Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A high schooler writes about AI tools in the classroom

theatlantic.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

281–290 of 368 posts

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

#281

Post by Ekaros »

aprilthird2021 wrote: post #277
marcus_holmes wrote: post #272

An ex-gf of mine spent four years going through university to become an Occupational Therapist. She's severely dyslexic, so the university provided her with all sorts of assistance to get through her degree, from scribes in the exams to extra time for tests. She passed, and became a qualified Occupational Therapist. She landed a job in a local hospital. And on day one, was handed a huge pile of paperwork to complete.…

> Trying to exclude AI from education is not only pointless, it's doing the kids a disservice: AI is going to be a large part of their future, so it needs to be a large part of their education. Hard hard hard hard disagree. Everyone uses a calculator, even to calculate tips at a restaurant, but kids still need to learn arithmetic without a calculator's aid first. I spent my CS education learning things that I never c…

I think lot of education is making students to be aware things that exist. And at least have some starting point to search for when they need a thing.

And to achieve that exact goal they need to actually do something with it. Somehow practise some level of skill.

And I don't think using AI does this. Or even allow them to look for things that might exist. Recent example for me was big cookie cutters. Didn't even consider that such things were around. Saw a set on Temu and it clicked. I could get 15cm wide cutter instead of finding some bowl or something...

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

#282

Post by aprilthird2021 »

greenspam wrote: post #174

Imagine back in the days when calculators were just invented. An 8 year old kid might have the similar complain: “my classmate finished a 4 digits number multiplication problem in 5 seconds which generally took 1mins.” People might say, in the long term, the kid who cheated would be less proficient in arithmetic, which turned out to be true. But when you think about it, it seems not the end of the world when most hig…

> it seems not the end of the world when most high schooler in US cannot do complicated arithmetic quickly and accurately without a calculator.

You do realize those students learn arithmetic in an environment where calculators are not allowed right?

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

#284

Post by aprilthird2021 »

alphazard wrote: post #171

The lesson here is adapt or die. The things they thought were important or difficult or impressive are no longer any of those things. Regurgitating information on a test or generating prose from the notes you took in class are tasks which are easy to stereotype, and now readily automated. Rather than framing this as destroying education, it should be interpreted as proof that these tasks were always shallow. AI is st…

> The things they thought were important or difficult or impressive are no longer any of those things. Regurgitating information on a test or generating prose from the notes you took in class are tasks which are easy to stereotype, and now readily automated.

Arithmetic is automatic, but you still have to learn how to do it, in an environment without a calculator, first.

Memorization has been solved by computers with infinite memory for at least a decade, but learning how to, building the muscle for, and yes even memorizing things that you can just look up online are still valuable in today's world because they work together with the other parts of your mental muscle and complement them.

Like, a set of wheels and a dolly can replace a lot of heavy lifting, but it's still helpful and healthy to lift weights!

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

#285

Post by jmrm »

You can avoid this problem easily not letting students using phones or computers in the classroom and making doing more tasks at the classroom than at home.

If you're going to say "but in a working environment you use a computer", then teach them how to use text processing and spreadsheets int the computer room, a thing that didn't happen today in most schools btw.

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

#286

Post by aprilthird2021 »

Loughla wrote: post #187
alphazard wrote: post #171

The lesson here is adapt or die. The things they thought were important or difficult or impressive are no longer any of those things. Regurgitating information on a test or generating prose from the notes you took in class are tasks which are easy to stereotype, and now readily automated. Rather than framing this as destroying education, it should be interpreted as proof that these tasks were always shallow. AI is st…

I have to present to a group of pissed off college faculty tomorrow. They're pissed because we ended our contract with the AI checking software. We ended it because it checks not for AI but for professional writing, good grammar and spelling, and professional non-conversational word choice. WHICH ARE THE THINGS WE'RE TEACHING THESE STUDENTS IN OUR CLASSES. I have to look at a room of mostly out of touch faculty and t…

The college should no longer accept essays written outside a controlled environment as credit for any course. Simple, everyone will be happy

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

#288

Post by godelski »

Swizec wrote: post #264
godelski wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm surprised the answer of doing all exercises (including essay writing) in class is apparently not obvious. Because that results in less education time. If you do homework in class then you have to give up lecture time. Of course, the other option is to extend school time. Here's a good litmus test: if something seems very obvious, you're likely missing some hidden complexity. It's not a perfect test, but if it's…

> Because that results in less education time. If you do homework in class then you have to give up lecture time. Homework is the real education time. The lecture is less than half the ingredients. You can't learn without engaging with the material. The best lectures follow a question-trytoanswer-getrightanswer pattern where students are basically doing homework as part of the lecture. We wrote all graded essays duri…

  > The best lectures follow a question-trytoanswer-getrightanswer pattern where students are basically doing homework as part of the lecture.
Are you referring to the Socratic Method?

I agree that homework is where a significant chunk of learning happens but I'm highly skeptical that the utility is preserved through such a short timeframe. Spaced repetition is highly effective for memory, and this is baked into any method which has take home assignments. A collaborative style lecture is good, but this serves a different purpose.

  > We wrote all graded essays during class.
Sorry, you jumped a little here. Who is "we"? Is there a "when" and "where" to this too? Are you a current high schooler? Recent grad? Was this years ago? I've lost the context here.

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

#289

Post by godelski »

lmm wrote: post #269
godelski wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the option is to what, stop handing out homework? That would result in less education time. To clarify, I mean education time, not classroom time.

Homework has never been shown to improve education. It gets given out because parents demand it.

I'm going to need some serious citation here. Through my personal experience, homework and at home studying were critical to my education. I would not have made it through any of my degrees (B.S., M.S., PhD) by just attending lecture (PhD doesn't even have lectures!), despite this being sufficient for high school and early college. Though, that does not mean this was a good thing as it only means the education was insufficient.

So... citation needed

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

#290

Post by marcus_holmes »

aprilthird2021 wrote: post #277
marcus_holmes wrote: post #272

An ex-gf of mine spent four years going through university to become an Occupational Therapist. She's severely dyslexic, so the university provided her with all sorts of assistance to get through her degree, from scribes in the exams to extra time for tests. She passed, and became a qualified Occupational Therapist. She landed a job in a local hospital. And on day one, was handed a huge pile of paperwork to complete.…

> Trying to exclude AI from education is not only pointless, it's doing the kids a disservice: AI is going to be a large part of their future, so it needs to be a large part of their education. Hard hard hard hard disagree. Everyone uses a calculator, even to calculate tips at a restaurant, but kids still need to learn arithmetic without a calculator's aid first. I spent my CS education learning things that I never c…

> Everyone uses a calculator, even to calculate tips at a restaurant, but kids still need to learn arithmetic without a calculator's aid first.

citation needed

I was rapped across the knuckles by a sadistic primary school teacher for failing to learn my times table fast enough. Everyone said I absolutely needed to learn this because I would not always have access to a calculator. Here I am, literally carrying a calculator with me every second of my life.

I've spent more time and money getting therapy for the shit my teachers did to me trying to teach me the times table than I've saved using it.

Post reply on HN