31–40 of 82 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Number munchers, Oregon trail, Odell Lake, Rocky’s Boots, LOGO, Carmen San Diego… My 1980s education technology was kick ass
Super Munchers, Outnumbered, Operation Neptune, Wild Science Arcade, and Mario Teaches Typing blowmp blowmp Da-da-daah! POW! :)
Educational software has always been an abyss. While in college, my summer internships (early 1980s) were at an educational computer facility. They had a "lab" with a variety of available computers and software for teachers to try out. Virtually all of it was abysmal -- glorified flash cards. It wasn't much different when my kids were in high school.
But if you buy a bunch of computers or whatever and some crap software and don't execute well it's not going to go good.
(Source: like half my family is/was a teacher or school administrator)
Educational software has always been an abyss. While in college, my summer internships (early 1980s) were at an educational computer facility. They had a "lab" with a variety of available computers and software for teachers to try out. Virtually all of it was abysmal -- glorified flash cards. It wasn't much different when my kids were in high school.
Number munchers, Oregon trail, Odell Lake, Rocky’s Boots, LOGO, Carmen San Diego… My 1980s education technology was kick ass
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I get you're going for the "AI is a tool" thing, but the problem with your analogy is that LLMs hallucinate and many students use them in lieu of doing reading and reasoning about the content. LLMs are to english class as a car would be to running class. Yes, the tool exists and is useful but it prevents you from getting the intended benefit.
Seems like educators should be adding AI to their curriculum.
AI is unbelievably awesome for education. We just need to raise the bar. If you only use it to do the normal work (essays), it’s a waste and maybe bad. Now, it is so much easier to teach programming… data analysis… design… all things that k12 is normally terrible at teaching.
I love how HN is just a cheerleader for AI btw. Like the vast majority of posts are all the same. “AI is unbelievably awesome”. “All dangers are overblown and silly.” “We’ve always had X downside, it’s nothing new” “but Web3 sucks in every possible way.”
As someone working on an AI tool for education, I think it's going to be one of the hardest industries to get right, but also the most important. - It's going to be tricky for AI tutors to make an impact. Teachers are better at inspiring students to do better than computers ever will be, but for those already motivated, AI will provide a great study tool. - Students have access to LLMs as well now, so any writing ass…
So students will be generating papers with AI and teachers grading them with AI? Maybe the real problem is education and teaching isn't innovating as fast as tech
Can't remember where but saw a comic not too long ago when an employee uses AI to generate a long email and the recipient uses AI to summarize it
What the teachers really are saying is that they're afraid the AI tools are coming for their jobs, and so the teachers will say anything at all to delay the inevitable. Around here the school budgets are absolutely massive (in the hundreds of millions of dollars for a village), and if I were getting such free money, I would say anything to keep it flowing.
I'd guess that most teachers would welcome AI augmenting their teaching. They're already doing more than they were 1-2 decades ago in terms of dealing with parents and reporting on curriculum (e.g., Seesaw app), at least where I live. AI isn't going to take jobs in childcare, kindergarten and early primary schools any time soon. I also don't think it would do more than augment teaching in the rest of primary school or high school.
Teachers would jump on an AI that helped them summarise daily and weekly activities for broadcast to parents. That must be such a grind doing it now.
The only thing this shows is that the education system actively resists preparing students to succeed in a modern economy. This is the modern equivalent of saying "keyboards hurt penmanship education."
Some examples in past week:
1. Claude: "Why is this code failing typechecking in typescript" -> gives me detailed reasons why, teaches me about some things I didn't know about, and solves the problem for me while uplevelling my understanding,
2. Gemini: "What kind of contractor do I need to install an oven with a downdraft?" -> Tells me I need an appliance installer, and then links me to https://www.thumbtack.com/ca/san-francisco/appliance-installers and I select the 1st one.
If a huge mechanism for assessing folks in education is "write an essay on this" and the teacher then "grades the essay output by the student," that's almost the perfect task where AI can do both ends. Which is pretty much a sign that assessments such as this have low educational impact.