Introduction
What is this about?
Language is a prerequisite for successful communication, i.e. communication between humans or between humans and animals, but also between humans and machines. Toolbox 7 is about discovering the specific communication features of robots and artificial intelligence together. The educational professionals support the children in developing an understanding of language as a system.
The main idea is to model the educational situation in such a way that children can use the elementary symbols (colours, signs, etc.) to learn to develop a robot or programming language themselves.
Children‘s point of view
Questions from children
What we know
Among human languages, an essential division is that between spoken language, sign language and written language.
In the animal kingdom, sign systems and communicative behaviors exist via acoustic, chemical or visual signals.
Wolves howl both at territorial boundaries and at central places within the territory.
Ants can smell where it is going.
The dance of the bees serves to guide conspecifics to food.
Robots and AI-controlled devices „express themselves“ through sounds. A long-lasting beep sounds from the refrigerator if the door is left open for too long. A text appears on the operating display of the washing machine when the lint filter needs to be cleaned. The floor hoover‘s light-emitting diodes flash in a specific sequence when it needs to return to the charging station.
Internet-based, AI-controlled voice assistants (Echo, Siri, Alexa, etc.) speak grammatically correct complete sentences, quote film dialogue and give quick-witted answers to seemingly everyday questions: „Alexa, can you drive a car?” „I always turn the music down when I‘m reversing into a parking space. Otherwise I can‘t see anything - you know that, right?“
Sources
1Pexels.com | Jason Renfrow Photography
2Unsplash.com | MD_Jerry
3Pexels.com | Pixabay
Goals
Pedagogical professionals
Check and modify if required
Expand your knowledge and apply it in new linguistic situations
Children
To experience the possibilities, characteristics and challenges of communicating with a robot
Use different ways and means to create and test robotic language
Exercises
#7 Experimental approach Part 1
Materials
- Colored cards
- Scissors
- Printer
- Plasticine
Implementation
We choose five colours and give them meanings, e.g.:
red – I am angry
green – I like something
yellow – I agree
blue – I don‘t like
white – don‘t know
After determining the meaning, colour cards are made by the children themselves.
Sources
1. Pexels.com | Andrea Piacquadio 2. Pexels.com | William Fortunato 3. Pexels.com | Polina Zimmerman 4. Pexels.com | Puwadon Sangngern 5. Unsplash.com | Markus Spiske
Reflection
- Can you answer all the questions? Why?
- Which questions can you not answer and why?
- What else do you need to create your own language or robotic language?
#7 Experimental approach Part 2
Materials
- Colored cards
- Scissors
- Printer
Implementation
Now the children think about questions. For example, one child takes the role of a robot and the other takes the role of a journalist who interviews the robot. The robot answers the questions in a conventional language
Variation
The language can be improved by introducing more colours, integrating Morse elements, and introducing different contextual situations (robot talks to a human, robot talks to an animal, robot talks to a robot etc.).
Reflection
Discuss how people communicate with the robot and how the robots respond, (the children will already have a basic understanding of the logic of creating and talking to the robot).
About this Toolbox
Toolbox #07 was created in 2022 by Ieva Pažusienė, Birutė Vitytė, Renata Bernotienė .
The project "I'm not a Robot: working with artificial intelligence in early childhood education" is co-funded by the Erasmus+ program of the European Union. The European Commission´s support for the production of this publication does not constitute an endorsement of the contents which reflect views only of the authors. The commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
This work is licensed under: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International