The second workshop at “Metasuppo Campus” established by Ehime Prefectural Board of Education was held on November 24. The theme was “Let’s draw a picture that AI can recognize faces! Using Scratch Lab’s Face Sensing block, participants tried programming and drawing a picture that AI can recognize as a face. Although the activity itself was simple, it turned out to be a valuable hour of experiencing the infinite possibilities together with the participants.
First, we tried programming with the when a face is detected (when a face is detected) block. We tried various things, such as characters around us as well as our own faces, and found that some non-human objects are also recognized as faces. Some of the pictures we draw will also be recognized and some will not, and we will try out different shapes of eyes, nose, mouth, and ears while referring to the tips given to us in advance by Eric Rosenbaum of the Scratch development team.
クリックでPDFファイルを表示しますOnce again, participants gathered at various locations in Ehime Prefecture to participate in the workshop. It is a little confusing, but each location has its own avatar in the metaverse space. Through their avatars, each participant used a terminal to try their hand at programming. As an avatar, I also act as an instructor and facilitator in the MetaSupport Campus.
In order to use facial recognition, I import webcam images into Scratch, so you can see my image on the screen I share on the Metaverse. I feel that this makes it easier to explain things because I can capture gestures and facial expressions in real time, which is difficult to do with avatars alone. However, I can only rely on the voices I can hear through the avatars at each location to know how the participants are doing. Listening carefully to the voices of the participants, I could imagine what kind of situation they were in, and I found myself strangely more attuned to their activities than usual.
I was suddenly reminded of the Dialogue in the dark that we conducted during CAMP. When participants engage in activities in the dark, using all of their senses other than sight, they try to gather information by fully utilizing other senses such as hearing, touch, and smell, which they usually rely on for information gathering. The senses are sharpened in a way that is different from the usual.
Toward the end of the workshop, we turned on the video on the terminals connected to the Metaverse at each site and asked participants to share their works by having their terminals captured on camera. Until then, I had only been able to imagine what kind of work they were creating based on sound alone, so I was greatly moved when I could actually see their work through the camera.
Because we could not see the work, we were able to reaffirm the importance of sharing in the workshop, such as the sharing through the sounds produced by Scratch, the sharing of the activity itself of looking for something to be recognized as a face or drawing a face to be recognized as a face, and the sharing of time. We were able to reaffirm the importance of sharing in the workshop. I also felt the support of teachers from the Ehime Prefectural Board of Education, “Metacchi” and “Sapotchi,” who usually provide support in the Metaverse space, was very encouraging because it is an unfamiliar space. I felt a sense of security from the visually impaired people who supported us in our activities in the dark at Dialouge in the dark.
We all may have some kind of disability in our daily life, not only in a special environment like this workshop. In order to compensate for them, we do everything we can to eliminate them without even realizing it. However, if we think about it, inconvenience may also be a chance to find something important.
This workshop was an opportunity for me to think about how I would like to try to create a simple workshop that retains only what is important, rather than subtracting what cannot be done in a face-to-face workshop to a remote workshop.
Again, I am grateful for the learning that came out of the workshop, and will be thinking about the next workshop.