April 15, 2026 • 30 mins
Artificial intelligence is everywhere—but most of our kids are only using it, not understanding it. So the real question is: are we raising kids who can just use technology… or kids who know how to think with it?
In this episode of the Mothers of Boys Survival Guide Podcast, I talk with tech entrepreneur and Coco Coders' founder Elizabeth Tweedale about why coding and computational thinking are becoming essential life skills. We dig into how AI actually works (and where it gets it wrong), why critical thinking matters more than ever, and how we can shift screen time from passive to purposeful.
If you’ve ever felt like you’re trying to keep up with technology right alongside your kids—you’re not alone. This conversation will give you a new way to think about it.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
I'm Suzy Shaw, mom of two now adult boys
and author of the book,
Mother of Boys Survival Guide. This
podcast shares practical
insights, expert advice,
and real conversations to help moms raise
confident, capable
boys. You can find more
episodes and resources at
(00:21):
mothersofboys.life. Now, let's get into
today's conversation.
Why kids should learn coding, preparing
children to understand
AI and build technology.
Welcome to the MOB,
Mothers of Boys podcast.
Artificial intelligence is suddenly
(00:43):
everywhere. Our kids are
using it for homework help,
search, and entertainment. But very few
actually understand how it works.
And that raises an important question for
parents. Are we
raising kids who simply use
technology or kids who understand how to
(01:04):
build it? My guest today
believes that teaching children
the foundations of coding and
computational thinking is one of the best
ways to prepare them
for the world they're growing up in.
Elizabeth Tweedale is a serial tech
entrepreneur and the
founder of Coco Coders, an educational
(01:26):
company that teaches children
ages 6 to 14, the foundations
of coding, computational thinking, and AI
problem solving. As both a
mother of three and a global
voice in education technology, Elizabeth
is passionate about
helping kids become creators
(01:46):
of technology rather than passive users.
Welcome, Elizabeth.
Thank you so much for having me, Suzy.
So Elizabeth, before we dive into all
this, can you tell us a
little bit about your journey and
what led you to start and launch Coco
Coders and focus on kids?
(02:08):
Sure. Well, my background is a bit
of a bridge between two worlds. I started
my undergrad in computer
science, but I've always
been drawn to design. So I went on to get
my master's in
architecture. And when I got into the
industry and worked for some of the
world's leading firms, I had a massive
(02:28):
light bulb moment. I saw
that even really in deeply creative,
physical, professional worlds like
architecture, that people
who were truly leading that industry were
the ones who understood
computation and computational
thinking. So we weren't just building
(02:49):
architecture and drawing drawings. We
were actually writing
code to simulate how wind hits a
skyscraper or how light fills a room or
how to redraw drawings
based on geometry with slight changes
that might come from the
brief. It was the fundamental
language of the modern world was this new
(03:14):
way of taking the tools that we've
developed in computer
science and applying it to practical
worlds. So I really then started Coco
Coders because of what
I was seeing out there in industry and
also having my own children. And I wanted
to give them that same
superpower that I saw in industry and the
ability to use logic and
(03:37):
coding and an understanding of
the technology that was being built in
their lives to bring any
creative vision to life or future
world that they could create for themselves.
And how old are your children?
I have a 17-year-old son, a 15-year-old
(03:57):
daughter, and a
7-year-old daughter. So
two close together and
then one that popped up later.
I think many parents can relate
to the feeling of feeling
overwhelmed by technology.
I know in my own personal life, I began
in broadcast television 40
(04:19):
years ago. And when I started my
career, everything was analog. And then
it became digital. And then
cell phones became a thing. And
so the technology just seems to be
growing faster and faster and evolving.
So why do you believe
it's so important for kids to learn, you
(04:41):
know, the foundations of
coding and computational
thinking rather than just using the tools
and the apps and
devices that are available?
Well, I like to think of it this way.
Most kids today are really
just players in a world that's
designed by someone else. So they're
playing the game, following
the path laid out for them by the
(05:02):
developers. But what we want to raise are
modders, which I know, you
know, on one of your previous
podcasts, thinking about Minecraft and
Roblox and how, you know,
that whole gaming industry
works with children. So if you have boys
that, you know, that
the second they get home,
they get into those games, they don't
(05:24):
just want to play, they
want to change the world,
create their own skins and break the
rules. So when a child
only knows how to use an app,
they're just the players, when they learn
the foundations of
coding, they get the chance and
the kind of developer key to the world.
They transition from just
being those consumers of
(05:44):
technology that we talk about, who are
directed by the technology
and where they should go and
what levels they should pass and how they
should use their apps, to
being the creators who really
define how that technology will serve
them and serve their purpose.
I call my boys Ernest and
Exuberance and in my book,
(06:05):
and Ernest was my Lego kid,
and he liked building things. And when we
discovered Lego
Mindstorm, when he was probably in
middle school, you know, that had some
really basic level of
programming that was part of it,
to make these little robots that would do
(06:26):
things. And then that sort
of led into, in high school,
getting into robotics club. And that was
just a breakthrough for
him. Now he's in IT and,
you know, doing cybersecurity.
When you talk about
the difference between being a consumer
of technology to a
creator, you know, what do
(06:47):
you think that shift looks like for kids?
And, you know, is that the Lego Mindstorm
sort of branch or, you
know, what does that look like?
I think that's a perfect example of a
tool that can help facilitate that. But
really what it looks
like is the shift from moving from how do
(07:09):
I use this to how do I
direct this? So finding
toys and applications and processes that
kids can interact with and experience
that. I like to think
that in this kind of AI era, we're seeing
a huge shift towards
prompt engineering and sort of
system oversight, which I know you talked
(07:30):
about previously in your
cybersecurity podcast. So to
be a creator now, you have to really
understand how AI is trained
or how it's built underneath
the scene is essentially a giant pattern
recognition machine
fed on human data. So if
a kid can understand that AI is just
(07:52):
predicting the next likely
word or pixel, you know, like when
you're typing your text in your iMessage,
based on what they're
taught, they become much better at
prompting it and also understanding where
they're going to lead it.
They can learn that the quality
of the output depends entirely on the
(08:12):
clarity of their logic. So
it matters because the sort of
creators of the future won't be the ones
who can type the fastest.
They'll be the ones who can
architect the best instructions and
recognize when the AI has its
hallucinations or goes
off-piste, if you will.
Right. And it does go off track. And I always think
(08:39):
it's funny the way it
apologizes, you know, it's like, oh,
you're right. Yes. My bad. Which, yes,
I'm so sorry. Which then
gets back to, you know, how did you ask
the question? I mean,
that's, I think that's sort of
your point is the prompt, learning how to
better manage the AI and
(09:02):
the systems, you know, you get
a better result, correct?
Yes, absolutely. Exactly. I think, you know,
it comes back around to
computational thinking and how we
actually build that up. And you brought
up Lego Mindstorms as
a perfect example. So if we think about
(09:23):
computational thinking, even just going
to the non-programmable
Lego, it's that exact same tool set. So
you can give two kids the
exact same box of a thousand
Legos. One might build a castle and the
other I build a spaceship.
The bricks haven't changed,
but the logic of the assembly has
changed. So that computational thinking
(09:46):
piece is just that. It's the
mental framework for how you snap ideas
together to solve
problems and how you use your own
intuition with preconceived structure to
create something that you like.
like and that you want to
Well, and I guess, you know, that that's how you
children begin to learn with
(10:06):
this computational thinking. What does
that look like in one of your classes?
Well, I think in our classes, we have
sort of four-week modules.
And at the end of four weeks,
each one has a different theme that
relates to real-world applications like
aerospace engineering
or vertical farming or, you know, things
(10:30):
like that. In week three and
week four, there's specific
challenges to add to the projects that
they've created in weeks
one and two. And those are
broken up into small challenges, medium
and big, but they're given to the kids
and they're not always
the same answer to get to the solution.
So one of the examples
(10:50):
that I like to use to explain
computational thinking and sort of the
difference between how we think about
solving a problem in
computer science versus math, you know,
you have an algebraic
equation in math and there's a very
specific set of steps that you have to go
through in order to solve
the problem. But in computer
science, you might have a test question
(11:14):
that says, draw five stick people in a
row. And so one child
could draw five circles spaced out and
then five little bodies, five little
legs, five little arms.
The next child could finish the exact
same assignment but draw
one little stick person,
then the next one, then the next one,
(11:35):
then the next one, then the next one,
solving the exact same
problem but using different ways to put
the building blocks
together in order to do it. So
I think that's kind of the essence of
computational thinking
and how we can demystify it
for parents.
I'm talking to AI. So we
recently shared a podcast
on raising cyber smart kids in the age of
(11:57):
AI. You mentioned that
earlier and tips for parents.
And we have a resource page as well. And
And we have a resource page as well. And
we'll add this podcast
and anything else that you
think would be relevant for parents to
that resource page.
This AI programming,
computational thinking, helping kids
(12:20):
understand it, building
systems, it seems to me that it would
impact almost not everything, but a good
portion of their life. So if you
understand better how to
ask a question in this framework, you're
(12:42):
going to get a better response even
out of Google or out of the library or in a
ChatGPT or whatever
the AI is that you're...
Right? Is that correct? Is that where you
think the superpower of this is?
Yes, that's exactly it. I think
understanding the
(13:03):
foundations of AI and the systems that
they're built on for kids really just
pulls back the curtain on the
magic. You know, it seems like
magic. You put something in and you get
out this answer. But when kids can
understand how the code
is built, they realize that AI isn't an
all-knowing spirit out there, the ethos.
(13:25):
It's a system built by
humans using large language models. So
all of the things that we've put out
there on the internet or
all of the documents that we've fed it to
understand how we
think, what we know, and what
we've said in the past. So they learn
that AI is essentially
trained on these massive data sets,
(13:46):
which means it carries all those biases
and errors of the
information it was given. So if
it's trained on Reddit versus Wikipedia
versus published white papers
that have been peer reviewed
by doctorates, it's going to have
different training
(14:06):
mechanisms behind it. So it's not an
oracle to be followed blindly. It really
makes the technology less
vague and less intimidating.
And they start to see it as a very fast,
very powerful intern
that they still need a smart
human boss to check in with, but they can
(14:27):
also start to question where the
information is coming
from and how seriously they should take
it. Right. Yeah, that's really
fascinating, relevant.
And I experience this all the time. And I
think it's fabulous
that you're teaching kids
this, and especially the limitations of
(14:48):
AI. I believe we call it
quirks. So why is that an
important skill for this generation to
understand where it's going
and how it's improving and it's
you know, quirks?
I think we kind of touched on this
before, but because AI hallucinates, it
(15:08):
makes mistakes that look incredibly
accurate or plausible.
And then like you said, you say, well,
that doesn't really seem
right. And you're like,
oh yes, I'm so sorry. You're so right.
Actually, here's your right
answer. But if a child doesn't
understand those underlying logic,
they'll really fall for a perfect looking
(15:31):
misinformation. So an
essay that looks like it's structured,
right? It has the right amount of
paragraphs. It has the
right amount of sentences. It ticks off
the points, but they
can't recognize those quirks.
That's really the kind of high level
critical thinking skill
that we're trying to impart
(15:52):
to their learning journey. And I like to
say it's sort of the difference between
being a passenger who doesn't notice the
car is off course, you
know, say what it's self driving
itself to being the navigator who sees
the error in the map and is like, oh,
actually, no, we don't
want to turn that way. You should be
going this way and you take back over the
(16:14):
reins and we pointed
in the right direction. So what we really
want is our children to
have that human in the loop
mindset. So they are still skeptical and
they add that creative
layer that makes the AI output
actually useful and safe and revisit its
(16:36):
own thinking process or
thinking patterns because it
tends to go down one journey. And the
answer might've been over there, but
because it already was
shaking out the skittles into the
different colors and the yellow one
already went to the cool
colors, there's no way to get back to the
warm colors, right? So
just keeping an eye on it as
it goes and using those critical thinking
(16:58):
skills is number one
important piece here.
Well, and as kids grow up and they move
into careers, there's
real cause and effect
that happens. I recently talked with a
lawyer who told me of a
(17:18):
case where somebody was trying
to validate to the court, these are the
reasons that what I'm
suggesting is correct and the AI
made up and totally hallucinated cases
that were not real but fit the
criteria. And then the judge,
(17:42):
this would be a great example for your...
Would that have been
a great example? Yes.
And they got dinged on their bar and
fined for using cases that
didn't exist as part of their
argument. And I just think that's a
really interesting example
of how hallucination turns
(18:03):
into actual fines and money and can
impact your career. It's
something that looks real and
believable. Right. So many moms, and you
believable. Right. So many moms, and you
this because we're sort of
the tech moms probably in our friend
group, but I think many moms
(18:24):
are nervous about technology in
their house and feel a little bit of
pressure to be the expert and
worry about screen time and how
much their kids and their family is on
the screen and that that seems to be
their primary focus of
(18:47):
limiting the amount of time that
somebody's looking at the
phone or the computer or the
television or whatever the device is. So
you've now suggested there are real
benefits from parents
understanding that. And in a couple of
other podcasts, we've
(19:09):
talked about this curiosity,
especially as your kids become teenagers.
And so how can that shift,
asking our sons and kids to
mentor us really, and having that
(19:29):
curiosity, how can that open the door to
better conversations
and understanding and relationships with
our kids?
I think that's a great question because
we all grew up even plus or minus a few
decades, depending on
(19:49):
how old your boys are, but
with parents that were still pretty much
the experts in whatever
they were trying to pass on
to us as children. And now that rug has
been completely pulled
from underneath our feet. So
the anxiety is definitely there and even
just navigating screen
(20:11):
time usage, which isn't
necessarily a thing that should have a
rigorous rule for all the
kids that is always the same
all of the time. One child might be five
minutes a day, one child might have
unlimited resources,
the app usage might be different in terms
of what they're allowed to
do. But one of the things that
(20:31):
I think you brought up is that word of
mentorship. I think that is definitely
the great lever that we
have at this moment in time, because for
the first time that expert
in the room is often just as
confused as the student because the tools
are literally changing
every day. So even us as the
tech moms in our mom groups are still
(20:54):
confused. So we're right there with you.
But by asking your sons
to mentor you, you can then sort of shift
that dynamic and
you're essentially modeling
intellectual humility, which they can
then take forward into the
universe. So you're showing him
that it's okay to be a successful
(21:14):
beginner and ask questions. It removes
that hierarchy fear that
we mostly all were probably parented on
and replaces it with
more of a partnership of
curiosity, as you said. So when you have
your kids on screen
time, if they're on TikTok or
watching YouTube videos about something,
(21:37):
playing Roblox,
Minecraft, even just asking to be a
participant in that learning journey will
go a long way because when
your child, when he explains,
say, the game mechanic or an AI prompt to
you that he's asking
help with for his homework,
(21:57):
he's actually reinforcing his own logical
thinking by just reteaching his thought
process back to you.
So I feel like it's a real opportunity
for us to shift that screen time from
that passive activity,
even if they're actively playing a game,
it's still, you know,
following that rule set that
the developers have set them on the path
(22:19):
towards into a
collaborative bridge between the two of
you. And so you don't have to go into the
situation having any of the answers or
even knowing if you're
saying TikTok or TikTok or the talkity
Tik, I don't even know, you know, but you
just need to be that
lead investigator in their screen time
(22:41):
journey and getting over
that anxiety piece, which is the
I need to know what I'm talking about to
I'm happy to not know, can you show me?
Right.
And shifting dynamic that way is I think
a huge opportunity for
us. But we've had very few,
you know, past mentors show us how to do
it in terms of society.
(23:03):
I yeah, I totally agree. And it sort of
reminds me when I when I first got into
broadcast television
was interviewing people and little kids,
one of my first projects was interviewing
kindergartners. And I couldn't get anyone
to say a sentence, you know,
they would just give me these
one word answers. And so, yes, no, you
(23:27):
know, who's your favorite
character, big bird, whatever.
So I asked my mom who was a kindergarten
teacher, I said, how do you
get how do you get little kids
to talk with you? And she says, I pretend
to be either deaf or
dumb. So I'm like, I'm sorry,
I didn't hear you. Could you explain that
(23:47):
to me again? Or I
didn't get it. And then they
come full force in and want to explain it
to you. And it's part
of this power shift,
I think, and curiosity. This is this is
so funny, because that
happens in our household will be,
(24:08):
you know, the girls might be eating
dinner and I'll say, Oh, Rose, I only
have seven of these left,
but we have 10 days that we needed to
last for how many more do I
need? And then my son or my
husband will be like three. And I'm like,
obviously, I know that, but
I'm trying to work on the simple
(24:29):
math over here. So it's the same kind of,
Right. Well, and when you're dealing with
teenagers, it's really, it's even harder.
But yeah, joyful curiosity is what one of
our teenage experts called it.
So if there's one mind shift you would
(24:49):
love parents to make as
they raise kids in this
era of AI and rapidly changing
technology, you know, what would it be?
That's a great question. I think there's
so many things.
Maybe it's just stop
trying to cheat proof your child's life
(25:10):
and start thought proofing
their brain. So don't fear the
tools that are popping up every day, but
teach them to approach
the tools with a mindset of
mastering the logic and the asking of the
questions behind where that piece of
(25:30):
information or new app
or new piece of technology is coming
from. I think if we focus on teaching
them to be the ones that
are holding those architectural
blueprints and architecting with
intention, no matter how much
the technology shifts and changes,
(25:51):
they'll never become obsolete. They'll be
the ones that will be
asking the questions and then on top of
it, building the
future. So yeah, I love that.
Adaptable. Giving them free right with
full screen. Yes, exactly.
You know, it occurs to me just even
(26:11):
understanding the
possibility is so powerful. You know,
recently there was, I have a spreadsheet
and I was thinking this would be really
cool as an app or put on a web page. And
so I asked someone in my
network who does that sort
(26:32):
of thing. And they were like, well, if
it's a spreadsheet, you
should just throw it into
you know, AI and ask it to create a page.
And I was blown away by
just even the thought of that.
Like that just hadn't ever occurred to me
to use the tool in
that way. So, you know,
the understanding of how to use the tool
(26:54):
is so critical.
Yeah. And I think that is a great
example as to maybe the kind of false
sense of security that is
descending on us as parents and
maybe, you know, broader society is that
those tools are super
powerful. They exist, but it will
(27:15):
only get you to 80% of the way there, 90%
of the way there. And then
there's little errors. Like,
you know, it was telling you to always
put in 30 centiliters of
liquid instead of milliliters or
wasn't converting things right. And I kid
you not that last 10 or 20%
of getting the AI to tweak
(27:37):
itself to make that new app that you've
just thrown in to Grok or
Chad GBT or Gemini is extremely
difficult if you don't have those
foundational tools and
understanding to then look under the
hood and say, this is where it needs to change.
So I ask all of our guests to give us a
(27:58):
quote for moms who are
trying to figure all this out,
this coding, AI technology. What do you
say to yourself or the
parents of your students?
Well, I always like to go back to my
grandmother, Rose's family motto, which
(28:18):
has been passed down
for generations and still seems to be
relevant, which is do your
best and let them say, I think
it's so relevant for us as parents today.
We are under so much
pressure to be perfect parents in
an age of AI and social media and all of
the judgment that comes
with those tools. But in
technology, as in life, there's no
(28:41):
perfect version 1.0. You do your best,
you iterate, you keep your
integrity along the way and you let the
critics and the they out
there say what they want. If we
can teach our boys and all of our
children that same resilience to focus on
the quality of their
(29:02):
work and their logic rather than the
noise of the world, I think
they're going to be just fine.
I really, really love that. Thank you and
resilience. Love that word. Right?
Isn't that what we hope for all of us?
Exactly. We're all still trying to keep
(29:24):
that intact and approach it every day.
So Elizabeth, if anyone wants to reach
out to Coca Coders, can you give us
the url or where we ca go for more information?
Yep. It's just cococoders.com. They give
it like Coco Chanel, but cococoders.com.
(29:46):
And love to have your son's try free
lesson and join one of our courses.
Fabulous. And we'll include that on the
MothersofBoys.Life website with the show notes of all
of this podcast. And thank
you very much for joining us.
Thank you so much for having me, Suzy.
(30:07):
It's been so fun. It's such a great chat.
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Be kind to yourself, moms.
I'm Suzy Shaw, mom of two now adult boys
and author of the book,
Mother of Boys Survival Guide. This
podcast shares practical
insights, expert advice,
and real conversations to help moms raise
confident, capable
boys. You can find more
episodes and resources at
(00:21):
mothersofboys.life. Now, let's get into
today's conversation.
Why kids should learn coding, preparing
children to understand
AI and build technology.
Welcome to the MOB,
Mothers of Boys podcast.
Artificial intelligence is suddenly
(00:43):
everywhere. Our kids are
using it for homework help,
search, and entertainment. But very few
actually understand how it works.
And that raises an important question for
parents. Are we
raising kids who simply use
technology or kids who understand how to
(01:04):
build it? My guest today
believes that teaching children
the foundations of coding and
computational thinking is one of the best
ways to prepare them
for the world they're growing up in.
Elizabeth Tweedale is a serial tech
entrepreneur and the
founder of Coco Coders, an educational
(01:26):
company that teaches children
ages 6 to 14, the foundations
of coding, computational thinking, and AI
problem solving. As both a
mother of three and a global
voice in education technology, Elizabeth
is passionate about
helping kids become creators
(01:46):
of technology rather than passive users.
Welcome, Elizabeth.
Thank you so much for having me, Suzy.
So Elizabeth, before we dive into all
this, can you tell us a
little bit about your journey and
what led you to start and launch Coco
Coders and focus on kids?
(02:08):
Sure. Well, my background is a bit
of a bridge between two worlds. I started
my undergrad in computer
science, but I've always
been drawn to design. So I went on to get
my master's in
architecture. And when I got into the
industry and worked for some of the
world's leading firms, I had a massive
(02:28):
light bulb moment. I saw
that even really in deeply creative,
physical, professional worlds like
architecture, that people
who were truly leading that industry were
the ones who understood
computation and computational
thinking. So we weren't just building
(02:49):
architecture and drawing drawings. We
were actually writing
code to simulate how wind hits a
skyscraper or how light fills a room or
how to redraw drawings
based on geometry with slight changes
that might come from the
brief. It was the fundamental
language of the modern world was this new
(03:14):
way of taking the tools that we've
developed in computer
science and applying it to practical
worlds. So I really then started Coco
Coders because of what
I was seeing out there in industry and
also having my own children. And I wanted
to give them that same
superpower that I saw in industry and the
ability to use logic and
(03:37):
coding and an understanding of
the technology that was being built in
their lives to bring any
creative vision to life or future
world that they could create for themselves.
And how old are your children?
I have a 17-year-old son, a 15-year-old
(03:57):
daughter, and a
7-year-old daughter. So
two close together and
then one that popped up later.
I think many parents can relate
to the feeling of feeling
overwhelmed by technology.
I know in my own personal life, I began
in broadcast television 40
(04:19):
years ago. And when I started my
career, everything was analog. And then
it became digital. And then
cell phones became a thing. And
so the technology just seems to be
growing faster and faster and evolving.
So why do you believe
it's so important for kids to learn, you
(04:41):
know, the foundations of
coding and computational
thinking rather than just using the tools
and the apps and
devices that are available?
Well, I like to think of it this way.
Most kids today are really
just players in a world that's
designed by someone else. So they're
playing the game, following
the path laid out for them by the
(05:02):
developers. But what we want to raise are
modders, which I know, you
know, on one of your previous
podcasts, thinking about Minecraft and
Roblox and how, you know,
that whole gaming industry
works with children. So if you have boys
that, you know, that
the second they get home,
they get into those games, they don't
(05:24):
just want to play, they
want to change the world,
create their own skins and break the
rules. So when a child
only knows how to use an app,
they're just the players, when they learn
the foundations of
coding, they get the chance and
the kind of developer key to the world.
They transition from just
being those consumers of
(05:44):
technology that we talk about, who are
directed by the technology
and where they should go and
what levels they should pass and how they
should use their apps, to
being the creators who really
define how that technology will serve
them and serve their purpose.
I call my boys Ernest and
Exuberance and in my book,
(06:05):
and Ernest was my Lego kid,
and he liked building things. And when we
discovered Lego
Mindstorm, when he was probably in
middle school, you know, that had some
really basic level of
programming that was part of it,
to make these little robots that would do
(06:26):
things. And then that sort
of led into, in high school,
getting into robotics club. And that was
just a breakthrough for
him. Now he's in IT and,
you know, doing cybersecurity.
When you talk about
the difference between being a consumer
of technology to a
creator, you know, what do
(06:47):
you think that shift looks like for kids?
And, you know, is that the Lego Mindstorm
sort of branch or, you
know, what does that look like?
I think that's a perfect example of a
tool that can help facilitate that. But
really what it looks
like is the shift from moving from how do
(07:09):
I use this to how do I
direct this? So finding
toys and applications and processes that
kids can interact with and experience
that. I like to think
that in this kind of AI era, we're seeing
a huge shift towards
prompt engineering and sort of
system oversight, which I know you talked
(07:30):
about previously in your
cybersecurity podcast. So to
be a creator now, you have to really
understand how AI is trained
or how it's built underneath
the scene is essentially a giant pattern
recognition machine
fed on human data. So if
a kid can understand that AI is just
(07:52):
predicting the next likely
word or pixel, you know, like when
you're typing your text in your iMessage,
based on what they're
taught, they become much better at
prompting it and also understanding where
they're going to lead it.
They can learn that the quality
of the output depends entirely on the
(08:12):
clarity of their logic. So
it matters because the sort of
creators of the future won't be the ones
who can type the fastest.
They'll be the ones who can
architect the best instructions and
recognize when the AI has its
hallucinations or goes
off-piste, if you will.
Right. And it does go off track. And I always think
(08:39):
it's funny the way it
apologizes, you know, it's like, oh,
you're right. Yes. My bad. Which, yes,
I'm so sorry. Which then
gets back to, you know, how did you ask
the question? I mean,
that's, I think that's sort of
your point is the prompt, learning how to
better manage the AI and
(09:02):
the systems, you know, you get
a better result, correct?
Yes, absolutely. Exactly. I think, you know,
it comes back around to
computational thinking and how we
actually build that up. And you brought
up Lego Mindstorms as
a perfect example. So if we think about
(09:23):
computational thinking, even just going
to the non-programmable
Lego, it's that exact same tool set. So
you can give two kids the
exact same box of a thousand
Legos. One might build a castle and the
other I build a spaceship.
The bricks haven't changed,
but the logic of the assembly has
changed. So that computational thinking
(09:46):
piece is just that. It's the
mental framework for how you snap ideas
together to solve
problems and how you use your own
intuition with preconceived structure to
create something that you like.
like and that you want to
Well, and I guess, you know, that that's how you
children begin to learn with
(10:06):
this computational thinking. What does
that look like in one of your classes?
Well, I think in our classes, we have
sort of four-week modules.
And at the end of four weeks,
each one has a different theme that
relates to real-world applications like
aerospace engineering
or vertical farming or, you know, things
(10:30):
like that. In week three and
week four, there's specific
challenges to add to the projects that
they've created in weeks
one and two. And those are
broken up into small challenges, medium
and big, but they're given to the kids
and they're not always
the same answer to get to the solution.
So one of the examples
(10:50):
that I like to use to explain
computational thinking and sort of the
difference between how we think about
solving a problem in
computer science versus math, you know,
you have an algebraic
equation in math and there's a very
specific set of steps that you have to go
through in order to solve
the problem. But in computer
science, you might have a test question
(11:14):
that says, draw five stick people in a
row. And so one child
could draw five circles spaced out and
then five little bodies, five little
legs, five little arms.
The next child could finish the exact
same assignment but draw
one little stick person,
then the next one, then the next one,
(11:35):
then the next one, then the next one,
solving the exact same
problem but using different ways to put
the building blocks
together in order to do it. So
I think that's kind of the essence of
computational thinking
and how we can demystify it
for parents.
I'm talking to AI. So we
recently shared a podcast
on raising cyber smart kids in the age of
(11:57):
AI. You mentioned that
earlier and tips for parents.
And we have a resource page as well. And
And we have a resource page as well. And
we'll add this podcast
and anything else that you
think would be relevant for parents to
that resource page.
This AI programming,
computational thinking, helping kids
(12:20):
understand it, building
systems, it seems to me that it would
impact almost not everything, but a good
portion of their life. So if you
understand better how to
ask a question in this framework, you're
(12:42):
going to get a better response even
out of Google or out of the library or in a
ChatGPT or whatever
the AI is that you're...
Right? Is that correct? Is that where you
think the superpower of this is?
Yes, that's exactly it. I think
understanding the
(13:03):
foundations of AI and the systems that
they're built on for kids really just
pulls back the curtain on the
magic. You know, it seems like
magic. You put something in and you get
out this answer. But when kids can
understand how the code
is built, they realize that AI isn't an
all-knowing spirit out there, the ethos.
(13:25):
It's a system built by
humans using large language models. So
all of the things that we've put out
there on the internet or
all of the documents that we've fed it to
understand how we
think, what we know, and what
we've said in the past. So they learn
that AI is essentially
trained on these massive data sets,
(13:46):
which means it carries all those biases
and errors of the
information it was given. So if
it's trained on Reddit versus Wikipedia
versus published white papers
that have been peer reviewed
by doctorates, it's going to have
different training
(14:06):
mechanisms behind it. So it's not an
oracle to be followed blindly. It really
makes the technology less
vague and less intimidating.
And they start to see it as a very fast,
very powerful intern
that they still need a smart
human boss to check in with, but they can
(14:27):
also start to question where the
information is coming
from and how seriously they should take
it. Right. Yeah, that's really
fascinating, relevant.
And I experience this all the time. And I
think it's fabulous
that you're teaching kids
this, and especially the limitations of
(14:48):
AI. I believe we call it
quirks. So why is that an
important skill for this generation to
understand where it's going
and how it's improving and it's
you know, quirks?
I think we kind of touched on this
before, but because AI hallucinates, it
(15:08):
makes mistakes that look incredibly
accurate or plausible.
And then like you said, you say, well,
that doesn't really seem
right. And you're like,
oh yes, I'm so sorry. You're so right.
Actually, here's your right
answer. But if a child doesn't
understand those underlying logic,
they'll really fall for a perfect looking
(15:31):
misinformation. So an
essay that looks like it's structured,
right? It has the right amount of
paragraphs. It has the
right amount of sentences. It ticks off
the points, but they
can't recognize those quirks.
That's really the kind of high level
critical thinking skill
that we're trying to impart
(15:52):
to their learning journey. And I like to
say it's sort of the difference between
being a passenger who doesn't notice the
car is off course, you
know, say what it's self driving
itself to being the navigator who sees
the error in the map and is like, oh,
actually, no, we don't
want to turn that way. You should be
going this way and you take back over the
(16:14):
reins and we pointed
in the right direction. So what we really
want is our children to
have that human in the loop
mindset. So they are still skeptical and
they add that creative
layer that makes the AI output
actually useful and safe and revisit its
(16:36):
own thinking process or
thinking patterns because it
tends to go down one journey. And the
answer might've been over there, but
because it already was
shaking out the skittles into the
different colors and the yellow one
already went to the cool
colors, there's no way to get back to the
warm colors, right? So
just keeping an eye on it as
it goes and using those critical thinking
(16:58):
skills is number one
important piece here.
Well, and as kids grow up and they move
into careers, there's
real cause and effect
that happens. I recently talked with a
lawyer who told me of a
(17:18):
case where somebody was trying
to validate to the court, these are the
reasons that what I'm
suggesting is correct and the AI
made up and totally hallucinated cases
that were not real but fit the
criteria. And then the judge,
(17:42):
this would be a great example for your...
Would that have been
a great example? Yes.
And they got dinged on their bar and
fined for using cases that
didn't exist as part of their
argument. And I just think that's a
really interesting example
of how hallucination turns
(18:03):
into actual fines and money and can
impact your career. It's
something that looks real and
believable. Right. So many moms, and you
believable. Right. So many moms, and you
this because we're sort of
the tech moms probably in our friend
group, but I think many moms
(18:24):
are nervous about technology in
their house and feel a little bit of
pressure to be the expert and
worry about screen time and how
much their kids and their family is on
the screen and that that seems to be
their primary focus of
(18:47):
limiting the amount of time that
somebody's looking at the
phone or the computer or the
television or whatever the device is. So
you've now suggested there are real
benefits from parents
understanding that. And in a couple of
other podcasts, we've
(19:09):
talked about this curiosity,
especially as your kids become teenagers.
And so how can that shift,
asking our sons and kids to
mentor us really, and having that
(19:29):
curiosity, how can that open the door to
better conversations
and understanding and relationships with
our kids?
I think that's a great question because
we all grew up even plus or minus a few
decades, depending on
(19:49):
how old your boys are, but
with parents that were still pretty much
the experts in whatever
they were trying to pass on
to us as children. And now that rug has
been completely pulled
from underneath our feet. So
the anxiety is definitely there and even
just navigating screen
(20:11):
time usage, which isn't
necessarily a thing that should have a
rigorous rule for all the
kids that is always the same
all of the time. One child might be five
minutes a day, one child might have
unlimited resources,
the app usage might be different in terms
of what they're allowed to
do. But one of the things that
(20:31):
I think you brought up is that word of
mentorship. I think that is definitely
the great lever that we
have at this moment in time, because for
the first time that expert
in the room is often just as
confused as the student because the tools
are literally changing
every day. So even us as the
tech moms in our mom groups are still
(20:54):
confused. So we're right there with you.
But by asking your sons
to mentor you, you can then sort of shift
that dynamic and
you're essentially modeling
intellectual humility, which they can
then take forward into the
universe. So you're showing him
that it's okay to be a successful
(21:14):
beginner and ask questions. It removes
that hierarchy fear that
we mostly all were probably parented on
and replaces it with
more of a partnership of
curiosity, as you said. So when you have
your kids on screen
time, if they're on TikTok or
watching YouTube videos about something,
(21:37):
playing Roblox,
Minecraft, even just asking to be a
participant in that learning journey will
go a long way because when
your child, when he explains,
say, the game mechanic or an AI prompt to
you that he's asking
help with for his homework,
(21:57):
he's actually reinforcing his own logical
thinking by just reteaching his thought
process back to you.
So I feel like it's a real opportunity
for us to shift that screen time from
that passive activity,
even if they're actively playing a game,
it's still, you know,
following that rule set that
the developers have set them on the path
(22:19):
towards into a
collaborative bridge between the two of
you. And so you don't have to go into the
situation having any of the answers or
even knowing if you're
saying TikTok or TikTok or the talkity
Tik, I don't even know, you know, but you
just need to be that
lead investigator in their screen time
(22:41):
journey and getting over
that anxiety piece, which is the
I need to know what I'm talking about to
I'm happy to not know, can you show me?
Right.
And shifting dynamic that way is I think
a huge opportunity for
us. But we've had very few,
you know, past mentors show us how to do
it in terms of society.
(23:03):
I yeah, I totally agree. And it sort of
reminds me when I when I first got into
broadcast television
was interviewing people and little kids,
one of my first projects was interviewing
kindergartners. And I couldn't get anyone
to say a sentence, you know,
they would just give me these
one word answers. And so, yes, no, you
(23:27):
know, who's your favorite
character, big bird, whatever.
So I asked my mom who was a kindergarten
teacher, I said, how do you
get how do you get little kids
to talk with you? And she says, I pretend
to be either deaf or
dumb. So I'm like, I'm sorry,
I didn't hear you. Could you explain that
(23:47):
to me again? Or I
didn't get it. And then they
come full force in and want to explain it
to you. And it's part
of this power shift,
I think, and curiosity. This is this is
so funny, because that
happens in our household will be,
(24:08):
you know, the girls might be eating
dinner and I'll say, Oh, Rose, I only
have seven of these left,
but we have 10 days that we needed to
last for how many more do I
need? And then my son or my
husband will be like three. And I'm like,
obviously, I know that, but
I'm trying to work on the simple
(24:29):
math over here. So it's the same kind of,
Right. Well, and when you're dealing with
teenagers, it's really, it's even harder.
But yeah, joyful curiosity is what one of
our teenage experts called it.
So if there's one mind shift you would
(24:49):
love parents to make as
they raise kids in this
era of AI and rapidly changing
technology, you know, what would it be?
That's a great question. I think there's
so many things.
Maybe it's just stop
trying to cheat proof your child's life
(25:10):
and start thought proofing
their brain. So don't fear the
tools that are popping up every day, but
teach them to approach
the tools with a mindset of
mastering the logic and the asking of the
questions behind where that piece of
(25:30):
information or new app
or new piece of technology is coming
from. I think if we focus on teaching
them to be the ones that
are holding those architectural
blueprints and architecting with
intention, no matter how much
the technology shifts and changes,
(25:51):
they'll never become obsolete. They'll be
the ones that will be
asking the questions and then on top of
it, building the
future. So yeah, I love that.
Adaptable. Giving them free right with
full screen. Yes, exactly.
You know, it occurs to me just even
(26:11):
understanding the
possibility is so powerful. You know,
recently there was, I have a spreadsheet
and I was thinking this would be really
cool as an app or put on a web page. And
so I asked someone in my
network who does that sort
(26:32):
of thing. And they were like, well, if
it's a spreadsheet, you
should just throw it into
you know, AI and ask it to create a page.
And I was blown away by
just even the thought of that.
Like that just hadn't ever occurred to me
to use the tool in
that way. So, you know,
the understanding of how to use the tool
(26:54):
is so critical.
Yeah. And I think that is a great
example as to maybe the kind of false
sense of security that is
descending on us as parents and
maybe, you know, broader society is that
those tools are super
powerful. They exist, but it will
(27:15):
only get you to 80% of the way there, 90%
of the way there. And then
there's little errors. Like,
you know, it was telling you to always
put in 30 centiliters of
liquid instead of milliliters or
wasn't converting things right. And I kid
you not that last 10 or 20%
of getting the AI to tweak
(27:37):
itself to make that new app that you've
just thrown in to Grok or
Chad GBT or Gemini is extremely
difficult if you don't have those
foundational tools and
understanding to then look under the
hood and say, this is where it needs to change.
So I ask all of our guests to give us a
(27:58):
quote for moms who are
trying to figure all this out,
this coding, AI technology. What do you
say to yourself or the
parents of your students?
Well, I always like to go back to my
grandmother, Rose's family motto, which
(28:18):
has been passed down
for generations and still seems to be
relevant, which is do your
best and let them say, I think
it's so relevant for us as parents today.
We are under so much
pressure to be perfect parents in
an age of AI and social media and all of
the judgment that comes
with those tools. But in
technology, as in life, there's no
(28:41):
perfect version 1.0. You do your best,
you iterate, you keep your
integrity along the way and you let the
critics and the they out
there say what they want. If we
can teach our boys and all of our
children that same resilience to focus on
the quality of their
(29:02):
work and their logic rather than the
noise of the world, I think
they're going to be just fine.
I really, really love that. Thank you and
resilience. Love that word. Right?
Isn't that what we hope for all of us?
Exactly. We're all still trying to keep
(29:24):
that intact and approach it every day.
So Elizabeth, if anyone wants to reach
out to Coca Coders, can you give us
the url or where we ca go for more information?
Yep. It's just cococoders.com. They give
it like Coco Chanel, but cococoders.com.
(29:46):
And love to have your son's try free
lesson and join one of our courses.
Fabulous. And we'll include that on the
MothersofBoys.Life website with the show notes of all
of this podcast. And thank
you very much for joining us.
Thank you so much for having me, Suzy.
(30:07):
It's been so fun. It's such a great chat.
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