post was written for MachineLearningForKids.co.uk\/stories: a series of stories I wrote to describe student experiences of artificial intelligence and machine learning, that I&#8217;ve seen from time I spend volunteering in schools and code clubs. I like to introduce students to building with machine learning by allowing them to play with pretrained models &#8211; a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,3],"tags":[580,536],"class_list":["post-4716","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-school","category-tech","tag-machine-learning","tag-scratch"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4716","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4716"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4716\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}