Stage 4: Connect to RAISE Playground
Keep both tabs open all week. Open in a new tab — don’t use the buttons in this page to leave the course.
a RAISE Playground project that knows about your AI
how two different websites talk to each other through a URL
a saved RAISE project with your model loaded and ready
Show the room — slowly — because today is the trickiest stage technically:
- Open RAISE Playground. Point out the cat sprite and the block palette.
- Click Add Extension (or the equivalent menu — show the exact path on RAISE's UI).
- Pick the AI / Teachable Machine extension.
- Paste your teacher model URL into the field. Show the new AI blocks appearing in the block palette.
- Save the project. Show campers exactly which menu saves it.
The big idea
So far we've been in Teachable Machine — the AI's home. Today we walk over to RAISE Playground — the game's home — and we hand it our AI.
Teachable Machine RAISE Playground
(your AI's home) (your game's home)
│ │
│ model URL is the bridge │
└────────────────────────────────────┘
The way two different websites share an AI is with a URL — that long link you saved at the end of Stage 2 and Stage 3. RAISE Playground knows how to take that URL and load your AI into the game. After today, the game can ask the AI "what hand sign do you see?" — but only because we built the bridge.
We don't code anything today. We just load the AI. Tomorrow we make it talk.
- sprite
- a character in your game (like the cat)
- extension
- an extra set of blocks RAISE Playground can add — including AI blocks
- block
- a colored puzzle piece you snap together to make code
- save
- store your project so it doesn't disappear when you close the tab
You should have your model URL from Stage 3 saved. If you can't find it, open Teachable Machine, click Export Model, and grab a new one.
Build it
Step 1 — Open RAISE Playground
Click the RAISE Playground button at the top of this page. It opens in its own tab.
You should see a green flag, a red stop button, a stage with a cat sprite, and a left panel full of colorful blocks.
If RAISE asks you to sign in or create a project, do whatever your coach says for the camp. If it just opens to an empty project, that's fine.
Step 2 — Find the Add Extension button
Look in the bottom-left corner of the screen. You should see a button with a + sign or a stack of blocks icon — that's Add Extension.
Click it.
A new screen slides up showing many extensions: pen, music, video, text, and a section for AI.
Step 3 — Pick the Teachable Machine extension
Scroll through the extensions and find one named something like Teachable Machine or Image Classifier. Click on it.
The screen goes back to the main editor. You should now see new blocks in the block palette on the left — they have a special color (often pink or purple) and they mention "Image" or "Class".
Step 4 — Paste your model URL
Find the block that says something like "Use model from URL" or "Load model". Drag it into the script area.
Click on the input field inside the block and paste your Teachable Machine URL — the one you saved in Stage 3.
Make sure the URL ends with a / like this:
https://teachablemachine.withgoogle.com/models/AbC123xyz/
Click the block once to run just this block. If your URL is correct, you should see a small status indicator (a check mark, a "model loaded" message, or the sprite reacting). The model is now loaded into RAISE.
Step 5 — Save your project
Right now, if you close this tab, you lose everything. Save the project:
- Click File → Save (or Save Now, depending on RAISE's version).
- Give it a name. Use something like:
AI Collector — First Last
Saving locks in the loaded model URL too. Tomorrow when you reopen the project, your AI is still connected.
Understand it
A URL is just an address. The model URL points to a place on Google's servers where your trained AI lives. RAISE Playground reads the URL, downloads the AI's brain (it's actually a small file), and uses that brain whenever you ask it a question with the new AI blocks.
The reason this works is the same reason you can text a YouTube link to a friend — the link is the bridge between your screen and the video's location. The AI is just a video your hand-sign brain knows how to play.
The extension is the part of RAISE that knows how to speak Teachable Machine. Without it, RAISE wouldn't know what to do with the URL — it would just be a string of letters. With the extension, RAISE has a translator for AI.
The thing we didn't do today is the most important one to notice. We did not write any code. We didn't even click the green flag. Today was setup. The game starts in Stage 5.
Try this
Try this
Three short experiments. Predict before you run, then test your guess.
What do you think will happen if you paste the wrong URL — like a YouTube link, or a Google search? Predict, then try it (be careful, you'll need to put the real URL back).
Look at the AI blocks in your block palette. Find the one that says something like "what class is the AI seeing" or "prediction". Now look at the regular Scratch blocks (the colored ones, not the AI ones). What does that AI block return — a number, a word, or something else? Hint: your green bars from Stage 3 showed it as a word.
Stage 5 makes the cat sprite say what the AI sees. There's a Scratch block called say. There's an AI block called something like prediction. Look at both blocks. How do you think we'll combine them?
Test your stage
- RAISE Playground is open in its tab.
- The Teachable Machine / AI extension is added (you can see special pink/purple AI blocks in the palette).
- You pasted your model URL into the Use model from URL block.
- When you clicked the block, the model loaded without an error.
- You saved the project with your name.
- Design check. Switch to the Teachable Machine tab and back to RAISE. Can you find both tabs in under five seconds? You'll be switching a lot from now on.
If it breaks
- I don't see an AI extension in the Add Extension menu. RAISE Playground sometimes updates the names. Look for Image Classification, Teachable Machine, or AI. If none exist, raise your hand — the coach may need to enable it for the camp.
- The model URL paste didn't do anything. Make sure the URL ends with a
/(forward slash). If it doesn't, add one. Click the block to run it again. - Error: "Could not load model." Open the URL in a brand-new browser tab. If it doesn't load there either, the URL is broken — go back to Teachable Machine and export a new one.
- My project disappeared after I closed the tab. You didn't save. Reopen RAISE, recreate the steps, and save before closing the tab next time.
- The new AI blocks look totally different from a video I watched. Different versions of RAISE name blocks slightly differently. The behaviors are the same — load a model from a URL, ask the model what it sees. Find blocks that do those two things.
This is the hardest stage of the week for technical reasons (not pedagogical). RAISE Playground's UI updates regularly — the exact button names and menu paths may not match this page. Have a backup plan: pre-record a 60-second screencast of the current Add Extension flow and play it for the room.
The single most common failure: trailing-slash on the URL. Walk the room and confirm every camper's URL ends in /. This bug takes 20 minutes to diagnose in real time.
If a camper finishes early, push them into the medium stretch (explore every AI block) — it primes them for Stage 5 and means tomorrow goes faster.
If RAISE Playground itself is down (it happens), the backup is paper-based: have campers draw the AI Collector Game by hand. Stage 4 is the only stage that requires RAISE to be online.