Learning science. Studio stories. AI literacy.
Why we built Tell and Show the way we did, grounded in the developmental and learning-science research that came before it. Plus stories from the cohort, design decisions in public, and the occasional kid quote that earned its place. Most of these posts are drafts; the founder reviews and refines each one before it’s final.
Start here
If you’re new to Tell and Show, these four posts cover the foundation: the pedagogy, the AI literacy framework, the safety posture, and the outcomes parents can actually see.
Why making is learning — and why AI didn't change that.
Seymour Papert spent the 1960s arguing that kids learn best when they build artifacts they care about. Forty-five years later, AI gives the artifact better scaffolding. The pedagogy is the same.
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AI literacy: what it actually means.
The MIT framework names five core competencies. We map them to the five surfaces of the studio your kid uses every session.
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Is AI safe for kids?
Parents ask this in the order it matters. We answer it the same way. Six concrete questions about safety, with what the research says and what the studio actually does.
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Six things kids leave with that they didn't have.
Not "they had fun" or "they learned to code." Six concrete competencies the studio leaves them with, mapped to research that says why each one matters.
Read →Learning science
Why the studio is built on constructionism, what we learned from Papert, Vygotsky, and Resnick.
Why making is learning — and why AI didn't change that.
Seymour Papert spent the 1960s arguing that kids learn best when they build artifacts they care about. Forty-five years later, AI gives the artifact better scaffolding. The pedagogy is the same.
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Flow, and why the 4 Ps map onto our four tracks.
Csikszentmihalyi gave us the engagement model. Resnick gave us the framework. The studio gives the kid the entry point.
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Scratch, Roblox Studio, Tell and Show — what each one teaches.
We're standing on Scratch's shoulders. Roblox Studio is a different thing entirely. Here's what each medium teaches a kid, what it doesn't, and where Tell and Show fits.
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What an 8-year-old learns vs. a 12-year-old.
Same studio, different cognitive scaffolds. The studio meets kids where they are. Here's how Piaget's stages and Vygotsky's zone show up in practice between Grade 3 and Grade 7.
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How is this different from a coding camp?
Coding camps teach syntax. Tell and Show teaches a creative loop with AI. Both have value. Here's where they overlap, where they don't, and which one your kid needs first.
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Tell and Show vs. Khan Academy Kids.
Khan Academy Kids and Tell and Show solve different problems for different ages. Khan is a curriculum delivered well. We're a creative environment with an AI partner. Here's the actual comparison, honestly framed.
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My kid already codes in Scratch. Is this a step backward?
The honest answer: no, but the angle is different. Scratch teaches the kid how computation works. Tell and Show lets them ship software a stranger can use. Here's how the two fit together.
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What kids learn when they make a game (not just play one).
Kafai and Burke have spent twenty years documenting what changes when a kid moves from playing games to designing them. The list is long, durable, and mostly invisible to parents who haven't watched it happen. Here's what to look for.
Read →AI literacy
What AI literacy actually means — Long & Magerko’s framework and how the studio teaches it.
AI literacy: what it actually means.
The MIT framework names five core competencies. We map them to the five surfaces of the studio your kid uses every session.
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Visible AI is the whole pedagogy.
Bret Victor argued that learnable systems require visible state. We took that brief and ran with it for AI.
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Is this just ChatGPT with a wrapper?
The honest answer is no. ChatGPT is a conversational text interface. Tell and Show is a constructionist environment where AI proposes scoped changes to a kid's real artifact. Here's how that plays out in practice.
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Reading code at 10 — what view-source teaches.
Every Tell and Show site, story, and game ships as plain HTML, CSS, and JS. The kid can right-click and view the source of the thing they made. That single affordance does pedagogical work most adults don't notice.
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When AI is wrong — and what your kid does about it.
Models hallucinate. They confabulate. They get function names wrong. The first time a kid catches Inkie in a mistake, something specific happens to their relationship with AI. Here's the curriculum that lives inside those moments.
Read →Is AI safe for kids?
Parents ask this in the order it matters. We answer it the same way. Six concrete questions about safety, with what the research says and what the studio actually does.
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We don't believe kids should learn to prompt.
Prompt engineering is the wrong skill to teach kids. The real AI literacy is something else — observable, decision-making, iteration-shaped. Here's the argument and what we teach instead.
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Can AI lie to my kid?
Models don't lie the way humans do; they generate plausible text that's sometimes factually wrong. The distinction matters for kids. Here's what hallucination actually is, what your kid sees, and what they learn from catching it.
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AI tutoring is not the goal.
Khan Academy and Synthesis are building AI tutors. Tell and Show is not. Here's the distinction, what tutoring optimizes for, what it doesn't, and why we chose the constructionist path instead.
Read →Motivation & agency
Why we don’t outsource creativity to AI. Dweck, Deci & Ryan, the iteration loop.
Iteration is the move. The "Review" button is the lesson.
Carol Dweck's growth-mindset research, applied to a Keep / Review / Undo row a 9-year-old uses fifty times a session.
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Why we don't outsource creativity to AI.
Deci and Ryan's self-determination theory predicts what happens when AI does the imagining for the kid. It's not what we want.
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Why we don't ship a "make-me-a-game" button.
It would be the most-clicked feature. It would also gut the entire pedagogy. Here's why the studio asks the kid for the small decision instead of taking the big one off their plate.
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Why we don't gamify the studio.
Most kid software ships with XP, levels, streaks, and badges. We don't. Decades of motivation research argue that gamification undermines the very motivation it's trying to amplify, and we've watched it happen in cohort kids who came from gamified apps.
Read →Outcomes
What kids leave with that they didn’t have. Named competencies, not vague claims.
Six things kids leave with that they didn't have.
Not "they had fun" or "they learned to code." Six concrete competencies the studio leaves them with, mapped to research that says why each one matters.
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Will my kid actually learn anything from AI tools?
It depends on whether the AI does the work or the kid does. We can show you the difference: what learning looks like in the studio, with the research that says why.
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Is this just edutainment?
Edutainment markets fun-with-a-vitamin-of-learning. Our problem with that frame: it assumes learning is bitter and needs to be hidden. The studio assumes the opposite — making is intrinsically motivating.
Read →For parents
Practical scripts, decision frameworks, and the conversations every parent has.
How to talk to kids about AI without being weird about it.
Most adults don't know what AI is yet either. That's fine. Here's a practical script for talking to your 8-to-14-year-old about the thing they're already using, written by someone who has had this conversation 50+ times.
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Will AI make my kid lazy?
The honest fear is that AI does the work and the kid stops trying. The research on productive struggle says it doesn't have to. Here's the difference between AI that hands you the answer and AI that proposes a move you decide on.
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What parents should know about kids and ChatGPT.
A significant share of US teens have used ChatGPT for school work. Your kid probably has too. Here's the parent guide we wish existed when ChatGPT shipped — what it is, what it isn't, where it's risky, where it's useful.
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Best age to introduce AI to kids.
There's no magic age. There IS a developmental floor (around 7-8) and a few specific things you're looking for in your own kid that say they're ready. Here's the framework, with the research.
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A parent's first 30 minutes in the studio.
Saturday morning. The license arrived. The kid wants to open the laptop. Here's what to expect, what to watch for, and what to celebrate.
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Is screen time on creative tools the same as TV?
No, and not because we have to say no. The research distinguishes active creative use from passive consumption. They're measurably different in how kids respond to them, and what those screens do to long-term outcomes.
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Two kids, one license: how Tell and Show handles siblings
The price for the second kid is $49. The studio is shared. The parent dashboard treats them as siblings, not as duplicate accounts. Here is what that looks like.
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Cohort vs. solo: which is right for our family?
Both work. The cohort adds a mentor and four other kids. The solo path is the studio on its own. Here is the decision framework, by kid temperament, family bandwidth, and what you are hoping to get out of it.
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Co-creating with your kid in the studio
The studio does not replace family time. Some parents are using it as together-time on Saturday mornings, sitting next to the kid, asking questions, watching the project unfold. Here is how to do that without taking over.
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What to do when your kid hits a wall in the studio.
Frustration is part of making. The kid will hit a moment where their idea doesn't work, their wizard didn't produce what they hoped, the playtest revealed a flaw. Here's what to do, and what to skip.
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What COPPA 2026 actually changes for parents
The FTC's updated COPPA rule took effect April 22, 2026. The CHATBOT Act, introduced six days later, narrows the AI-with-kids surface further. Here's what changed, what your kid's AI tool needs to do now, and what to ask before clicking "agree."
Read →From the studio
Design decisions in public, cohort stories, and the founder’s reflections.
Why we don't track screen time.
Screen time as a unit of measurement is a category error. We chose a different metric: projects shipped, AI decisions reviewed, ideas iterated. Here's the philosophy behind that choice.
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What we learned in the first cohort.
Stories from the first four-week mentored program. The design decisions we made because of the kids in the room.
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How Theo went from playing games to making them.
The Achilles moment. The "make the arrows feel scary" decision. The studio Theo helped shape.
Read →Founder writing in public. Grounded in real research.
Most edtech marketing tells you what their product does. We’d rather show you why we believe it works — with citations you can chase yourself. The learning-science posts here lean on Seymour Papert’s constructionism, Mitchel Resnick’s Lifelong Kindergarten work at MIT, Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development, Carol Dweck’s growth-mindset research, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s flow model, and Deci & Ryan’s self-determination theory. We connect the dots; the underlying work is everyone’s to read.
The studio-story posts are the founder’s observations from the cohort and from working with Theo. Voicier. Less footnoted. Always honest about what failed.
The research is the floor. The kid’s project is the ceiling.
Read a post or two if you want the reasoning. Open the studio if you want to feel it work.