The Learner’s Apprentice: AI and the Amplification of Human Creativity

The hundreds of example projects in this book will help educators make the case for creative uses of AI in education.

by Ken Kahn

with a foreword by Gary S. Stager

In The Learner’s Apprentice: AI and the Amplification of Human Creativity, Ken Kahn introduces a fresh perspective of using generative Artificial Intelligence, known as chatbots, to co-create educationally rich experiences and interactive software. Kahn shows how teachers can guide students—from elementary school to college—through the process of creating powerful software applications (apps), illustrated stories, conversations with notable figures, interactive games and adventures, and more.

In The Learner’s Apprentice, you’ll learn how to use AI to:

• Make software – without learning to code: Learn to make playable interactive games, scientific simulations, augmented reality games, and mobile apps. Make AI-enhanced software apps and train your own machine learning tasks.
• Create history, science, and literature adventures: Build historically accurate interactive adventures, debate with notable figures, or create immersive science fiction stories in any language.
• Design mathematically rich representations: Create charts, graphs, and apps that explore mathematics from proofs to data science.
• Enhance creativity and storytelling: Write and illustrate stories across different styles, time periods, and subjects, and connect creative writing to various disciplines.

Learning by co-creating with a chatbot

The book’s ideas democratize and reimagine a variety of disciplines. There is something here for everyone—affording learners of all ages opportunities to be historians, mathematicians, scientists, and authors, rather than being taught math, science, language, or history.

Making the case for creative AI in education

This is not a book about fantasies of replacing teachers with machines. Rather, The Learner’s Apprentice models generative AI as an apprentice, colleague, co-thinker, proofreader, pair coder, brainstorming buddy, and illustrator—an intellectual ally that amplifies human potential.

The book’s hundreds of examples will challenge you to rethink everything you thought you knew about AI in education while demonstrating that AI can be used creatively and constructively.

Read praise for this book from educators worldwide

A novel approach to programming

The Learner’s Apprentice advocates that everyone can co-create software applications that can run in a browser (known as web apps). Students may partner with a chatbot to create remarkable web apps without spending months or years learning to code. The book shares hundreds of detailed examples of how to make interactive web apps that are useful, fun, school-friendly, and support learning across the curriculum.

A real AI expert

Ken Kahn brings a wealth of experience and expertise to this work. After getting his doctorate at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Ken has been an advocate for creative computing as a computer scientist, researcher at the renowned Xerox PARC, software developer, and professor of learning and computing. The book’s examples document a thoughtful exploration of the untapped potential of AI chatbots and are shared with lively anecdotes and practical lessons for readers to try themselves.

Author

Ken Kahn is a pioneer in designing creative, interactive environments for children to learn to program. During his doctoral studies at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab, Kahn worked with Marvin Minsky and Seymour Papert using AI and computers to revolutionize education.

Kahn went on to teach at several universities and spent 8 years as a research scientist at the renowned Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, home of pioneering research on AI, computer science, and education. Always interested in how children can learn to program, Kahn designed ToonTalk, an animated programming language designed to enable students to creatively explore open-ended programming challenges. Kahn subsequently was a researcher at the Institute of Education in London exploring uses of ToonTalk, and a Senior Researcher at the University of Oxford developing agent-based modelling (ABM) tools and teaching. For teaching AI programming to beginning programmers, Kahn created a library with over one hundred Snap! blocks that provide AI functionalities.

With introduction of generative AI tools like ChatGPT, Kahn realized that children could create complex programs by conversing with a chatbot. He shifted his focus from providing accessible programming tools to novices to understanding how children could co-create apps and have other creative experiences with generative AI. In The Learner’s Apprentice, Kahn shares hundreds of examples of these kinds of apps, stories, and creative pursuits, with the goal of empowering children to master modern technology through creative collaboration with chatbots.