Writing A Book Series For Children During A Pandemic
— Shanshan Jin
Summer 2020 has been special to me. Before the summer, I never imagined myself being a picture book author. But, if we have learned one thing this year it is that life surprises you in many ways. When the COVID-19 pandemic started, many schools started shutting down to contain the spread of the virus. The education sector was & still is, hugely affected by the lockdown, both locally and globally. I wanted to make the most out of my lockdown time & hence I started comforting myself by reading books. It was during this time at home, I realized that I could create something meaningful for the community, along with ReadyAI.
And, that’s how the AI+Me Book Series journey began.
AI+Me is a series of five books introducing the basic concepts of artificial intelligence. It explains the five big ideas of AI: perception, representation & reasoning, machine learning, human-AI interaction, and societal impact of AI.
I started working on the first book in May 2020. At first, it was just a simple idea of creating a children’s book that could teach children about basic artificial intelligence concepts. However, we realized that AI cannot be an isolated discussion for today’s kids. It needs to be an ongoing conversation that involves not only kids but also parents & teachers. Hence, we decided to take it forward by making it into a book series that takes children on an AI journey, covering the 5 Big Ideas of Artificial Intelligence.
AI is reshaping our society every moment of the day. It is becoming an essential part of our lives & is contributing to various industries in different parts of the world. Educating kids about artificial intelligence is crucial because it can help them to create a better life in the world of AI. When today’s kids grow up, their lives will be surrounded by AI-based technology. Many of them will use AI in their daily lives, while some will go on to lead the industry. Given the predictions, it is crucial to get them familiar with the concept from a young age & that is exactly what we do at ReadyAI.
Before I started the book series project, I worked as the creative director at ReadyAI for about two years. During my time at ReadyAI, I got a chance to design AI courses, organize worldwide AI competitions for youth, teach at local community centers and schools, and develop an online learning platform that provides AI learning and teaching materials.
AI+Me is the most popular course that I have created on the platform and has over 8,500 learners. It was published in April 2019 and has been translated into six languages. In this 30 minutes free online course, students can learn about the Five Big Ideas in AI designed by the AI4K12 working group.
With COVID-19 in the picture, it’s time to support parents and teachers with virtual educational tools. The book series is my small contribution to support young learners around the world with the knowledge and skills of AI. It empowers them to take part in building an equal and sustainable world together. The first four books are now available on Amazon both in kindle version and paperback. Book 5 will be coming out soon. The book series contains a lot of key concepts, insights and fun activities to keep the kids engaged.
We hope our book series makes AI learning easier, more fun, and most importantly, accessible to all kids that would some day shape our world’s future.
— Shanshan Jin, Creative Director at ReadyAI
About AI+Me series: The series is designed to introduce basic artificial intelligence concepts to young learners.
AI+Me Big Idea 1 — Perception: How AI Sees the World brings you into a world of self-driving cars, home assistants, and other considered cool artificial intelligence (AI) technologies.
Representation is one of the fundamental problems of intelligence, both natural and artificial. AI+Me Big Idea 2 — Representation & Reasoning: How AI Makes Choices tells students how AI agents reason about very complex problems.
Learning has always been seen as a key element of intelligence. We get smarter by learning, and so do machines. AI+Me Big Idea 3 — Machine Learning: How AI Learns introduces three kinds of machine learning: supervised learning, unsupervised learning, and reinforcement learning.
AI+Me Big Idea 4 — Human-AI Interaction: How We Work With AI explains why understanding and interacting with people is one of the hardest problems faced by intelligent agents.
AI+Me Big Idea 5 — Societal Impact: How AI Can Change the World introduces different ways of using AI technologies in our daily life. Using an example of self-driving cars makes students think about how AI would positively and negatively impact our society.
You can buy our books on Amazon.
