We tried hard to solve it, gave up and looked up the answer. We needed more explanation to understand :)
My reading companions wanted to share riddles for fun. One of them had a book filled with riddles that he had got as a birthday present and hence the need to show it off with his peers. There is some joy in asking a group of friends a riddle and watch them think hard when you know the answer. Even better if they beg you for a clue and you think of the most distant clue so that they don't get it right away. We were having a good time and the riddles were fairly ok to handle even if at times they got a little tough. Then one of the readers said, "I have a really tough riddle to solve."
This is the riddle that went up on the board.
What is it that comes once in a year, twice a month, four times a week, six times in a day?
We thought and thought and gave up soon. Then the child who had come up with the riddle in the first place innocently said, I did not understand how the answer is 'odd numbers'.
The whole group responded by getting into action. They listed the hours in a day and discovered that there are 6 odd numbers. 4 times a week? List the number of days from 1 to 7, we get 4 odd numbers. Twice in a month, makes sense as there are two odd months. We got stuck at once in a year! Some decided to google and were even more puzzled with the answer. '1' in 12 months is an odd number, they found. Their reaction was priceless! We laughed together and wound up the session. That was a fruitful session with a lot of collaborative thinking and as a bonus lot of laughter too!
Post session thoughts
There is an inherently growing worry that students tend to use AI for school assignments and could lose their originality and resort to shortcuts. An article by Neerja Singh in the Teacher Plus magazine, titled, "Generative AI- Mind in the Machine," made me think again.
With repetitive work being facilitated by AI models, what is left for humans to do is to dream, be curious, strive for emotional intelligence and supervise the execution of our visions through the machines we created.- Neerja Singh
This young reader chose to use AI to give him a riddle that would challenge his friends and found himself in a predicament- he did not understand the answer. He sought help to understand and that led to collaboration and team work.
Could we show the younger generation that AI is not something that helps you copy and finish assignments quickly but can help them discover something beyond that could end up being enjoyable and satisfying too? Have you experimented with AI the way these children did? Do share with us by dropping an email to lakshmi@talkingcircles.in. That may pave the way for an interesting and productive discussion proving once again that we can choose what we want to do with AI. We are still the masters!
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