Re: Retraining robots

Inline.

Ken Kahn wrote:

> Hi all.
>  
> I'm not sure that retraining is very important. I think the best style 
> (both cognitively and practically) is to keep your robots "small". 
> Lots of simple robots is easier to think about and easier to 
> manipulate and edit than a few complex robots. If a robot is trained 
> to do only a handful of steps then training over again rather than 
> retraining is straightforward. And the repetition may be helpful in 
> understanding the robot better. Kids don't seem to mind the repetition 
> as much as adults.

You're right about this. We're not thinking of having kids go through 
long debugging sessions using retraining. However, we did find it useful 
to use retraining as part of a structured task. Kids are given a robot 
that divides (a copy of) n by d, and sends out the result. Their task is 
to change this robot so that it generates the reciprocals. They do it by 
retraining. Using this approach, the TT programming is aligned with the 
mathematical idea under investigation. See the task template at:
http://www.weblabs.org.uk/wlplone/Members/ioe/my_reports/Report.2004-03-03.3222/index_html

We also pilot a new methodology in this template, which we call 
task-in-a-box. Let's talk about this on Friday.

> Regarding problem 1, there are some differences and there is an issue. 
> Many people name robots after training them - in that case only 
> trained robots have names (either generated or edited). Beginning 
> rather recently the drop feedback now makes it clear whether the drop 
> is back in the thought bubble (because it was removed to edit more 
> easily) or the drop is to the robot to retrain. In the first case the 
> thought bubble wiggles rather than the whole robot. Untrained robots 
> don't make this distinction. Also for the most part people grab an 
> untrained robot when they need one so there isn't much risk of confusion.

IMHO, these distinctions are too subtle for most mortals to notice.

>  Regarding 2 I think this would be useful but needs to careful design. 
> I think reusing the time travel controls would be confusing. Not 
> convinced that this should be a high priority enhancement.

It all depends on how extensively we want to use retraining. I find the 
time travel metaphor very intuitive in this case. Instead of moving the 
whole world back in time, you're only sending this one robot back to the 
point when it was trained. Alternativly, or as an intermediate solution, 
when I go into retraining any mouse movement will invoke time-travel, 
and when the robot completes its run time travel is invoked. If I want 
to retrain, I click the record button. If I accidentally touched the 
mouse, I hit play.

- Yishay

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