AI1: Lesson 3 Talk to Me - Building Smarter Chatbots

This KS3 / lower secondary computing lesson shows students how chatbots decide what to say - and gives them the tools to build one themselves.
They explore how simple rules are used to match user input with pre-written responses, test how well these rules hold up to variation, and improve their bot through logic edits and peer feedback. For an added challenge, they simulate memory by teaching the chatbot to remember and reuse the user’s name.

Through this, students uncover:

• How rule-based systems power chatbot conversations using simple keyword matching
• What Natural Language Processing (NLP) means in the context of chatbot design
• How to build and test a chatbot using if-else logic in an offline simulation.
• Why effective chatbot responses depend on anticipating user intent and variation.

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