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Sweden goes back to basics, swapping screens for books in the classroom

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Re: Sweden goes back to basics, swapping screens for books in the classroom

#151

Post by schnitzelstoat »

Gigachad wrote: post #60
schnitzelstoat wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's quite rare that it gives a wrong answer nowadays. Even more so if you ask it to use the internet etc. But yeah, it's not infallible and sometimes even when it gives you a source it will incorrectly summarise it, but you can double check the information in the source itself. It just makes it a lot easier to do quickly rather than having to go and find the right Wikipedia article or dig through lots of documentati…

Only if you are asking surface level questions. There are also certain topics that seem to be worse than others. For asking about how to do things in software guis modern LLMs seem to have a high rate of making up features or paths to reach them. For asking advice in games I've seen an extremely high rate of hallucinations. Asking why something is broken in my codebase has about a 95% hallucination rate. If you are j…

I've used it for languages and studying some reinforcement learning stuff, including examples in PyTorch. I haven't had many problems with it really.

Once when I asked it some questions about a strategy game (Shadow Empire) it got them wrong, but the sources it cited had the correct information.

Re: Sweden goes back to basics, swapping screens for books in the classroom

#152

Post by lawn »

amadeuspagel wrote: post #21

> Basic skills — especially reading, writing, and numeracy — must be firmly established first, physical textbooks are often better suited for that purpose. Reading and writing, maybe, but numeracy? With a computer, you can get instant feedback, immidiately see whether you did the math correctly or not. With a textbook, you have to wait for your teacher.

If you aren't sure your answer is correct then you're more likely to redo the problem or try to confirm it with fuzzier calculations. This is difficult and is great exercise.

Learning math isn't just about being correct. It's about doing the motions and learning how to problem solve.

Using the computer the way you suggest will make you lazy as you won't learn to do these hard things.

Re: Sweden goes back to basics, swapping screens for books in the classroom

#153

Post by duskdozer »

rvz wrote: post #23
mentalgear wrote: post #15

I remember that - even though Steve Jobs promoted the iPad as a replacement to the 'heavy schoolbooks kids had to carry all day' - he never allowed his children to use iPads. I bet Zuckerberg doesn't allow his children to use social media. And I assume that Sam Altman won't allow his children to use AI chatbots. What does that tell us?

He (Zuckerberg) doesn't. It tells us that they know that kids should not be using any of this technology as it is extremely addictive to kids who are none the wiser. > What does that tell us? It tells us three things: 1. Do not give a child access to iPads, social media or ChatGPT until they are old enough and are aware of their addictive nature. 2. Get them to read books as an alternative. 3. Being unable to restric…

You've fallen for the false framing. "companies have free reign to engineer as much addiction as they want" and "government enacts universal age verification surveillance" are not the only two options.

Re: Sweden goes back to basics, swapping screens for books in the classroom

#154

Post by mcphage »

bombcar wrote: post #137
mentalgear wrote: post #15

I remember that - even though Steve Jobs promoted the iPad as a replacement to the 'heavy schoolbooks kids had to carry all day' - he never allowed his children to use iPads. I bet Zuckerberg doesn't allow his children to use social media. And I assume that Sam Altman won't allow his children to use AI chatbots. What does that tell us?

Zucchini also thinks spending $80 billion on a failed metaverse is a good bet, so maybe they're not the experts of everything.

How much of that was actual spending—and if so, where did the money end up?—and how much of that was just fraud?

Re: Sweden goes back to basics, swapping screens for books in the classroom

#155

Post by duskdozer »

lo_zamoyski wrote: post #112
mentalgear wrote: post #15

I remember that - even though Steve Jobs promoted the iPad as a replacement to the 'heavy schoolbooks kids had to carry all day' - he never allowed his children to use iPads. I bet Zuckerberg doesn't allow his children to use social media. And I assume that Sam Altman won't allow his children to use AI chatbots. What does that tell us?

> Steve Jobs promoted the iPad as a replacement to the 'heavy schoolbooks kids had to carry all day' This is largely an American phenomenon. If you visit some other countries, students don't walk around all day saddled with what look like Medieval tomes in backpacks that come comically close to dwarfing the student. There is no reason for them to be so thick, so heavy, so expensive, hardcover, or even loaned. And the…

In many places it's the teachers who move around all day while the students remain.

Re: Sweden goes back to basics, swapping screens for books in the classroom

#156

Post by beej71 »

heraldgeezer wrote: post #144
yodsanklai wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We also limit access to sugary foods and other things that can be damaging in excess. Maybe you do, but not everybody does. 19.7% of American kids are obese. The hypocrisy is that tech executives promote and lobby for excessive use of their products (even manufacturing addiction), but know better for their kids.

[flagged]

[flagged]

Re: Sweden goes back to basics, swapping screens for books in the classroom

#157

Post by e584 »

heraldgeezer wrote: post #144
yodsanklai wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We also limit access to sugary foods and other things that can be damaging in excess. Maybe you do, but not everybody does. 19.7% of American kids are obese. The hypocrisy is that tech executives promote and lobby for excessive use of their products (even manufacturing addiction), but know better for their kids.

[flagged]

Even easier to judge someone's character by the vile shit they write online!

Re: Sweden goes back to basics, swapping screens for books in the classroom

#158

Post by tgv »

brookst wrote: post #52

It’s sad to see HN take this at face value and parrot the “screens bad” view without understanding it. I dug deep into this a while ago, starting with the “how legit is the science” question because I wondered if the studies had looked at any tradeoffs (e.g. did laptop use improve programming skills in ways paper books do not?) It’s a rabbit hole. I encourage folks to read up and form more nuanced opinions. This bein…

Education research is really low quality. Like so many other fields in social sciences, the results rarely generalize beyond the direct findings, and only support the hypotheses in the mildest way. It cannot robustly guide decision making.

The fact that studies on screens vs books cannot get a consistent answer says enough. I checked #3 of your links, and the amount of bullshit is astonishing. The cited articles offer vague, unresearched explanations for contradictory findings, or point at differences in the stimuli, something which should obviously never have happened. After some cherry picking, article #3 treats the remaining studies as equal and reliable enough to throw in a big bag, as if that solves the problem.

Think of it like this: the replication crisis in cognitive psychology was found trying to replicate some of the better studies. The average education research study is several levels below that. It'll have a replicability of 0.1 or worse.

Re: Sweden goes back to basics, swapping screens for books in the classroom

#159

Post by duskdozer »

smatti wrote: post #2

A very similar development is going on in neighboring Finland. There are schools that use almost exclusively paper books (instead of digital ones) again. The overall consensus among parents is that books are way better than screens for kids, all the way up to high school. Hand-writing and free drawing with pen and paper provide many advantages to fixed screens. You cannot open a new tab to Youtube in a book. The sign…

>Naturally, the kids should learn AI and AI workflows also. And personal AI assistants can probably help many kids in their studies. Learning AI should be its own subject

What? Why? And why "naturally" as if this is an entirely uncontroversial statement?

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