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A high schooler writes about AI tools in the classroom

theatlantic.com

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Re: A high schooler writes about AI tools in the classroom

#111

Post by jay_kyburz »

monero-xmr wrote: post #26
rvz wrote: post #4

What are we going to do to solve this?

Paper / blue book exams? It seems obvious to me. I went to college when we had giant desktops and CRTs but everything was paper when it mattered. Bizarre how no one can see the obvious

You _don't_ need to jump all the way back to paper and pencil. It's the internet that's the problem. Kids just need to do their work in class on a machine that is only connected to school network, not the wider internet.

Updated to say what I was trying to say. (Apologies)

Re: A high schooler writes about AI tools in the classroom

#112

Post by carabiner »

GianFabien wrote: post #51
add-sub-mul-div wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What the surface level take about calculators misses is that the average person can't do arithmetic in their head because they don't need to, but they also don't pull out a calculator in the many times a day it would be useful, like at the grocery store. People make horrible decisions with everyday home economics math and are taken advantage of. The lesson isn't that we survived calculators, it's that they did dull u…

Actually the experience with calculators portends a dismal future. Before calculators, i.e. slide rules, log tables, hand arithmetic: by the time engineers completed their university education most could approximate relevant parameters in their work to +/- 5% or the actual value. Slide rules would give you a result to 3 (rarely 4) significant decimals, but you needed to know the expected result to within half an orde…

If we had stayed with slide rules, we'd probably be on mars and beyond by now. Household fusion reactors too.

Re: A high schooler writes about AI tools in the classroom

#113

Post by glitchc »

jonathanlb wrote: post #110
glitchc wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For many/most students, the home is not particularly conducive for doing homework a variety of reasons. I think this speaks to the parents and the type of home environment that they create. This is one of the major sources of disagreement between the right and the left, where the former (sometimes strongly) feel the parents bear responsibility for the type of environment their kids grow up in while the latter (equa…

> external factors (abuse, addiction, sickness, etc.). Beside factors that body's performance, also consider factors that impact well-meaning parent or caregivers' _presence_ in the home, such economic realities, e.g., parents working multiple jobs, parents with challenging schedules, single parents, lack of community support (e.g., availability of a supportive neighbors or families.)

Agreed, of course. All captured in the etc. Nothwithstanding these factors, the debate still boils down to who's responsible for the kids' well-being: Them or society.

Re: A high schooler writes about AI tools in the classroom

#114

Post by dghlsakjg »

GianFabien wrote: post #51
add-sub-mul-div wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What the surface level take about calculators misses is that the average person can't do arithmetic in their head because they don't need to, but they also don't pull out a calculator in the many times a day it would be useful, like at the grocery store. People make horrible decisions with everyday home economics math and are taken advantage of. The lesson isn't that we survived calculators, it's that they did dull u…

Actually the experience with calculators portends a dismal future. Before calculators, i.e. slide rules, log tables, hand arithmetic: by the time engineers completed their university education most could approximate relevant parameters in their work to +/- 5% or the actual value. Slide rules would give you a result to 3 (rarely 4) significant decimals, but you needed to know the expected result to within half an orde…

I agree completely.

The amount of college educated people that do not now how to calculate a tip in their head is terrifying.

I can understand not being able to get 17.5% down to the penny. But 10%, 15% or 20% can be calculated in your head faster than I can get my phone out. This level of math is pretty basic.

Its also worth saying that I was never described as a "math person". The number of people that will blindly accept what the calculator tells them is too fucking high.

I have already noticed far too many people using chatGPT as a source. I have a tax attorney friend who got in an argument with an agent at the CRA (Canada Revenue) over whether her interpretation of a rule was correct or whether the chatGPT interpretation was correct. Mind you, she works as a prosecuting attorney so it wasn't adversarial, it was just her saying, "sorry, I'm the legal expert, this interpretation is incorrect, and we will lose if we use this interpretation".

Re: A high schooler writes about AI tools in the classroom

#115

Post by dghlsakjg »

like_any_other wrote: post #17
frollogaston wrote: post #6

Maybe they can allow AI for writing but raise the bar on quality so the blind copy-paste submissions still fail. I've still never read a good AI-generated doc at work, it's always verbose and aimless. At this point I close the doc if I catch a whiff. Unlike the AI code which is fine. It's probably either that or ban it and do everything in-person, which might have to be the stopgap solution.

> Maybe they can allow AI for writing but raise the bar on quality so the blind copy-paste submissions still fail. These are highschoolers, still learning to write - their output won't be the best. It won't be long at all until AI can write as well as the average (honest, pre-AI) highschooler, if we're not past that point already.

You have severely overestimated most high-school students.

The whole reason that this is an issue is that LLMs have been able to match or beat student output since chatGPT 3.5.

Re: A high schooler writes about AI tools in the classroom

#116

Post by HelloMcFly »

dghlsakjg wrote: post #108
HDThoreaun wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Bring back oral exams With 30 kids in a class Im not sure this is possible. Oral exams scale horribly

Bring back smaller classroom sizes.

Bring back functional school funding models.

Re: A high schooler writes about AI tools in the classroom

#117

Post by HelloMcFly »

hodder wrote: post #107

The real irony is that this article was clearly, edited and formatted by an LLM.

What indicators make you so certain? Certainly the em-dashes in the third sentence raised my eyebrow, as they always do now (it's sad—I loved a good em-dash).

Re: A high schooler writes about AI tools in the classroom

#118

Post by monknomo »

glitchc wrote: post #98
csa wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I recently found out that my nephew's school had no take-home homework before high school, instead having kids complete assignments during class time. At first, I was flabbergasted that they would deny kids the discipline building of managing unstructured time without direct supervision. Good! If they want to give kids the chance to develop the skill of managing unstructured time, that could easily be fit into the…

> For many/most students, the home is not particularly conducive for doing homework a variety of reasons. I think this speaks to the parents and the type of home environment that they create. This is one of the major sources of disagreement between the right and the left, where the former (sometimes strongly) feel the parents bear responsibility for the type of environment their kids grow up in while the latter (equa…

I think the lefty one is more accurately that the children cannot help what kind of home their parents provide.

Maybe their parents have a responsibility to do better, but if the parents are not delivering on their responsibility, should the children bear the consequence?

Re: A high schooler writes about AI tools in the classroom

#119

Post by SJMG »

GianFabien wrote: post #51
add-sub-mul-div wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What the surface level take about calculators misses is that the average person can't do arithmetic in their head because they don't need to, but they also don't pull out a calculator in the many times a day it would be useful, like at the grocery store. People make horrible decisions with everyday home economics math and are taken advantage of. The lesson isn't that we survived calculators, it's that they did dull u…

Actually the experience with calculators portends a dismal future. Before calculators, i.e. slide rules, log tables, hand arithmetic: by the time engineers completed their university education most could approximate relevant parameters in their work to +/- 5% or the actual value. Slide rules would give you a result to 3 (rarely 4) significant decimals, but you needed to know the expected result to within half an orde…

Totally agree. The pessimist in me says that part of this is unavoidable. Our tools specialize so that we can direct our limited resources elsewhere, as a consequence of delegating those particular abilities atrophy in us.

Not being able to organize information, create a synthesis, or express yourself in less-likely-than-a-LLM terms is going to have detrimental effects. I think not only will it lead to insane, horse-blinder level, hyper specialization, but it will flatten entire segments of the human experience.

Re: A high schooler writes about AI tools in the classroom

#120

Post by Spooky23 »

zdragnar wrote: post #5

I recently found out that my nephew's school had no take-home homework before high school, instead having kids complete assignments during class time. At first, I was flabbergasted that they would deny kids the discipline building of managing unstructured time without direct supervision. Homework- at home- seemed like such a fundamental part of the schooling experience. Now, I'm thinking that was pretty much they onl…

My son’s middle school English teacher comes up with various schemes to make it hard to use AI, or if you do, it makes your ideas better.

The magic of AI is it amplifies what’s there. Smart or diligent people get better. Dumb and lazy people kick the can down the road.

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