Where this comes from
Hi, I'm Helen, your explorer-in-residence and I run a nonprofit called Women Defining AI. It helps more women and non-binary leaders go from zero to building with AI, because I'm on a personal mission to find the builders who do not know they are builders yet. Tiny Tinkerer is my second project, and it's really a family project alongside our kiddos because let's be honest, I'm not a robot engineering expert either. But what better way to learn than next to some of the most curious people in my life.
Both projects explore that same idea: Building is a way to spark curiosity in everyone. So how do you inspire everyday building, in everyone?
The problem we kept running into
AI in education is tough right now because most students are using AI to shortcut the learning. We see rampant cases of cheating and parents are left wondering how kids will actually internalize important concepts that are being taught in schools. But as a parent and as someone who's been thinking a lot about education myself, I've seen this problem manifest even before AI. In schools, we have long been teaching kids to get good at tests and answers rather than the part that actually matters: how do you ask good questions? and how do you explore the possible answers?
Because everything we "know" today in the modern world was unknown at some point in history. It takes curiosity, ingenuity, and grit to search for answers to interesting questions. Those are more important prerequisites than "the degree you got" (in my opinion).
A different way to use AI in learning
As a family, we want to explore a different way to think about using AI in learning and teaching. Here, instead of an answer machine, our AI tools are curiosity copilots. We use them to frame the questions before we build, and to help read what we saw afterwards. What is worth finding out? How might we test it? What should we try next? This is important because even as parents, we have a tendency to jump to an answer when one of our kids asks us a question, rather than asking them how they might answer it or how they might think about solving it.
Why we start with robotics
We see robotics, hardware and AI together, as the next frontier for this field. The fun part is that it's a family thing for elementary-age kids. Having something tangible to build with, experiment with, break, fix, and layer one new concept onto at a time helps with learning. It helps with the hands-on part of exploring these very abstract concepts. For the grown-ups, we get to experiment with how we use AI to prototype parts for the 3D printer, try open-source robotics, and wire up machines we find. Starting with robotics means Tiny Tinkerer is a project for the whole family, kids and grown-ups alike. It's a multidimensional exploration: how do you use AI in education, how much can we do with robotics as these AI models evolve, and what are the fundamental concepts to learn together as we build more things in the physical world?