CreatiCode XO (AI Assistant) - Explain To Me
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Introduction
CreatiCode XO is a coding assistant running in the CreatiCode playground. It is an AI chatbot trained to help K-12 students learn Scratch programming. It can help students and teachers in many tasks, such as answering questions and writing code.
The key benefit of using XO is to get personalized and timely help. You no longer need to wait for your turn to ask your teacher your own question. Instead, you can ask XO to help you anytime and get a response right away.
In addition, learning to code with XO isn’t just about coding; it’s about developing essential skills for the future. You’ll learn how to ask precise questions and thoughtfully analyze the responses you get. As AI assistants become a part of everyday life and work in the future, these skills will be invaluable.
There are many ways to use XO, and in this tutorial, we will focus on how to ask XO to explain things to us.
Explain How to Use a Block
When you wonder how to use any block, you can ask XO like this:
Note that XO will not only explain what the block does but also give you a simple example. You can directly copy the example code into the playground to run it and observe the result.Note that you should make sure XO understands exactly which block you are referring to. For example, if we ask “how to use the touching block?”, then XO will not know whether you are referring to the “touching Sprite” block or “touching color” block.
Explain How to Do Something
When you are not sure what block to use, you can simply ask XO how to do something, such as how to implement a feature or how to make the sprite do something. For example, this is the response you get for “how to draw a star?”:
Note that your request should be as specific as possible, since XO may make mistakes if it has to write a lot of code at once. As a rule of thumb, your request should not require more than 10 blocks to implement.
Explain A Concept
XO is also really good at making coding ideas clear, especially when you ask questions starting with “what is [censored]?” So, if you were to ask, “what is a clone?”, here’s how it would explain it:
Explain Code
There are times when you’re exploring someone else’s project and might not grasp everything about how it functions. This is a great opportunity to seek XO’s assistance. You can inquire about broader aspects, such as the interaction between sprites, or delve into more detailed queries about the purpose of a particular block or sequence of blocks. For instance, here is how to ask about user input handling in the “ChatGPT - Chat with Einstein” project:
Use a Different Language
XO always responds in the same language as you do. If you use Spanish/Chinese/French, it will also show code blocks in those languages. Here is an example in Spanish:
Add Your Personal Flavors
XO isn’t all serious when answering your questions. If you throw in a fun twist, XO often comes back with unexpected and enjoyable answers. For example, if you ask, “Explain what is a loop. I’m a pirate.”, here’s how it would respond:
The possible ways to twist your questions are endless. Here are some fun examples:- “Explain what is a variable as if I’m 5 years old.”
- “Explain what is an event listener. You are Harry Potter.”
- “Explain what is a conditional statement. Pretend we’re time travelers.”
- “Explain how to use clones. Assume I’m a chef.”
- “Explain what are messages used for. You’re a detective solving a case.”
- “Tell me about sprites. We’re astronauts on the International Space Station.”
- “What is a list in Scratch? Imagine we’re deep-sea explorers.”
- “Explain what is a costume. You’re a superhero with transformation powers.”
- “Explain what is a sound effect. Pretend we’re in a zombie apocalypse.”
- “Explain what sensing means. Assume I’m a medieval knight.”
- “Explain what is an operator. You’re an alien explaining earth technology.”
- “Explain what is a touch event. Imagine we’re inside a video game.”
- “Explain what is a backdrop. You’re a wizard with a spellbook.”
- “Explain what is a pen tool. We’re on a spy mission.”
- “Explain what is direction. Pretend I’m a dragon hoarding knowledge.”
- “Explain what is a boolean. You’re a famous inventor from history.”
- “Explain what is a custom block. Imagine we’re running a circus.”
- “Explain what is an animation. You’re a comedian on stage.”
- “Explain why we have repeat blocks. You’re an ancient philosopher.”
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How do you make the AI give you a block visual? All it’s doing is giving me step by step orders that don’t make perfect sense or don’t exactly work
Edit 1: I’m telling it to give me examples/pictures of the blocks, but it’s not
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It should be able to write code for you and display them visually. As shown above, when you ask “how to use the ‘for’ block”, it would show you an example program as visual blocks, and you can directly copy that into your playground.
If that doesn’t work for you, please share the prompt you are using, and we will investigate why.
Thank you
Bin