 Good morning and welcome to this week's edition of Encompass Live. I'm your host, Krista Porter here at the Nebraska Library Commission. Encompass Live is the commission's weekly webinar series where we cover a variety of topics that may be of interest to libraries. We broadcast the show live every Wednesday morning at 10 a.m. Central Time, but if you're unable to join us on Wednesdays, that's fine. We do record the show as we are today, and it is then posted to our website for you to watch at your convenience. And I'll show you at the end of today's show where you can, where our website is, and where you can access all of our archives and recordings. Both of the live show and the recordings are free and open to anyone to watch. So please do share with your friends, family, neighbors, colleagues, anyone you think that may be interested in the show. We here at the Nebraska Library Commission, we are the state agency for libraries in Nebraska, and that is for all types of libraries. So you will find things on our show that are for public libraries, academics, K-12s, corrections, museums, anything, historical sites. If it's a library, that's really our only criteria, something library related, something libraries are doing, some cool things we think they could be doing, services and products that might be of interest, libraries from within Nebraska and across the country sharing things that they're doing. So it really is just all across the board there. Before we do get started, I do want to briefly address the situation that's in our country right now, of course, for the COVID-19 pandemic that is going on. We are here in the Nebraska Library Commission. I'm showing you our page here. We are for Nebraska sharing lots of resources and information for our libraries in the state. So if you're in Nebraska Library, please do take a look at what we have here. We have a post here that is pinned to the top of our main page about resources for libraries. And we have a specific page that we have set up where we are constantly updating with things that may be useful to you as a library and trying to deal with how you would handle this in your community. So just please take a look at all of this. We got some examples of policies that other libraries have used. I know that's been an issue and of course the general guidance from the CDC. So we have that on our page for everyone. We are also attempting to keep track of what's going on with libraries in Nebraska. You will see at the top of our page, we have a link here, Closings and Accommodations from Nebraska Libraries. This is, we have a form, a Google form we've set up where libraries in Nebraska can submit their information about what's going on in their library, what they're doing. Basically, how are you handling things in your community? This is just for Nebraska Libraries since we're the Nebraska Library Commission and then it feeds into the spreadsheet here. So if you are in Nebraska and wondering what's happening in our libraries, you can find out here and hear the details about that. If you are in Nebraska Library, fill out our form so we can try and help share that information. And you see we've got lots of other things that we have put up here as well. Things that have been postponed and extended in Nebraska. If you're not in Nebraska, check with your own state library organizations and see what they are saying in their areas here at the Nebraska Library Commission. We are actually officially closed to walk-ins as of this past Monday. So no coming into our office for anything. Some of our staff are here. I call it a skeleton crew, maybe just keeping basic things going. I usually work from home. I'm here just this morning in the office. Amanda, who is our speaker this morning, she's actually one of our staff here working from her own, actually, to join us today. So do be patient when you are reaching out to us at the commission for anything at the current time. We all have, we have voicemail that we are trying to keep up with and emails as well and we'll get back to you on things as soon as we can. As far as Encompass Live is concerned, we are committed to keeping going with the show. Definitely. We, I have, let's see, I'm going to bring up our Encompass Live page just to show you, spell it correctly and you'll find it. I had scheduled, I had worked, sessions already scheduled for April, as you can see here. I've reached out to all of our speakers for our next three upcoming weeks that I have booked and they are all willing to still present. So we still do, libraries do still need information and continuing education and just professional development is still something that we think would be important and we're still wanting to help that happen. So we will keep going on with the show as long as I can keep having presenters. Everything inside the schedule right now is confirmed and will be happening on those dates. So keep an eye on the schedule for new ones as I add them. But let's switch over to today's show. Amanda, I'm going to give you presenter control so we can get your slides up. So you should see that pop up now. You can do it in present mode and make it full screen if it'll do that for you. I'm going to start with that. Much quicker than sometimes how it works. So today's top show is our actual monthly pretty sweet tech. Amanda Sweet, who's here with me is our technology innovation librarian here at the Nebraska Library Commission. And once a month, usually the last Wednesday of the month, she does her pretty sweet tech session on something tech related. So if you are a big tech librarian, if that's your thing or you're into library techie type stuff, that would be definitely the show for you to keep an eye on. So she is here today to talk about chatbots, which I've encountered some of them online, I'm sure. I've never created my own. So that's kind of going to be what we're going to be talking about today. So I am just going to hand over to you to Amanda and teach us how to create our own chatbot for our entertainment or for actual like useful things. So chatbots are getting a lot more popular, and a lot of people have probably interacted with them without actually knowing that was what it was. So for example, if you've used the Q robot, you've actually interacted with some form of a chatbot, because chatbots are designed to virtually simulate a conversation. They can simulate a transaction, they can simulate a social conversation. Chatbots are starting to show up more in social media and doing the various things, which is not fun. But so what we're going to go over is more or less loosely what chatbots are because they are the definitions still evolving as with every bit of technology you're ever going to encounter. And then we'll find an angle of approach to find out if you're going to start incorporating chatbots into the library or you're going to start incorporating chatbots into makerspaces or programming in the library. What do you actually want people to know about it? Because after you show people how to build like a simple chatbot out of scratch, that's awesome. But then where do you go from there? I mean, if you just show people how to make one chatbot, they're probably not going to decide, oh my God, I want to be a programmer right now, I have all the resources I need to do it. And honestly, a small percentage of people actually do decide to become programmers. There's about 25% in the world that are legit programmers. And I got that number based on there was a core survey that went out there that was really controversial, but said this is core, it's public opinion. Really? So peer research started doing some and now they need to define what is a programmer? Is it someone who took a few classes online and can build a website? Or is it a software engineer like my brother? And my brother has one answer to that. I have another. So and then we're going to go through how to actually make the simple bot and scratch. And then some different activities and resources that you can use to incorporate chatbots into your library. All right, so now I'm going to play this short video and this is a video that you can also play during programming in your library. And this is from Goodwill Foundation. In today's world messaging has become one of the more popular methods of communication, whether it's through text messages or messenger apps. It's how a lot of people prefer talking with one another. Because of this businesses are developing chatbots that you can message and talk to as if they were human. In fact, you may even think you're talking to a human when it's actually a chatbot. Your businesses are using them for online customer service to resolve issues and answer simple questions. A few are even developing shopping assistance to give you recommendations when you're looking for a certain product. There are currently two different types of chatbots. The first uses a certain set of rules, meaning that they can only respond to specific words or commands. So if you don't use the correct phrasing, the chatbot may not know how to respond. These bots are only as intelligent as their program to be. The second type of chatbot uses artificial intelligence. This means that it can understand language and you can speak with it more conversationally as if it were a real person. These chatbots will also get smarter over time, learning from each conversation they have with their users. As this technology continues to evolve, more companies will use chatbots as a way to engage with and assist their audiences. Community foundation, creating opportunities for better life. So that tells you what a chatbot actually is and it helps if you don't start replaying it on a loop. So this kind of tells us that chatbots right now are pretty much good for one thing. Handling specific tasks. There's a lot of fear out there about chatbots and computers taking over the entire world. But I've talked to an AI and data driven innovation group. I've talked to my brother who's a software engineer. And I've talked to a bunch of people in the IEEE, international electronics and engineers. There's one more word in there. I don't remember it right now. Acronyms. But I've talked to a lot of people that are developing this stuff. And they all say that it's actually further out. It's both closer and further out than we would like to think. Because right now chatbots as you'll soon see when we make one. The rules based ones are really limited. And our imagination is a lot bigger than what that little bot can do right now. It's the AI ones that we're watching out for. That's the scary ones, yes. And the AI ones, the most popular chatbot out there right now, it uses natural language processing. And that would mean that in a rules based system you have to say a specific phrase or a specific set of phrases for the chatbot to be able to register it and respond properly. But with an AI you can use natural language and it will pick out different keywords or different popular phrasing based on a whole load of database like a database of conversations that it's registered and scanned before. And so you know they said this they probably mean this and this means something similar in my existing database. So I'm going to say this. And that's what Google and Microsoft and everyone are using right now. And Google and Microsoft they want people to adopt their systems. So right now they're starting to abstract away the hard bits of it and making it possible for people that don't know coding to just load in a fact into a system or load in a web page into a system. And automatically build a chatbot based on the information that's on that page. So they're making it easier because they want us to use it. And when we use it, the technology is going to go everywhere, but it's going to be used well in some places and poorly in others. And it's the poorly made chatbots that we're worried about, because that can wreak some havoc. So right now, these are two fairly innocuous chatbots that you'll find just an everyday life. The one on the left is that Q robot that I was talking about. And the Q robot has several different personalities. And this one is, I guess, a little snarky, I'll go with snarky. This one of the ones that you got for those tech kids that you were put together. Okay. Right now, through the library commission, we have 12 of these little Q robots, and I'm developing like a little mini curriculum that will show you how to look at these chatbots and go, what could go wrong. But it's all fine. Right. And what are the limitations of the chatbot. And how do we react differently to a chatbot that has a personality versus one that is just flatly answering questions. And how do we interact with the chatbot verbally and how do we interact with the chatbot in a text situation. And the what the chatbot on the right is actually from a bank and really large banks are currently using this just to look up standard like transactions how much is in my bank right now. And this one I gave this example because it shows how natural language processing is at work, because yeah my good through payday is not something that you would normally assume that someone would say. So we know that this is probably not rules based, but sort of is, because we're saying that, yeah my good through payday probably means that they want to find out how much they have in their bank. It will cover the expenditures that they have going out. So that's an automatic trigger for the system to say, okay they have this much, but this is the bill you have coming up. And this is how much you're actually going to have. I don't know if this is enough for you to make it through payday because I'm a computer, but is that enough. But I can give you some basic info to work with. And based on that the customer says, you know I probably have enough I can put a little in savings, and then the computer can automatically switch that over without going in through any human intervention because it's not money it's just data. And then the human just answers. Sure. Yeah, I want you to do that, and then it's done. So right now, when you're trying to find out if a chat bot can actually be used in real life. Think about a conversation or a transaction that you're having with a business or an organization and ask yourself. Can I diagram this conversation. And if I can diagram this conversation. And this conversation usually goes in the same way or set of ways. It can probably be automated. And with a chat bot. You're actually designing an experience. You're not designing just about because you want this chat bot to be blending in so that you barely even notice it's there. There are some chat bots that they don't automatically announce that they are chat bots. And you may never know. So some examples would be Amazon and KLM travel and I'll go to KLM travel, which is using a KLM travel assistant. And you remember where I said, if you think of a conversation that you have that usually goes in about the same way and has a prescribed dialogue. And you look at the way that travel assistants are trained to drill down to find information to find out where people actually want to go. And they automated it. And so now they can you can talk to Google assistant over voice. And you can talk to you can watch. So this one is the one that just uses the Google assistant or Alexa. So you just talk into the box and it tells you it asks you questions to narrow down what you're looking for. Then gives you recommendations and resources, which is both exciting and terrifying for librarians. There are certain things that we are asked constantly that we're constantly giving the same answers to that could definitely be automated. Yeah, but is that necessarily a bad thing is what we have to ask ourselves. This technology may happen anyway but what can we do. We can't stop it, but we should know whether it exists. So, what can we do to bring technology into the library but help people use it in a safe way. And there are a lot of people that are going to be experimenting with chat bots. And they're not always going to have the most ethical reasoning behind them. So as we're learning, we should probably start incorporating ethics into this, and that can get tricky. But imagine a world where we didn't try it all. And then coding is probably one of the most popular reasons that we would bring in chat bots into library. And it's just helping people gain exposure to that kind of technology gain exposure to coding on a whole and find out different ways that they can use it and apply it to encourage people to start getting into that field. But working, we want people to start getting to the field but work with others and work with subject matter experts and work as a team to be able to develop solutions that actually help. To develop just solutions that make money because there's sometimes a difference there. The IE told me that a lot. So, I'm about to go and jump into that tutorial that we're talking about the and we're going to use Raspberry Pi. But it's not technically Raspberry Pi, it's actually just scratch but the tutorials located on Raspberry Pi. The website. So what we're going to be looking for is we're going to learn the tool, but is it doing what we want it to do. Alright, so now the first, now I'm going to go into, here's our tutorial. So the easiest way to do it is to resize it if you're on one screen. And now we have our tutorial on the left, we've got scratch on the right. And so this is actually the desktop version of scratch because I had some trebles actually getting into scratch right now because there's probably so many people trying to do it. And so I pre made this, and I downloaded the offline version of scratch so that's what this is right now. So it's not going to look and do that if they don't can't get to the actual live one. So this tutorial has instructions for being able to download scratch offline. So you would just go to this link. And so this is the sample project that has these little sprites loaded into it. And this is the link that you would go to to download this editor that I'm using right now. So you don't actually need the internet to be able to do it you would just need the internet long enough to download this. So now this will tell you that you don't actually need a Raspberry Pi to be able to build this. You just need the computer. And this is a love hate relationship that I have with Raspberry Pi tutorials. This is designed for a beginner, but it tells you that you're going to use code to concatenate strings and scratch. If you've never coded before you may not know what concatenating screen strings and scratch is, but it's just this that I'm used to teach children how to get them interested in an understanding code that is a. Yeah. And so that's my love hate relationship with it. So if you have parents or educators or kids going on here, they're going to go concatenate what. But that's all this is is say join hello names. This is joining. So we're going to stop this. We'll click on this. It's programmed to ask what's your name. I type in Amanda. It says hello Amanda, when the system says hello Amanda, it's actually doing this, and it's concatenating the word hello with the variable names. And it can't name what they mean. So concatenate is basically joined together. Okay, so I'm going to I'll run through this, and I'll show you based on this what this is doing. So we click here. This is starting the program. We have it ask what's your name, and it's waiting and it will wait until I type something in here. So I type Amanda my name, and now it's setting my name Amanda as a variable. The variable is called names. So now it's saying hello Amanda, but it only set it for two seconds, and then it flips straight over to asking, are you okay. But now it's concatenating again, because it's saying are you okay, but now it's pulling in another variable, and it's pulling in my name. So concatenating the string are you okay with the variable Amanda, and it stored my name as a string, and a string is just a bit of text that is stored or printed by the computer. So it concatenated two strings of text and join them together. And that's how computers are able to insert your name into emails and try to personalize emails that way. So we just concatenated we stored a variable, and now we use a conditional selection to respond to user input and scratch. The conditional selection is this yellow if else statement. So when it asks, are you okay, and then it concatenates my name Amanda from this variable. Then I type in. Yes. So it switches to cut switches costumes. Now the sprite is overjoyed. And she just said that's great to hear for two seconds. But now we start this again. What's your name Amanda store the variable concatenated and asks, are you okay, it concatenates my name again. And not really. And then it says, oh no, and it switched the costume to sad face, but it only said oh no for two seconds. So if we want to slow this down a little bit. We can change this will go up here. So after it says what's your name, and it stores my name as a variable, then it'll say hello Amanda, we're going to slow this down so we're going to say this for five seconds so we can get a chance to look at it. And then we'll say this for five seconds, and this for five seconds. So now I got what's your name, Amanda, 2345. And are you okay, but now let's see how this can go wrong. Absolutely. Oh no. Why did it do that. We know that absolutely should cause the computer to say that's great to hear. We know that. But that's not what we told the computer to do. We said, when the, when the sprite asks, are you okay. If you say, yes, it says that's great to hear. If you say anything else. Oh, no. So that's why when I said absolutely, it still said oh no. And that's why we have the natural language processing and natural language processing if you use a system like that when you said absolutely, the system would say, Oh, yeah, that also means yes. So that's great to hear. And how did we actually make this. Now you kind of know how it works and what you can do with it. So the easiest way to get people into this is to actually pre build this. And so what I'll actually do is I will save this pre made file. And we can post it on the site so that you don't actually have to take the time to build it yourself. You can just grab this. And then the easiest way is to modify it just like I did here. And then you can modify it further by saying, oh no. Let's see if going to space will help. And now we can switch the backdrop. So now what's your name, Amanda. Hello, Amanda. 2345. Are you okay? No, let's see if going to space will help. It'll show that for five seconds. We're already in space. We're going to the moon. We're going to change this to two and two. So now we're on the moon. But now if you want to build this from scratch, you have a whole tutorial that'll show you how to do it. So we're at 1032 right now. And let's see how much of this tutorial I actually want to walk through here. It'd be helpful to know if people have a background in using scratch or not, because if I go through this whole tutorial I will bore the people that have you scratched a million times in a day. And I might go too fast for the people that have never used scratch before in their lives. Yeah, so let us know if you, if you've used scratch ever before and know anything about it, click the hand raise icon on your excuse me. And you're a go to webinar interface here and we'll see if we have a majority of people who've used it or not. So go ahead and click and let us know we've got 26 people logged in at the moment. So if you have you scratch and you think you know enough not to need the beginners. We'll see where we kind of lean here. Make sure get into your hand raise if you've used scratch and know something about it. Looks like we've got six hands up right now out of 26. Okay. One person commenting I've never used scratch but I did use the Lego Mindstorm software. Similar. Similar. Yeah. The blocks don't join the same way, but similar. So I'd say most people have not who are on with us right now. Yeah. Okay. So let's start this from scratch as it were. So the fun part is that each one of these different sprites has a different programming environment attached to it. Well, a different, you can program it to do different things. So right now we have Giga visible right now. We're going to switch over to Tara. And so this little block over here where it has the little eye and the eye that's crossed out. This will show which sprite is visible right now. So I'm not going to get rid of the code that we have here. I'm just going to switch characters. We'll make this one visible. And we're going to make Giga invisible. So now we can work with Tara. And this way we still have Giga to reference the code. We have a question about scratch that. Maybe now would be an okay time to ask. Does scratch chatbot support regular expressions so you can prevent errors that would occur if you answered with things like my name is Sam, instead of just saying Sam. Or my name is Amanda rather than just saying Amanda would it does it automatically know that or is that something we'd have to know it stores the full thing as a string so they will think that my name is Amanda is your name. Which is actually kind of funny. So when you do this. If you show. So now we click on Giga. And that's just the way that we programmed it. So you could program it to you'd have to do that yourself to make sure that it would recognize the difference. See and so that one actually gets trickier. There's another tutorial on here. Yeah. So if we go down here to the resources. I put in another scratch chat bot tutorial. But I don't recommend this as much because it gets more complicated. This goes by the actual letter number. You could technically tell it to switch to that certain character in there. But there is an ignore function but you'd have to be able to, you don't know what the response is going to be you don't know how many characters long it's going to be. People could say my name is Amanda but my nickname is Mandy. And we'd never be we wouldn't be able to use it that way. And it'd be easier in any other programming language with this. I will never say never. Because there might be someone out there right now that's going. Yeah, sure. But not in the program that we're using right now. I'd have to think about it. So now this is just asking us to choose our sprite, which we just did we chose Tara and we hid all the other characters. So now we go over here and now it wants us to start creating our chat bot. So it wants us to this yellow box is an event trigger. So this here, it's color coded which is the handy part will click on the events here. And we want to find when this sprite is clicked. And then we're just going to drag it and plunk it right there. So here's our first block. And we're telling the computer that all the action starts when we click this little dude. And now we want to ask what's your name and wait. So we're looking ask this is a blue block will go to the blue sensing. And now we are looking for ask ask what's your name and wait. And say, so we're going over up to the purple and say, we're just going to drag that over now we want to change what this is saying from the default, we just click in. And then I hit backspace. And what a lovely name. So now we give that a test. So I'm going to hit this stop to stop the previous program from from running, because it was still running this giga one. And just because we can't see giga doesn't mean that the computer isn't still trying to work with her. So we're clicking on Tara, and we're telling the computer we're working with Tara. When we click on this sprite, it asks what's your name. And then I tell it, and no matter what you say your name is, you have a lovely name. And this is just the screenshot of it working. So now what if we want to concatenate. So this is where we would join high with whatever you say your answer is. So now to get this we go down into our operators block, and we're going to the color code that's this little inside block here. So now we're looking for join. And it's this one here. And we're going to pop it right into that white section. And then we type in hi. So now where does this answer come from. It's blue. We're going to sensing. And we grab answer. And then we just plunk it straight in there. So now whenever it asks something, our answer is stored in here and pulled in, and then also show you something kind of funny here. What is your name, Amanda. You see there's no space here. Why is that. So we click in here, type of space, click on it. And now there's our space. If you've used other programming languages, that'll look a little different in Python or something else, but that's how it works here. It works the same way in Python. But so now that just a screenshot of showing how it works. So now this is where we're going to set our variable. So the thing is that we go down to variables. When you first start this, and you have, if you're starting it from a fresh project, this variable section will be empty. The buttons will appear and you will have no variable names right here. All it will say is make a variable, make a list and make a block. So to make a variable. You just click make a variable type in a name. And I'm not going to type in name because I've already used that one. And then it'll show up in here. And then when we pull this in here. Activating this dropdown will show you every variable that you have currently existing. And now you have to tell the computer what this frog is. Okay, so we'll just stick with the tutorial here. So when we try to load this in. Let's just drag this set over here. We're going to be using the name block. And we want to grab that answer. We'll drag that in here. And now I'll show you what this looks like when it's not working. What's your name, Amanda. Hi Amanda. Yep didn't do anything. So why is that it's because of this. So we just adapted our code by adding this block. But it's still looking for the answer from up here. So we're trying to join high with the answer. But now we have a variable in the way. So now we have to go into our variables and grab. Names. Here. What's your name. Amanda. Hi Amanda. And that's how you would properly tell the computer to say grab this. From the variable and don't grab it from the answer. And that just that at work. So now it's going to start challenging you by not walking you through step by step and just saying. Okay. So we just got to ask another question. Can you store the answer to this new question in a new variable. So based on what we just did. It wants us to ask the question, where do you live. And then it wants us to say, I've never been to stop part. So we want it to ask. So we're going up into sensing. And we drag this plunk it in. And now we're setting a new variable because we need the computer to store. Your answer in a new variable so we can use this answer later. Because if we kept all of these as answer, answer, answer, answer. The computer doesn't know which answer you're talking about. So that's why we're using variables so we can assign meaning to what we're saying. Where do you live. So now we're going to set a new variable and I've already created the variable live. So now we're going to set, we're going to choose live. And now we want the answer from this immediate question. So we're going to grab this answer here. And now we want it to say I've never been to whatever city that you put in. So now we're going into our purple. And now we're going to say I've never been to and now we put in our space because we don't want everything to blur together. And now we go back into our variable and grab live and drag that in here because we want to tell this to grab whatever we stored in this specific variable. So we don't get it confused with any other answer. So now we go here. What is your name, Amanda. Hi, Amanda. It's concatenating. Where do you live. Lincoln. So now the thing that is not working here is that we did not join these together. It's not concatenating. So now we want to join this. So do you see how the computer is supposed to be responding by saying I've never been to anything, but I said for live. This is actually one of the most common mistakes that people make, because you can't say anything for a variable number of seconds, because this was just stored as a string. And this is looking for a number. So this is one of the most common mistakes I've seen, which is actually pretty easy to fix. So now we're popping this out. We're saying to. And now we're going to operators, and we're just replicating this block up here. And we're grabbing join. And now we put our live in place of our banana. And now we say I've never been to with our space at the end. I'm going to click this here. What's your name, Amanda. Hi Amanda is concatenating. Where do you live, Lincoln. And now I've never been to Lincoln. So it helps when you're showing people how to code to give controlled failure, because that's going to happen a lot when you're actually trying to put together a program. And that helps build the frustration level in a controlled environment. To say, All right, this didn't work. It didn't even work during our demonstration. But let's take a second look at this and say. So what went wrong. If you look at this little block up here, and then look down here. What's different. You can see where the where it didn't met. Yeah. I like how this does. I love I'm really it's, I never done much with coding. I did the coding hour. Tried that once a few years ago, but I like the different the color schemes here that show how things connect and everything I think it's. And again, it's, you know, originally something for children but for someone like me, you don't have to be just a kid to have to be learning this for the first time. You know, seeing how that connects it is like is awesome, I think. Yeah. No, I think that definitely does come in handy. And scratch was actually developed by some people out of MIT. And they worked with like a ton of kids over the years and it's just delightful. Yeah. I'm a school learner that this just shows you right with a quick glance. Oh, that is part of this and that needs to be connected this way. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, a bunch of coding texts, which when I look at that at my brain just like, I have written code and I've forgotten one semi colon at the end of a line and I wanted to beat my forehead against a wall. Yeah. So this kind of eliminates part of the frustration level of syntax. So in text based coding, you need every semi colon in the right spot, and there's indenting so that it makes sense to the people reading the code. But this is just, you're just snapping together the blocks. And you can do a surprising amount of stuff with just scratch programming. And it's kind of this is why they say that it's an awesome way to get people into it. And now they're starting to make tools that use both of them. The reason that I chose the Q robot for tech kits to the library is because they use a drag and drop block programming similar to scratch. But they also let you see the same thing in JavaScript. They start making that transition over. And raspberry pi also makes a series of they make an educator series that shows how to transition people over from block based programming over into text based programming. So this is just a really awesome way to get people started. And so we've kind of gone over more or less how this works. Eventually it will start asking you to do different challenges. And this is why this is where it started asking the, are you okay. And this is where the other variable name would start coming in handy, because when you pull this block up and say, ask, are you okay. So now you need to be able to tell it to grab from the right variable. So you're grabbing variable set. And now you want it to grab from name. And now you're grabbing the names. Sorry. I described that completely incorrectly. Just ignore everything that I just said for the last 30 seconds of my life and we'll be okay. So are you okay we're storing a new variable for are you okay. So the answer that we're given in this question is stored in this variable, and it's in the ask that we're telling it which variable to grab for this. So now are you okay. You know I don't actually like the way they did this. I'm going to do it this way. We're going to delete. Are you okay. Events. If else. So this is where it's saying are you okay if you say yes do this if you say no do this. Oh we're at 1054. Yes. Okay. So this is what it looks like. Once you go through the rest of this tutorial here. And I just got into my pattern of storing variables. It's a thing. So now once you walk through this entire tutorial you can start looking at other ways that you can use this. So that is one tutorial in all the world that you can use to teach chatbots. So if you want to learn more about what a chatbot actually is how it's used in real life and different ways that it can be used to solve actual problems in the world so that people actually get interested in chatbots instead of just saying, Well that was nice. Then these are some different resources that you can dive into. And one of my preferred ones is just what is a chatbot. IBM Watson. It's true. Our favorites. Yep. So this one will kind of give you a rundown of benefits of using a chatbots and Watson is one of the most popular AI systems to be able to develop and use chatbots. IBM is really really into chatbots for good technology for good and all that jazz. So this is kind of a good way to find out how can we funnel this technology to do good stuff instead of just terrorize people on social media. And these are also there's also a combination of tutorials for different brands and beginner. We want different entry points into chatbot because some people love scratch some people hate it. And these so these top three are mostly scratch this hour of code is a little combination of everything. So now this. That did not link to the right thing I have to fix that. Okay. So let's go back to this. But we actually want. So that's an easy entry. And this is also another resource that shows a sample of an existing chatbot. And then some different ways that you can extend it out into other programming languages. And this one will click on Eliza bot here. Good old Eliza was one of the first chatbots ever made. She uses natural language processing. And this one was developed as a therapy bot. And so it automatically says how do you do please tell me your problem. I'm tired. Do you enjoy being tired. Why no, not really. Why not sleep is good. Please go on. I hope so. Typical therapist. Tell me more. Live the dream. What, what persons appear in your dream. There are many. Would you like it if they were not many. That got really existential. That is interesting. Please continue. I hope so. You say hope so. So would you interact with Eliza as a therapy robot. No. There's not a lot of actually you can tell it's just here's the typical things to say to keep them talking rather than giving them any actual. Information or real. Yeah, I mean, I get it. That's what it's doing. Yeah, it's showing you how it works. Yeah. And then you start saying. Really. Potentially negative things and things that could actually harm people. How would Eliza react. Yeah. Taking what you typed and putting it in. You've been told to ask this question and insert whatever they said. Yeah. There are limitations. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I think I've interacted with this and if you instructed people to just start saying off the wall stuff and things that you would never want any person to do. How does the chat pop respond. And is this a good application for this chat bot and how would you change it so that it were. Yeah. And that's actually not the lesson plan that's linked on the hour of code or the chat bot that's associated with Eliza. I might want to adapt. And so this one is a fun one that shows how. So Microsoft has Azure and Azure is the one that is used for a lot of I out and chat bot stuff. And this is kind of a version of building a chat bot that has been adapted for complete beginners. So you don't have to have any code experience you don't have to have any. All you basically need is access to a fact page. So you can use this to develop something like what are the hours of my library and how long are you open it would be able to answer. I really hope it doesn't answer do you have vegetarian options because that would be a weird thing for a library to have. But which books do you have you can program it to send a link to your catalog. And you can just kind of play around with it to see how it works and then start making a list of what to do and what not to do with either chat box in the library or chat box in real life. So you can use this in a library specifically or you can use it as a teaching tool and maker spaces, or in library programming, just depending on how you want to use it. That's a question we had I was wondering, wondering, do you know, I know there are libraries that have chat services on their pages now that are what I'm assuming what they say they're like staff by actual other, you know, library employees behind there answering your questions that you might put into your chat thing. Do you do we know of any libraries doing chat bots like this for that kind of thing. There are. Okay, there is San Jose. Let me see if I can actually find the page. Okay so San Jose State University started building a chat bot. And I'm trying to what I'm trying to find out here is if they give the public access to the actual bot or if you have to log in, and that I don't actually know. Talk with Emma. So yes, I would act I can add this as a resource link. And they take somewhat of a different approach to chat box than I described in the video but they also have a really good approach. So there's always more than one way to do something I can't really say that there is one way. So I'll link over to this, and you can play with their chat bot. So what a lot of people are doing in businesses and probably in some different libraries is they will. I'll use the example of what you probably do in a library, you would go through your reference service and your call logs. You would make an entire database of all the most commonly asked questions. And then you would find the different trends in those question logs and say these questions are the ones that get asked the most frequently, and that can be the, that can be answered with either a simple resource or a simple answer. I would load this into a rules based chat bot system and use this as an entry point chat system into a reference service. When the person asked the question that the chat bot does not recognize we would program the chat bot to shoot over to a real human being. And that is the way that chat bots are most used in business and how it would apply to libraries. So if you looked at the chat bot that San Jose uses, they might do that they might not. But make sense. Yeah, yeah. Cool. And just so everyone knows, I didn't mention, I don't think I mentioned this at the beginning, these slides, with all these links in them that I mean it is using you will have a link to that with the archive recording when that's made available to. And while I'm thinking about it, I'm actually just going to copy this into. Because that one doesn't have a tutorial that I saw, but it is a good information resource. The presentation you can ever get you think it just got updated now. And are there any questions that you have so far. Besides that one about library examples anybody have any other questions you want to ask of Amanda. It is a little after 11 o'clock officially we go 10 to 11am for our show here but we can go as long as is needed if you have questions or anything or comments or anything you want to share. Type into the questions section of your good webinar interface. The show is being recorded and the recording should be available by the end of the day today. Everybody who was here, attending and who registered for the show will get an email from me letting you know what's available will have a link to these slides as I mentioned to Amanda will send me the link, the shareable link for that. So we will have that available as well. And I'll also post this in the chat here. Yeah, I don't think that grab the whole link. So that is about the long and the short of it and I just put that in there. So that should have all the resources and I'll put a much everything. Well it doesn't look like anybody is typing in any desperate questions I need to ask at the moment just lots of thank yous for the webinar thanks very much good information. So this is one of those. It says happen that is a lot of info and a lot of. I want to go and play with it to figure out myself kind of thing yeah. That's why to learn. I mostly learned by breaking stuff. So there's that. All right well I think that'll wrap it up for today then nobody has any questions about the chat bots and everything you shared. I know this was a great a great session very interesting I mean this kind of thing that definitely I think librarians some librarians are very detail oriented and this is the kind of thing of making these things match up I think would really. We'd really be good at going in and making sure those, you know, is everything asking what it's supposed to or all the right questions in here. And I think definitely for either to be used on the library's websites or to teach, as you said, in different sessions or trainings or whatever. Great. All right. All right, so I am going to pull presenter control back to my screen. So yes that will wrap it up for today show. Thank you so much Amanda for logging in from home with us and joining us. As I said, tech is our always usually the last Wednesday of the month and as you can see here on our calendar. It is scheduled the next one for April 29, the last Friday in April. We're still on track for doing that one at the moment. We'll see what the new topic is going to be for next month that I don't I don't know what it is yet Amanda may know. I'm still fading it. No problem. We've got got a lot of time for that one there's actually five Wednesdays in April so get much more time. We may be together we may be from home again. We'll see how it goes between now and then. So that will wrap it up for today show here on our website as I said this is our upcoming shows. This is where archives is there's a link right here. And the most recent ones at the top of our list. So today's will be here as well as once I get it on here you'll have a link directly to it a link to the recording and your YouTube account are you to account. And a link to the Google slides that I mean to put together. This is the archives. I'll show you while we're here for the full archives for our show. There's a search feature here you can look up anything you want to do any topic to see if we've done a show on something a particular person has been a presenter or whatever you want. You can search our full archives or you can limit in just the most recent 12 months if you want to. This is because this is our full archives going all the way back to the beginning and I'm just going to scroll back here and compass live premiered in January 2009. And we do have our full archives here on this on the site so you'll notice the dates here that I scroll down to 2017. So some of the things that you so if you want something that's more current enough to date information definitely use that limiter to just search the most recent 12 months worth. But some of the topics here are eternal things like you know best new children's books of 2017. They're still good children's books they just happened to come out in 2017 something still might be good for you. Some things here maybe outdated. 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Be smart be safe flatten the curve. Bye bye.