Event Overview

On December 19, the annual Microsoft “Hour of Code” came to Microsoft's Beijing office, attracting more than 80 primary and secondary school students. "Hour of Code” is a global initiative designed to help youth master problem-solving skills and exercise their computational thinking, inspire children to learn more, break stereotypes, and feel empowered. With a theme of diversity and inclusion, this year's event is designed to encourage elementary and middle school students of all ages to explore the world with a more inclusive mindset by enhancing empathy while experiencing the joys of basic AI programming and computer thinking through curriculum training. Because of the theme direction of this year's event and the demand for AI, visualization and programming in the entire education industry, AI Fang Xiaozhi developed by Adjacentech was selected as the official AI programming platform for the "Hour of Code" . At the event, Alain Crozier, Senior Vice President, Chairman and CEO of Microsoft Greater China, dressed up as Santa Claus, brought candy and gifts to the children and learned about programming with them, witnessing the children's creativity and imagination being stimulated in the learning process.

Hour of Code

"Hour of Code" is a popular programming activity that has taken the world by storm since its launch. Microsoft's 2020 “Hour of Code” China Tour for primary and secondary school students has traveled to 15 cities and reached more than 10,000 students and teachers in more than 100 schools. Microsoft has been a major supporter of the event for seven consecutive years in China. To date, more than 835,274,000 students worldwide have participated in the event, and the number of participants is growing rapidly every day. Microsoft has been rooted in China for more than 20 years and has worked tirelessly with Chinese communities to foster innovative talent.

AI Fang Xiaozhi

Fang Xiaozhi Artificial Intelligence Visual Programming Platform is an artificial intelligence programming platform designed for youth programming education launched by Adjacentech and Microsoft. The curriculum is open to primary and secondary school students and covers the whole age level. It can help students better understand artificial intelligence. Through immersive hands-on production to achieve innovative programming and learning AI curriculum prepared based on Microsoft Cognitive Services, from shallow to deep, theory combined with practice, allowing students to program from zero foundation to proficient use of visual programming platform, and expand their thinking to various AI scenarios. The course includes six sections are: Basic Logic, AI Visual Course, AI Speech Course, AI Language Course, AI Search Course, and AI Comprehensive Advanced Course.

Event site

The event was mainly attended by students from the first to the third year, with more than 80 people on site, and the atmosphere was lively. The artificial intelligence teacher carefully guided the students to understand what artificial intelligence is and how artificial intelligence makes inanimate machines imitate humans and become "intelligent". From the three waves of AI to the AI applications that can be found everywhere around us today, he explained how machines recognize faces, distinguish between dogs and cats, and how they train, predict, and work. In the process of learning AI, you need to use AI Fang Xiaozhi programming tool to practice operation, by dragging and dropping to assemble the modules and get the desired result according to logical reasoning. The graphical interface and fun-filled human-machine interaction immersed the students in the fun of programming.

AI Fang Xiaozhi programming scenarios

Circular logic, face recognition, and machine learning, as important programming scenarios of AI Fang Xiaozhi, take students into the world of programming. The circular logic programming scenario allows students to know the logical way to communicate with machines; the face recognition scenario allows students to know the remarkable ability of machines to capture faces through cameras, recognize faces, and determine the information of faces including the area of the face, the gender of the person, the age, the emotion, which celebrity they look like, etc. Machine learning programming scenario, so that students understand the computer to be intelligent work ideas, to achieve the computer to learn human skills, how should write the program, how the machine learn to speak, learn to recognize a variety of objects, recognize different people and so on. Through AI Fang Xiaozhi's customized programming scenarios, the programming logic is presented to students in a simple way to light the flame of children's curiosity about programming and AI.

Activity Feedback Conclusion

How did the children feel after the one-hour programming activity? "I love programming and would love to know how intelligent machines are produced in life. After participating in this programming activity today, I think I have a clue and I will participate again next year, I will make a robot and let him help me with my homework!" One of the students said. Let's listen to the parents' feelings about their children's programming activities: "Usually he doesn't say a word at home about his homework, but today he came to this activity and he kept talking and was very active. As a parent, I support my child because he likes programming and wants to be a programmer in the future."

"Hour of Code" is a global event that has engaged tens of millions of students in over 180 countries. The curriculum of the "Hour of Code" has supported over 40 languages, and last year nearly 100 "Hour of Code" were conducted in China, reaching more than 10,000 teachers and students. Fang Xiaozhi will continue to participate in the event and provide assistance, as well as open more AI scenario courses.