Five big questions
The five districts each ask a different question about AI.
Mechna Academy is an iPad and Mac learning app where children aged 8 to 10 learn how AI machines work by testing them, in 15–20 minute sessions, and never talk to a live AI.
/// SECTOR 01 _ CURRICULUM
Mechna Academy is a learning app where children test how AI machines work. They never talk to a live AI. Mechna City has five districts, and each one is a side of AI.
Lantern Market
Greenline Park
The Foundry
Storyworks
Clocktower
Those six questions come back in every district. Children also practise saying “can’t tell yet” when the evidence doesn’t settle it, and recognizing when a person must decide. In every lab, they prove what they’ve learned on a case the machine has never seen.
/// SECTOR 02 _ THE ROUTINE
Science teaching often follows a five-stage cycle (engage, explore, explain, elaborate, evaluate), so every Mechna lab follows the same routine that a child learns once and then uses in every lab.
Someone in the city needs help.
Play with the machine. What does it do?
Commit to a guess about how it decides.
Open the Peek Hatch, which unlocks only after the guess.
Change one thing, and compare before and after.
Try a case the machine has never seen.
Save a Discovery Card, linked to the evidence.
Guess first, then peek. One cause at a time. A fresh case at the end. First guesses are kept as given, and finishing a mission never claims mastery.
Every Mechna lab follows the same seven steps: Spot, Try, Guess, Peek, Tweak, Prove and Keep.
/// SECTOR 03 _ FIT
Homeschool families can use short sessions on an iPad or Mac, and educators can use six recurring questions for classroom discussion.
Bring the six recurring questions to class: a ready guide for a discussion about AI with 8–10-year-olds.
Tell us about your class, and we'll reply personally.
Join the educator listJoin the educator list/// SECTOR 04 _ WHAT YOU GET
Educators can read Mechna Academy’s research principles and use six questions to discuss AI in class.
Each learning principle behind Mechna, its sources and their limits, and the mechanic it shaped.
What goes in, how it decides, how it learns, how it’s tested, how it fails, and who is in charge. They work today as a frame for any class discussion about AI.
Tell us about your class, and we’ll reply to you personally.
/// SECTOR 05 _ THE LIST
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/// ANSWERS
The six recurring questions can frame a classroom discussion about AI. Join the educator list for access updates.
Mechna teaches how AI machines work, across five districts of one city: AI in everyday life, what machines can notice, how they learn and get tested and fixed, how AI makes new things, and whether to trust it and who decides. Across twelve missions, children predict, test, change one cause at a time and try fresh cases. No coding is needed at ages 8 to 10.
It’s designed to fit one. Sessions run 15 to 20 minutes, two sessions make one mission, and every instruction is spoken and captioned. Each child gets their own profile on the family iPad or Mac. Homeschool families can join the waitlist.
No. AI is the subject. At ages 8 to 10 there’s no Python and no typing: children investigate machines through pictures, choices and sentence tiles. The learning format here is for ages 8 to 10.