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Sal Khan is pioneering innovation in education again

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Re: Sal Khan is pioneering innovation in education again

#251

Post by pacbard »

Pulcinella wrote: post #70

Background: I taught high school science for half a decade and now I am in tech. This will never take off. One, there is no money in Ed.Tech. There is no money in Ed.Tech. There is no money in Ed.Tech. What little money there is goes to the obvious stuff like student records databases. Anything that requires an ongoing subscription fee is dead in the water. The only reason those stupid smartboards took off is because…

Agree 100% with the cost analysis.

Let’s say you want to purchase a math tutoring platform. The cost is $30 per student per year. CA schools get about $5 per student per year in lottery funds to purchase instructional materials (shared across all materials). General fund is pretty much all spent on staff/teachers or facilities. One time covid funds are running out. Schools can purchase textbooks at ~$100 per unit and use them for years without subscriptions.

In short, there is no money in public education for these tools.

These platforms look great, but the price is prohibitive. Maybe some basic aid district could pick them up, but those are usually small (I.e., it won’t keep a start up in business).

Note. This is an observation from California. Other states might find education better.

Re: Sal Khan is pioneering innovation in education again

#252

Post by lolinder »

mulmen wrote: post #243
lolinder wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Suicide rates during WW1 were hovering around 20 per 100k. During the Great Depression it peaked at 22 per 100k [0]. That's around 50% higher than the 2022 number you cite (14.3 per 100k), which is hard to describe as "really not that far off". EDIT: The comment I replied to has been edited in multiple ways since I replied, so the text in quotes above is no longer present. The comment previously indicated that we had…

I edit a lot so I set the delay in my profile to give me 10 minutes to do so.

If you edited within ten minutes then something isn't working, because your comment changed multiple times after I replied to it. The delay is supposed to prevent me from seeing it at all until the period is up.

Re: Sal Khan is pioneering innovation in education again

#253

Post by csa »

balls187 wrote: post #193
from-nibly wrote: post #157

Disclaimer I'm talking about the US, but I believe it applies at least somewhat to most of the modern education system everywhere. The problem of education isn't the lack of resources it's the lack of purpose. The internet is all the resources you will ever need. Sure AI could augment this a little. Maybe it could re-explain something you can't quite wrap your head around. The problem is that kids know that the educa…

Is your comment based on recent experience? I have two young school age kids, and my experience with them does not align with your assessment. Their schooling is vastly different from the "Sit still, do what you're told" model that was used to train the an upcoming generation of factory workers.

> Their schooling is vastly different from the "Sit still, do what you're told" model that was used to train the an upcoming generation of factory workers.

Not op, but this is an area I know a bit about.

1. You’re right that instruction methods have evolved over time to be less teacher-centered. This might be considered an improvement. That said, good teachers who implement these methods well are mostly in good school districts (no surprise).

2. The issue comes more in secondary ed, imho. The issue is with the curriculum. In 1900, only about 4% of HS-aged kids went to HS. These folks were the elite, and the HS education was preparing them for a 2-year or 4-year program after HS (again, mainly for elites). The curriculum that existed then is largely the same one we have today, and it’s completely absurd. We get odds things like lower level math (non-calculus track) basically being re-heated middle school math. We get four required years of “English” that focuses on grammar (often taught in a dubious, prescriptive manner) and literature largely written by dead people (when there is plenty of good modern lit and poetry to learn about/through). We have science education that largely does not train students to engage scientific thinking (again, except maybe for the honors classes at good schools). To summarize, we have a curriculum designed for college-bound elites that has been ungracefully shoe-horned into a one-size-fits-all train wreck.

All of the curricular issues are solvable, but it there will need to be a critical mass of support in local communities to be able to implement change through the inertia of the existing system of education administrators and (to some extent) teachers.

Until this happens, imho it’s best to look at secondary ed as very expensive child care for the vast majority of students, with the exception being in better school districts (usually where the elites or elite-ambitious live).

Primary ed is ok… the main learning outcomes that folks need are the three Rs. Some folks, especially on HN, seem to think scientific thinking should be included. They’re not wrong, but that only flies in schools/communities of elites.

Re: Sal Khan is pioneering innovation in education again

#255

Post by turtlebits »

danielmarkbruce wrote: post #212
Pulcinella wrote: post #70

Background: I taught high school science for half a decade and now I am in tech. This will never take off. One, there is no money in Ed.Tech. There is no money in Ed.Tech. There is no money in Ed.Tech. What little money there is goes to the obvious stuff like student records databases. Anything that requires an ongoing subscription fee is dead in the water. The only reason those stupid smartboards took off is because…

There is a small fortune spent on private education. After school classes, tutoring etc etc. The money is spent by the upper middle class and above. If this solution works better for some subset of those people, it will take off in that market.

Private education as "in person" . Not faceless SaaS subscriptions.

Re: Sal Khan is pioneering innovation in education again

#256

Post by bufordtwain »

Pulcinella wrote: post #70

Background: I taught high school science for half a decade and now I am in tech. This will never take off. One, there is no money in Ed.Tech. There is no money in Ed.Tech. There is no money in Ed.Tech. What little money there is goes to the obvious stuff like student records databases. Anything that requires an ongoing subscription fee is dead in the water. The only reason those stupid smartboards took off is because…

This might be the exception that proves the rule but I used to work for an outfit that made a school website product (SaaS) and they seemed to be making plenty of money.

Re: Sal Khan is pioneering innovation in education again

#257

Post by pictureofabear »

peppertree wrote: post #232
seidleroni wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand the skepticism around AI in ed tech, and I think people have the right to be skeptical of this being portrayed as a "cure all". Saying that it is of no value because nobody will pay for it and the kids wont learn from it because they're hungry does not capture the whole picture. I was never a great student because I had trouble focusing in class, but if I had this to guide me through my homework, I belie…

If you have ever worked with children you will realize vast majority of them lack the willpower to learn new things and seek out answers. A good teacher can provide the social accountability and guide them, but it's not something you can put on auto pilot with AI.

This is the crux of the problem in my opinion.

Children look to adults as role models for what to learn and why. We already know that children respond better to role models who have similar ethnicities and backgrounds to them, let alone being the same species.

AI cannot and will never be able to provide this motivation to learn, which is what kids actually need, because it is not human.

Re: Sal Khan is pioneering innovation in education again

#258

Post by pictureofabear »

neuralnetes-COO wrote: post #95
Pulcinella wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As for "GPT-4" fabricating things, I remember in school how I wrote essays and was given A's despite citing NYT and Wikipedia. Fabrications exist all over the place. If anything, hallucinations might give more examples as to how to be skeptical of any source and look for direct sources as much as possible. "Actually it's good that AI sucks because it will teach people to be more skeptical" is not a very compelling ar…

This is the purpose of LLMOps. To provide guardrails for precise output to prevent hallucination.

Is it too early for full-stack LLMDevSecOps?

Re: Sal Khan is pioneering innovation in education again

#259

Post by AlbertCory »

diddypiddy wrote: post #105
doctoboggan wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Impressive! You should give yourself more credit as it takes more than just internet and patience to teach yourself enough to get into college. I am also excited for society. However I am worried as well. While an AI tutor who is able to understand the child's current knowledge and gear the lessons toward what will make the most sense will be very powerful, it could also be used for brainwashing, propaganda, misinfor…

We live in a world where wealth is increasingly being concentrated at the top, social mobility for the average person is trending downwards, suicide rates in the US are at all-time highs, drug abuse rising, general deaths of despair rising, mental illness rising, climate and ecological catastrophes mounting by unchecked greed and all of this AI crap is mostly in the hands of the powerful who will use it to solidify t…

All your premises are wrong, even if they're grammatical and coherent (what does "general deaths of despair" or "climate and ecological catastrophes mounting by unchecked greed " even mean?

> all of this AI crap is mostly in the hands of the powerful

too funny when the subject of the article is the Khan Academy which is hardly a hate-target.

Re: Sal Khan is pioneering innovation in education again

#260

Post by gnicholas »

rahimnathwani wrote: post #7

I'm as excited about the potential as anyone. I would love to give my child an AI tutor like The Primer. But nothing like that exists today, as far as I know. I was disappointed with Khanmigo when I tried it back in August. Although I have a year's subscription to it, I've not asked my child to try it. It seemed too boring and told me my answer (to a problem it had given me) was wrong, even though I was right. I'm op…

> told me my answer (to a problem it had given me) was wrong, even though I was right.

This is a fatal flaw. It absolutely cannot make mistakes like this if it's going to succeed because that will undermine the confidence that teachers and students have in the system.

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