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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

#321

Post by cauliflower99 »

The examples used in this student's classes demonstrate how inept the teacher is at designing a classroom promoted for learning rather than performance. If I were a teacher and I send around sheets of paper of exercises, my first directive is "Close all laptops" (or never have them there in the first place) followed by "If I see any use of technology to cheat, you have failed the exam." This is EXACTLY what is was like when I was in school only a few years ago.

Similarly for the debate club - why are teams allowed to have any technology in the hall in the first place?

Education is supposed to be difficult - that's how we learn!! Teachers seem to pander more and more to students who complain that "This is too difficult". As if easy learning was ever a thing!

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

#322

Post by jeremyjh »

sandworm101 wrote: post #315
HPsquared wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LLMs democratize personal tutoring. AI can massively improve education, if done right.

They are working well now because they live off the pile of human-created online content. Give it a few years. When all the AI has to feed on is the output of other AI bots, they will likely hit a reality wall and halucinate themselves into insanity. Forget new physics. It will probably be hard to get an AI to admit the earth isnt flat.

I expect they'll keep training on the pre-2022 corpus and supplement with new curated material. Of course they'll use AI to curate so the same process will eventually happen but probably can be slowed significantly.

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

#323

Post by cauliflower99 »

AIorNot wrote: post #42

I’m an AI engineer but I think schools need a nuclear option Banish tech in schools (including cell phones) (except during comp classes) but allow it at home Ie in high school only allow paper and pencil/pen Go back to written exams (handwriting based) Be lenient on spelling and grammer Allow homework, digital tutoring AI assistants and AI only when it not primary- ie for homework not in class work Bring back oral ex…

From a teacher's perspective, I'm sure the craft is a mess of bad school policies vs. so-called "best practices" vs. real learning science vs. government policies vs. ancient bad advice (eg. learning styles and tablets in classrooms) vs. personal opinion.

It's not like there is a senior engineer who's got mountains of expertise to defer to (like a software team would have). Teachers are likely given directives from their schools and get dumped a bunch of tablets and are told this is "modern" education and to just roll it out.

Anyway, to your point - top-down directives are what change schools. There has been success such as banning smartphones in Ireland & UK recently. Schools taking on the problems and then solving it themselves could go a long way, rather than waiting for government to mandate things.

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

#324

Post by Planktonne »

latchkey wrote: post #72
hrunt wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not what's happening in these schools. Many children have no outside-of-school work -- at all. My two children have had many classes with no homework up through 8th grade. And this is in a highly regarded, very competitive school district. From what I can tell, this is mostly a parent-led thing, well supported by overworked teachers who are more than willing to avoid even more work grading out-of-school assig…

> overworked teachers who are more than willing to avoid even more work grading out-of-school assignments. This seems like where we'd take advantage of AI to grade the assignments. AI could take the first pass and then the teachers can proof it, cutting down the overall time spent.

This doesn't work particularly well; it's the same with getting students to mark each other's work and then having the teacher quality control.

It's much faster to grade/give feedback on a piece of work than it is to verify the accuracy/comprehensiveness of existing grading/feedback.

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

#325

Post by glitchc »

godelski wrote: post #258
glitchc wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The counterargument is : If there are no consequences, what is the incentive to bear responsibility? Ultimately this argument does not have a clear answer because it's driven by beliefs, not facts.

> If there are no consequences, what is the incentive to bear responsibility? Sorry, but if a starving child is not enough of an incentive, I'm not sure we're talking about people that can be incentivized. Either they want to provide for their children but are unable to or they just don't care. Punishing the former does nothing to help the child, likely only exacerbates that situation as, last I checked... parents wh…

I'll try once more. There are children starving globally every day. How many of them are you saving personally? If not all, why not? How many should we save collectively? And which "we" should be responsible for which children (neighbourhood, town, city, country, region)? If so, why? These are not trite questions. Think carefully before answering.

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

#326

Post by conartist6 »

djoldman wrote: post #146

Unfortunately, this kind of story will continue to be a popular one in newspapers and magazines, garnering lots of clicks. It feeds into the "everything is different now" sort of desperate helplessness people seem primed to adopt with respect to AI sometimes. Obviously the answer to testing and grading is to do it in the classroom. If a computer is required, it can't connect to the internet. Caught with a cellphone,…

And then the same policy at your company.

If kids have to learn not to cheat on homework, why the heck don't adults? Is learning over by the time you have a job?

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

#327

Post by ofjcihen »

godelski wrote: post #248
ofjcihen wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure where the OP said that. Can you show us?

Sure. Current paradigm: Education time = time at school + time doing assignments OP said: > Obviously the answer to testing and grading is to do it in the classroom. So my question is, when is homework done? If it is being done at school, then our two options are to extend hours spent at school or give up time normally spent lecturing. I guess there's the alternative of getting rid of homework and only evaluating stu…

I think your assumption is where this falls apart. To be clear, your assumption about where time is spent and how there can only be 2 outcomes.

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

#328

Post by SoftTalker »

ethbr1 wrote: post #305
lmm wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for saying the quiet part out loud. Phone bans have never been about improving education, they're just adults seizing a chance to make children's lives more miserable.

I think you misunderstood parent's (admittedly poorly illustrated) point. As someone who grew up mostly before cell phones, it forced a greater level of planning, responsibility, and freedom on me than kids now normally experience. I'd often call my parents (gasp! Remembering my house phone number!) to adjust plans, by telling them where I'd be for how long. And generally, they had no problem with it. I laugh thinkin…

Correct. Parents want kids to have phones at school because it allows the parents to be lazy about making plans for the day and sticking to them.

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

#329

Post by nunez »

BrenBarn wrote: post #253
nunez wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There seems to be two schools od thought on this from what I've learned from my wife's experiences. One school has been abdicating homework for more in-classroom practice, as homework adds more grading and scheduling load on the teacher for little overall benefit. The core idea behind this is that motivated students will always practice at home, even if they aren't explicitly asked to. Unmotivated students --- usuall…

What do they do in the flipped classroom when (not if :-) some students come to class having done absolutely nothing at home?

Depends on the instructor, the school, the admin, the state, etc. This is actually a huge blind spot with the approach. We have a friend that's a college instructor that will turn students away if they don't do the material. Flipped works great in that environment. Not so much when you're a public school teacher in a state that cares about standardized test performance and advancement at all costs while also cutting their education budgets and, consequently, forcing teachers to wrangle 30+ student classrooms...

Thread on the topic: https://old.reddit.com/r/Teachers/comments/1958imi/what_are_...

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

#330

Post by Swizec »

godelski wrote: post #288
Swizec wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 me…

> Sorry, you jumped a little here. Who is "we"?

Right, this was in high school some 20 years ago in Slovenia and also in college after. Anything graded happened at school. All tests were open answer where you have to write 2 or 3 sentences. We also had oral exams in front of the whole class where the teacher asks you questions and you answer. In college the orals were more private because the classes were huge and the exam periods more condensed.

Homework was graded in that you’d get a + for doing it and a - for not doing it. Collect enough - and you get an F. This was more to make us do the homework than to actually check the work.

Afaik this hasn’t changed but I don’t know any recent school children in Slovenia so maybe it has.

> Are you referring to the Socratic Method?

I don’t know what it’s called. The approach where you challenge students to try figuring out the answer/explanation before you explain it to them because that has been shown to lead to better learning outcomes even though, or because, it’s harder and slower.

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