015 min
Pack for camp
Read a pretend rainy forecast. Let children choose a coat picture.
Ask: “Did you need my name to choose a coat?”
Listen for: “No, we needed to know it was raining.”
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Foundation · Privacy
Pack for rain and wind. Which picture messages does the helper need?
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Investigate with Kiki the kookaburraA minimal fictional camp message and an illustrated help-seeking plan.
Pack for rain and wind. Which picture messages does the helper need?
A helper can tell our pretend camp what to pack when it receives the weather. It does not need a child’s name or home address. More information is not always more useful. We can make a message useful and keep personal details out. An adult helps decide what is safe to share.
Before this lesson: Choose a coat for a rainy day. No prior AI lesson is required.
A helper can tell our pretend camp what to pack when it receives the weather. It does not need a child’s name or home address. More information is not always more useful. We can make a message useful and keep personal details out. An adult helps decide what is safe to share.
Choose a coat for a rainy day. No prior AI lesson is required.
Prepare a fictional camp message with rain, wind, a made-up full name and a made-up street. Never invite real addresses. Read the packing rule: rain needs a coat; wind needs a windbreak. Demonstrate the send gate using only supplied fields.
ACARA V9 AI curriculum connection ↗ · Technologies ↗
A complete teaching sequence · 35 minutes
Read a pretend rainy forecast. Let children choose a coat picture.
Ask: “Did you need my name to choose a coat?”
Listen for: “No, we needed to know it was raining.”
Show the full fictional message and ask what will happen if the name is removed.
Ask: “Will the helper still choose the coat?”
Listen for: “I think so; rain is still there.”
Move fields through the privacy gate, send and inspect both the received message and packing result. Remove only one field between sends.
Ask: “What actually travelled through the gate?”
Listen for: “Weather and wind, but not the name.”
Remove the weather as well. The helper must show that it lacks the information rather than invent a forecast.
Ask: “Is the smallest possible message always useful?”
Listen for: “No; now it cannot tell what to pack.”
Pairs assemble the smallest message that still produces the correct packing result. Draw its contents and an adult-help symbol.
Ask: “How will you know you kept enough?”
Listen for: “We can send it and check the coat.”
Role-play another screen asking for a photo.
Ask: “What could you say to a trusted adult?”
Listen for: “This is asking for my picture. Can you help?”
A helpful machine needs every detail.
Removing the rain field protects information but makes the packing task unanswerable. Minimisation means enough useful data, not always zero data.
Make the received message contain only weather and wind; explain why each remaining field is needed.
Ask each child to identify one useful field and one unnecessary field. Distinguish a reason based on the task from a memorised claim that all information is bad.
| Criterion | Beginning | Secure | Extending |
|---|---|---|---|
| Useful information | Keeps or removes everything | Keeps weather and removes identity | Explains why deleting weather breaks the task |
| Help seeking | Needs prompting to pause | Names a trusted adult and asks for help | Explains what the adult needs to check |
Use weather pictures and a closed envelope; adults read field labels. Do not require children to spell private-information words.
Design a message for a different pretend helper that chooses shoes from terrain. Explain why a weather field may no longer be enough.
Use only the supplied invented details. Never ask children to enter their own name, address, photo or school. The browser sends no lab inputs to a service.
Shared device? Turn remembering off. A project file lets you continue on another device.
Your browser is the laboratory
Pack for rain and wind. Which picture messages does the helper need?
The fictional message says rain, strong wind, Alex Example and 7 Imaginary Lane. Rain triggers a coat; strong wind triggers a windbreak. Missing weather produces an unknown response.
The experiment opens after your prediction.
There is no penalty for being surprised.
Apple Silicon · PyTorch MPS
Run all possible field combinations to show which preserve useful packing decisions and which expose unnecessary fields.
Teacher-operated extension: students predict and interpret the visual report together.
The bundle contains lesson-specific working code, a configuration file, a reactive notebook, a deterministic CPU check and hardware setup instructions. Acceleration is reported only after a tensor operation and result read-back succeed.
Download Mac Studio investigation ↓unzip f-signal-mac-pathway.zip -d f-signal-mac cd f-signal-mac bash setup-mac.sh source .venv/bin/activate python experiment.py --device mps --output results marimo edit notebook.py
CPU and available-device execution status is recorded in the downloaded README and validation report. DGX Spark execution requires that hardware; static validation alone does not establish GPU compatibility or performance. The browser lesson remains fully available without this extension.
NVIDIA DGX Spark · PyTorch CUDA
Run all possible field combinations to show which preserve useful packing decisions and which expose unnecessary fields.
Teacher-operated extension: students predict and interpret the visual report together.
The bundle contains lesson-specific working code, a configuration file, a reactive notebook, a deterministic CPU check and hardware setup instructions. Acceleration is reported only after a tensor operation and result read-back succeed.
Download DGX Spark investigation ↓unzip f-signal-dgx-pathway.zip -d f-signal-dgx cd f-signal-dgx bash run-dgx.sh # Open the localhost notebook URL printed by the container.
CPU and available-device execution status is recorded in the downloaded README and validation report. DGX Spark execution requires that hardware; static validation alone does not establish GPU compatibility or performance. The browser lesson remains fully available without this extension.
A minimal fictional camp message and an illustrated help-seeking plan.
Download the editable handout →