The Human Robot
🎯 Today's mission briefing
We are learning to write instructions so exact that a robot could follow them — and to fix the steps when the robot gets stuck.
You'll know you've got it when:
- I can write steps in order that another person can follow exactly, without guessing
- I can test my instructions on a 'robot' and find the step that went wrong
- I can fix a broken step and test again — and I know a bug is normal, not naughty
Robot for hire
Connects to what your guest already knows and makes them curious. Activating prior knowledge is one of the strongest predictors of new learning.
Ask your helper to become a robot. Robots follow instructions EXACTLY — no guessing, no helping, no 'you know what I mean'. Now tell your robot to sit on a chair, using only small steps. Try 'walk to the chair'... but if you never say STOP, your robot walks straight into the wall! (Gently, robot.) Tricky, isn't it? Today you learn to write instructions so good that even the world's most literal robot can't mess them up.