#emergingpractices

At the end of my last assignment, I specified that in my evaluation stage I wanted to investigate how children can learn through exploration, experimentation, and problem-solving in playful and different ways. The leading words in that sentence being ‘play’ and ‘learn’. How does a child learn from play, and how effective is it? 

‘Play’ is said to be essential in the development of young adolescents social and skill development it builds confidence through exploration, problem-solving and being able to relate to others. These skills can only be learned through both guided and non-guided play (Macintyre, 2018). Relating this back to Dash and Dot (social robot) I find that the robot does, in fact, fill all the requirements for confidence building and learning through play. However, how effective is play for building these skills, compared to standard methods of teaching? And are there different characteristics of play that affect the effectiveness of this learning?

The umbrella term ‘play’ or ‘playful learning’ can be separated into three different sub-categories, this brings a kind of structure to the way that ‘play’ can be used as a learning tool. “Whether adults are supporting or not, a critical requirement for learning through play is that children must experience agency and be supported rather than directed.” The effectiveness of learning through ‘play’ can be measured through five characteristics. “we say that optimal learning through play happens when the activity (1) is experienced as joyful, (2) helps children find meaning in what they are doing or learning, (3) involves active, engaged, minds-on thinking (4) involves iterative thinking (e.g., experimentation, hypothesis testing), and (5) involves social interaction (the most powerful resource available to humans - other people).” These characteristics should not be something a child is feeling at all times but, each one should be felt at least once throughout the process, as this supports deeper learning (Zosh, Hopkins, Jensen,  Neale,  Hirsh-Pasek, &  Whitebread, 2017).

From what I have researched on Dash and Dot, the product does, in fact, allow the user to experience most of the five characteristics of play. The product especially gravitates more towards the ‘hands-on’ and ‘expiramentation’ approach of learning through play. I have yet to evaluate if the product is actually joyful to use, and at what level of social interaction can be achieved in ‘free play’ scenarios. I would also like the evaluate if the product is more suitable towards a ‘free play’ or ‘guided play’ learning environment. 

Reference

Macintyre, C. (2016). Enhancing learning through play: A developmental perspective for early years settings. Routledge.

From what I can tell, nobody has picked the iRobot Roomba, so I thought I would pick this robot.

I’ve picked this robot because I like simple things, things that are designed to do one thing, and do it well, rather than a complex machine that does a lot. I can apply a lot more focus to it’s one main function, and therefor I think it’s the best for me. Also, with it being a commercially available product for some time, hopefully there should be a lot of knowledge already out there that may help me in my future semester in Emerging Practices.

So what does the iRobot Roomba do? It simply goes around vacuuming your house automatically at the push of a button on your phone. It scans around avoiding objects, and knows where it has previously been, and goes around until the house has been cleaned. It knows when it is running low on battery, and goes back to the recharging stations to charge itself.

The creators present this as an effortless, forget it and let it do its thing, social robot, where you never have to lift a finger again when cleaning the floors of your home. They express that it can go from different floor services, and vacuum up many different materials such as food, dust, and dog hair.

I am very sceptical of this, as I’m sure anyone with a dog that malts hair, knows that it’s a nightmare to vacuum up, so I doubt a simple small robot could achieve this. I also think about other sides that a lot of people probably miss. You have to empty the thing. The device looks very small, so I would presume it fills very quickly, meaning you have to keep finding it and emptying it, hardly the “forget it and let it do its thing” attitude that they try to come across as.

The Tech Chap expresses that when he was testing out the iRobot Roomba, he would sometimes move furniture around so the Roomba could get around more easily, and at that point, he wonders if he should just vacuum himself (The Tech Chap, 2017). He does however say that it is a great device, only emptying it once a week, and says it gets everywhere in his home, and in all the corners. He does say he doesn’t have any pets however.

Looking at user reviews on Consumer Affairs website, the Roomba only has an average rating of 2/5 based on 38 reviews. Most of the negative comments are similar, stating lack of service options, scratches and marks on floors, walls and furniture, battery power lacking and the Roomba not finding it’s charging station before the battery went flat, and someone saying the Roomba can’t distinguish the black carpet for a cliff, meaning the cliff sensors that stop the Roomba from going over an edge, also stop it from going onto a black surface.

The first lecture of Emerging Practices was interesting. We discussed what the paper was going to be about and what we would need to achieve.

The paper seems fairly straight forward, having to produce 3 reports over the course of the semester, each after a certain phase of the paper.

We were asked to describe what 'Emerging Practices' means. Initially my definition was something that has been around for a while, but only just coming out and being commonly known, such as VR/AR.

After looking online, I would say I wasn't far off. Emerge is "to come forth into view or notice, as from concealment or obscurity" (Collins English Dictionary, 2012) and practices is decribed as "The actual application or use of an idea, belief, or method, as opposed to theories relating to it." (Oxford University Press, 2018).

We also did a reading written by Rodney Brooks, about his career in robotics. He had worked with robots since the beginning, and had helped do activities such as putting the Mars Rover into space. He spoke about robotics as a dead topic, something that people shouldn't really get into. There was one thing that I quite disagreed with, that AI is in a bubble and will either burst and deflate. I think that he was incorrect about this because I don't think interest in AI will ever decrease anymore now that we have all this technology at our disposal, but I also don't think it will just be some kind of breakthrough where the bubble bursts.

EDIT: This paper is NOT purely a theory paper and will include hands-on work. I have since revisited my analysis of this paper so stay tuned for more!

Since our initial introduction to the Emerging Practices paper, I have quickly realised that this paper is extremely different from what I was anticipating. The paper is centered around up and coming practices in the industry of social robotics. The paper is entirely theoretical and based around investigation, therefore, I need to understand exactly what emerging practices are and how they relate to social robotics. 

Emergent change is change that follows no big upfront plan. For example, the Internet largely emerged without much of a central plan as the result of networks connecting to networks in an open way that followed a minimum set of shared standards. Emergent change occurs both naturally and as a strategy of continuous delivery designed to be responsive to business needs and strategic conditions (Spacey, 2016).

Planned change is the practice of creating and implementing long term strategies with a planned architecture and design, (Spacey, 2016).

I really like this diagram that Ricardo showed us about the design process. Projects pivot, change and develop and I believe that many emerging practices come out of times of confusion and conflict rather than from a perfectly planned, straight line.

A social robot is an autonomous robot that interacts and communicates with humans or other autonomous physical agents by following social behaviors and rules attached to its role. Like other robots, a social robot is physically embodied (avatars or on-screen synthetic social characters are not embodied and thus distinct). Some synthetic social agents are designed with a screen to represent the head or 'face' to dynamically communicate with users. In these cases, the status as a social robot depends on the form of the 'body' of the social agent; if the body has and uses some physical motors and sensor abilities, then the system could be considered a robot (”Social Robotics”, 2018).

This is going to be a challenging paper as ‘social robotics’ (autonomous robots that communicate with people) have not been a very big interest of mine in the past. I feel oblivious to the realities around artificially intelligent robots and I hope to discover more clarity over the course of this paper. 

References

Social robotics. (2018, June 21). Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_robot

Reflection on blog post. 

Until reading this blog post by Rodney Brooks, my view of Artifical Intelligence has been somewhat naive. Due to the fact that Artificial Intelligence has been a minimal part of my interests, I haven’t invested much time into researching current practices and investigating where the technology is at. I didn’t even realise that robots were used to aid in rescue efforts after 9/11 and Fukushima but how cool is that!

“All of these robots have had some level of AI, but none come remotely close to what the popular press seems to believe about robots and what many prognosticators warn about, sometimes as imminent dangers from AI and robots”, (Brooks, 2017). Brooks shares the realities of where Artificial Intelligence and Social Robotics is at in society today. 

The majority of people, especially those who don’t question the world around them and struggle with critical thinking, believe what they hear and get the majority of technology updates from movies and social media. Ex-Machina being a prime example of Artifical Intelligence being shed in a completely unrealistic light.

This movie gives the impression that Artificial Intelligence is close to being this developed and appears to be set in our current time period. 

Brooks believes that right now we are in an AI bubble and that should it not burst, it will certainly deflate before too long. I don’t entirely agree with this statement. AI has been of growing interest for a long time and perhaps the bubble surrounding AI in the light above, will deflate, but AI is going to be a valuable tool in the future in all sorts of industries. 

The existence of this bubble makes it hard for all sorts of people to know what to believe about the near term for AI and robotics. For some people the questions surrounding AI and robotics are simply an intellectual curiosity. For some it is a very real question about what their job prospects might look like in just a few years. For executives at companies and for those in leadership positions in governments and the military, it is a fraught time understanding the true promise and dangers of AI. 

Most of what we read on social media about AI, from misguided academics with good intentions, including from ‘experts in their respective industries’, is far from reality. I hope to learn and investigate the real truth and future course of AI and other social robotics, throughout this paper.

References

Synthesis