Can an AI teach science effectively to the YouTube generation?

I detail my experiment of using AI to create the ultimate YouTube Learning Channel. Then I let my kids (3 & 4 years) watch the content and quizzed them. #edtech

The million-dollar question: can an AI teacher replace an actual teacher?

NO! Even though my journey and the results were very encouraging for an AI-generated science teacher, the simple fact is that teachers do so much more than just teach the subject. They are also criminally undervalued and underpaid. So, I opine that this technology is not a replacement but a teaching tool for teachers and educators to produce content that is both engaging and reduces effort.

Why did I start this journey?

If, like me, you have any experience in entertaining kids, trying to find content for them to consume is a constantly challenging task. Here was my biggest beef with finding good YouTube content for the kids.

1. Too many ads or sponsored content.
2. Videos with human teachers were not engaging enough. They were either too cluttered or did not have a good balance of visual aids to human teaching.
3. Videos that were engaging were not human enough. I always found that kids loved watching a person in the video.
4. Lastly but not least… The ads! Too many ads.

Don’t even get me started on finding content on TV. I love Sesame Street, but everything else was just too Disney-ed. (I don’t have anything against that, btw, big fans of the mouse).

I decided to take AI’s help.

Using AI to create a better YouTube channel to teach kids science.

Using AI to come up with the framework for the channel.

The first thing I wanted to do was to get a good understanding of how to do this. So, I went to ChatGPT and asked it to give me some basic principles in making a YouTube channel for this purpose. It was surprisingly very helpful.

Designing a Youtube Channel for teaching science to kids

I wanted to truly understand the academic principles behind these key points. So, I asked AI to elaborate on them.

Academic principles for content for children

To summarize the above, essentially, I needed to keep content in multiple steps: introduce a higher concept and build up to it, incorporate both visual and audio cues, and make it exciting.

As for the actual content, I did not have to look far. I am constantly bombarded with questions by my kids, so I decided to use that as the content for the series. Some of their questions were:

• How does a rainbow work?
• Why is the sky blue?
• What makes something float or sink?
• etc.,

I took the above and designed a framework.

Using AI to come up with the framework for the videos.

I asked AI to help me framework a video structure based on these principles and keep it to 2 minutes in length and provide me an example.

Using AI to come up with a framework for a video

I boiled this down to this infographic.

AI designed framework for a children’s video

Using AI to come up with the script for the videos.

I then used AI to develop the script for the video with this framework in mind. The process was relatively simple, and I was able to get repeatable results in only a few tries.

Using AI to produce the videos.

Now that we have our script, our design, and prompt, we should be able to produce results. For the actual video production itself, I wanted to experiment and use this awesome company called Synthesia.

This video does complete justice to this tech.

Lets dive into what this technology is and how it works.

The tech uses a series of deep neural networks that study the way people talk and can output a very realistic rendition of text-to-speech. To create new avatars or custom avatars (even your own), the below is the process (as stated by the company itself)

We need around 15 min of footage, best before a green screen. We then train our models, which takes us about two weeks and then we have a new avatar :) All the avatars in our studios are made in this way, so all of them are captures of real humans.

Now using the framework from above. I created a template to be used to create videos.

Template in synthesia io studio

Synthesia allows you to input text and the rest of the work is done by the service. I did however create a lot of the animations and images that supplemented the videos.

Let's look at how the final product came out.

You can find the channel here

Conclusion and Results:

The kids loved the series, and they were able to recall the concepts introduced in them. The videos were short enough to keep their attention span. I would personally consider this experiment a win.

In conclusion, this tech is not designed to replace a teacher, since the feedback and interaction with the kids are absent. This technology is a great tool for teachers and educators to use to create quality custom content in an affordable, efficient, and easy way.