While the world and media argue about AI and LLMs replacing human jobs, today I am going to talk about the optimistic side of this technology, focusing on how AI enables a new generation to dream big and create their projects with ease! A privilege that older generations did not have, and some of them needed to spend a few years learning the grammar and syntax of programming languages to do it!
Recently, I volunteered with a Scout group to introduce Scouts to programming and Vibe Coding. The volunteering experience showed me how AI is helping children become more imaginative, teaching them to be changemakers rather than just consuming technology. During the course, I saw firsthand how an autistic child used AI to express his thoughts, how the technology enables people far from technology to adapt quickly, and how it can help disadvantaged communities achieve the impossible! In this blog post, I am going to share the background of the scout story, the program we worked on, and the results we achieved from this experience.
(Event photos)
The Scout Boys' Story:
The Scout Boys' Movement allows youth to engage with the community, be productive, and be good citizens. The Scout movement provides youth with structure, hierarchy, and values to follow and work on. Having a structure, values, and hierarchy creates a great environment for teaching and introducing new concepts to youth. In the Scout group I worked with, they had both a structure that allowed them to gather children and a hierarchy that enabled children to respect what they learned and their teachers. Besides all that, it provides youth with a space to be themselves, explore their leadership skills, and be creative!
The Program:
The structure, hierarchy, and creative space foster the usage and development of new tools. In the program I hosted with them, we introduced high and middle school students to AI by explaining its fundamentals, how it uses statistics and probability to generate results, and then allowed them to create their own solutions to problems and build a product to solve these problems. In the end, each built their own AI solution using Replit.
In the program, I focused on three concepts: the fundamentals, creative thinking, and building. Each step introduced a new concept and deepened understanding of AI and the world we live in. In the first step, we had a conversation about AI, how the children are using it, and what they can benefit from it, the limits, and the possibilities of the tools we have.
In the next session, I explained to them how to use the AI models and tools we have to create a solution for their environment and community. Heavily inspired by “The Mom Test,” I shared the book's concepts and ideas.
At the end, we (as scouts) collaborated with Replit and a university to host a hands-on workshop for the scout boys to bring their ideas and projects to life. In this workshop, I showed them how to use Replit, explained the basics of the program, and provided each with a PC to work on.
Combining scouting values with technology created a unique learning experience for the children. While AI empowered them to turn their ideas into real projects with unprecedented ease, scouting taught them the importance of teamwork, collaboration, leadership, and responsibility. Together, these two worlds showed how technology can amplify human creativity rather than replace it, enabling young people to dream bigger and achieve more.
The Results:
By enabling the children to create their own projects with Replit, they were able to express their emotions, experiences, and even their ideas. Some of them created websites based on their own hobbies; others felt they knew the tech and helped their peers; some were new and just listened and watched what their peers did. It was such a great experience to see each child do what they wanted. For us, we allowed them to build two projects: one was a creative project based on their own ideas, and the other was a Morse code translation project, in the hope of connecting their coding experience with their scouting experience.
(The Morse Code Machine in one of the projects)
For the Morse code translator, which converted text to and from Morse code. All the children did this project, yet some added their own touches. One created the project as a mahjong game, another created a full Wikipedia-like page about the code, and the third added an image of a Morse code machine to the project. Setting a specific project showed us that even when the goal is simple and clear, children have a great deal of creativity to apply to their projects.
(Mahjong Morse Code Game)
As for the creative projects, we allowed them to create whatever they wanted, so we had children who built their family business website and another who built a futuristic website about technology. At the same time, this was great; we saw someone who built a sniper game, another who created a Minecraft-like game, someone who was interested in medicine created a human body exploring program, another created a blog about technology, someone who was interested in embedded systems created a website talking about different types of cards they are using, a car parking game, and a scout survival app.
(Human Anatomy Explorer)
(Embedded Systems Explorer)
(MineCraft-ish game)
With all these different projects, we can see how a small group of children can create impactful technology for themselves rather than just consuming it! This would not have happened without the tools we got from AI development.
Note: Use this link to check all the projects.
The Impact:
The impact of this experience is not only about the empowerment and projects the scouts created, but also about a butterfly effect that will stay with them forever. At the same time, since we created a safe environment for them to explore, we noticed that it enabled them to express their empathy as well.
In the group we worked with, we had an autistic child who struggled with typing and writing, yet he wanted to create his project. Even though he struggled and without our requests, he got help from his peers; one of the children volunteered to work with him on his projects, and they worked as a pair. This happened without forcing or even requesting them, which showed a great example of teamwork and how they apply it in their lives (spoiler: we gave the scout who helped his friend a gift).
Another great case was seeing how children with little exposure to technology experienced its impact, worked on it, and built their own projects. They would not have had a chance to build a project from scratch before the “Vibe Coding Era.” It would have consumed more time and been harder to develop.
Final Thoughts:
The whole experience showed me how technology development can reach untapped fields. It would not be feasible to teach all children programming and expect quick results. Vibe Coding without a strong software engineering foundation would not yield good results, yet it can provide a platform for people to test their ideas and express their creativity.
I am excited and happy to be in this Era and hope to see how it will develop in the future, hopefully be a part of the technology development as well!
Acknowledgment:
This workshop and experience would not have happened without the support of awesome people in the community. Starting with the Fatih Scout Group: Ahmad, Mulham, Muhammed, Bilal, and many others, whose dedication to mentoring and supporting young people made this experience truly meaningful.
Replit and, most importantly, Francisco and Faris for their support and sponsoring the event. Assistant Professor Ali Nizam and the International Student Club at Fatih Sultan Mehmet Vakıf University for their support throughout the project. Ahmed Saleh for suggesting "The Mom Test" book to read.
The most important part of this experience is the scouts themselves, for showing us the bright side of technology and how enabling them can bring joy to their families and to us.
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