GIANT Newsletter: Announcing a free program and our new AI report

Join Our November Gratitude Mission

From L to R: I learned to ride a tricycle. I learned how to make slime. I learned how to make a robot.

Let’s kick off this month with some gratitude!

Ask your kids: what is something cool you learned this year that you're thankful for?

Show us! Send us photos of projects your children have made, that represent what they’ve learned. Or, simply send us photos of what they are grateful for. Include a short description of what they learned, along with their names and ages. Feel free to submit a description without a photo! We will remix your submissions into Appreciation Avatars and feature these Avatars in our GIANT Gratitude Journal, coming to a screen near you later this month! The journals will provide a space for your kids to further write about or draw out what they feel gratitude for. See above for some Appreciation Avatar examples. Be sure to follow along on our Instagram feed and stories for another chance to see your avatars! We will be sharing them throughout the month starting this week! Please send your submissions by November 20th!

SUBMIT YOUR GRATITUDE HERE

A GIANT Halloween at The Killingly Public Library

On the Saturday before Halloween, The GIANT Room hosted a special Halloween event at the Killingly Public Library in Connecticut. Sparked by a collection of library books, children and families embarked on a creative STEM workshop, crafting potions, spell books, and monsters. This event was a component of our extensive partnership with the Connecticut Public Library system, which you can read about here. However, the excitement didn’t end there! Sparked by the projects from this event, The GIANT team developed a Remix inspired by Laura Seeger Vaccaro's book, I Used to Be Afraid.

Click here to read I Used to Be Afraid GIANT Storybook, a journey of courage, creativity, and community!

GIANT Kids Co-Design a Social Networking App That Supports Their Digital Citizenship

The GIANT Room is committed to including children at the design table. We recently partnered with the Joan Ganz Cooney Center and Mrs Wordsmith teams to co-design a social networking app designed for children aged 8 to 13. This app underwent testing and development by a group of 30 GIANT kids over the course of two product development cycles.

Read about the process and the findings in this article written by Dr. Azi Jamalian and published on Joan Ganz Cooney Center’s Blog

Introducing The GIANT AI Report!

The fast-paced AI landscape may seem overwhelming, as we are constantly inundated with new developments and breaking news. The GIANT AI Report is here to break it down into digestible bite-sized pieces that are currently relevant to parenting and education.

GIANT Kids holding their AI-generated Avatars

Here’s What Biden’s AI Executive Order Could Mean for Schools
In the recent executive order, issued by President Biden last Monday, he has instructed his administration to develop resources for teachers to effectively utilize AI-based educational tools. The order mandates the U.S. Department of Commerce to create guidelines for content authentication to combat AI-generated content concerns and plagiarism. It also urges Congress to pass legislation focusing on data privacy, particularly for children.

How AI Can Teach Kids to Write–Not Just Cheat

Will young students increasingly rely on ChatGPT to write? A recent study with high school students in San Francisco yielded some enlightening insights. Some students found the writing produced by ChatGPT to be too formal, and some believed that ChatGPT cannot “think for us”. Read more about the study’s findings, as well as some of the ways that ChatGPT can constructively aid students in their writing process.

Nightshade Data Poisoning Tool
A new tool allows artists to make hidden alterations to their digital art, preventing AI models from using their work in a predictable manner if incorporated into training datasets. Could this be used in photos to protect images of children from training dataset inclusion?

Spread the Gratitude. Share the Knowledge. Please forward this newsletter to a family that would like to be in the mix!

JOIN OUR NEWSLETTER