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Learn Your Way: Reimagining Textbooks with Generative AI

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Re: Learn Your Way: Reimagining Textbooks with Generative AI

#231

Post by ookdatnog »

Imnimo wrote: post #14

I looked at the example for computer science basics for a 7th grader interested in food. Explanations include: "a list can be used for a recipe" "a set can be used to list all the unique ingredients you need to buy for a week's meals" "a map can be used for a cookbook" "a priority queue can be used to manage orders in a busy restaurant kitchen" "a food-pairing graph can show which ingredients taste good together" May…

Especially the set example is also just confusing for 7th grade kids (or anyone who doesn't already understand sets, really). It's technically correct to say that you can store the unique ingredients of a recipe in a set, but that's not an obviously useful thing to do (if you want to compose a shopping list, you need the quantities as well), so the example doesn't actually illustrate anything that helps make sets more intuitive to the student. I think many, if not most, kids of that age will also not even correctly parse the phrasing "list all the unique ingredients" (not to speak of the unfortunate phrasing "a set can be used to list all ..." while you're trying to illustrate the difference between a list and a set).

Re: Learn Your Way: Reimagining Textbooks with Generative AI

#232

Post by shomp »

With truly personalized learning I would expect more than incremental returns on the traditional pedagogical approach. I learn very rapidly with LLMs at my fingertips, largely due to the dialectical approach -- that is, having a conversation with the model allows me to dive in to places that are blurry and uncertain. Rather than "read, digest, quiz" maybe with the new tooling there is a better way to zero-in on what is unclear other than doing an assessment. Just kinda thinking out loud here.

Re: Learn Your Way: Reimagining Textbooks with Generative AI

#233

Post by hdctambien »

joshvm wrote: post #56
Imnimo wrote: post #14

I looked at the example for computer science basics for a 7th grader interested in food. Explanations include: "a list can be used for a recipe" "a set can be used to list all the unique ingredients you need to buy for a week's meals" "a map can be used for a cookbook" "a priority queue can be used to manage orders in a busy restaurant kitchen" "a food-pairing graph can show which ingredients taste good together" May…

I'm sure computer science has improved in high school over the last (gulp) 20 years, but when I did variations of IT and programming lessons before university, it was bad . This was peak "you must Microsoft Office"-era. I've been involved in outreach for almost as long at this point. A lot of kids ask sensible questions like 'when do I ever need to use trig in real life?', because the examples in lessons and exams ar…

To be fair, the applications of geometry that most people might end up using in real life are going to be boring to a 15 year old.

How many paving stones do I need to buy for the walkway I'm building in my backyard?

How far from the top of the roof should I start attaching this gutter so that I still have roof to nail it to 30 feet later?

How big of a ladder do I need to get to that branch I want to cut down in that tall tree?

Will I be able to get this couch up the stairs, around the corner, and through the door?

Re: Learn Your Way: Reimagining Textbooks with Generative AI

#234

Post by legacynl »

kccqzy wrote: post #133
raincole wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "a list can be used for a recipe" I don't even know what it means, tbh. I feel it's going to confuse the hell out of 7th graders.

How is that difficult to understand? A recipe is an ordered list of steps of what to do. So of course a list can be used for a recipe. I personally prefer a serious text without bringing in unrelated concepts like food, but this is still understandable.

> A recipe is an ordered list of steps of what to do. So of course a list can be used for a recipe.

That you felt you need to add 'ordered ... of steps of what to do' to your definition of list, kind of proofs that a recipe is a bad analogy for a list.

A recipe contains multiple lists, has a name, has a purpose and a desired outcome. Totally different from a simple list. But a kid who's unfamiliar with the programming concept of 'list' doesn't know that, so it's very possible that at some point they will get confused when a list can't do things that a recipe can do.

Re: Learn Your Way: Reimagining Textbooks with Generative AI

#235

Post by legacynl »

Imnimo wrote: post #14

I looked at the example for computer science basics for a 7th grader interested in food. Explanations include: "a list can be used for a recipe" "a set can be used to list all the unique ingredients you need to buy for a week's meals" "a map can be used for a cookbook" "a priority queue can be used to manage orders in a busy restaurant kitchen" "a food-pairing graph can show which ingredients taste good together" May…

At first glance this seems fine, but pondering it for a moment, I think this is pretty bad. These analogies don't fully make sense. Also they kind of work on their own, but they clash together. A map is the same as a cookbook, and a list is the same as a recipe. A cookbooks contains recipes, so a map contains lists?

Re: Learn Your Way: Reimagining Textbooks with Generative AI

#236

Post by amarant »

palmotea wrote: post #202
amarant wrote: post #190

This seems like it has some pretty great potential. Human teachers don't have infinite patience. I recall my high school chemistry teacher's response when I was trying to understand why certain reactions happened: "just accept that these reactions happens and memorise them for the test. Don't try to understand it" I did not become a chemist. Now I'm in my thirties and I kinda wish I had studied something involving ch…

> I recall my high school chemistry teacher's response when I was trying to understand why certain reactions happened: "just accept that these reactions happens and memorise them for the test. Don't try to understand it" > I did not become a chemist. That kinda sounds like you got tripped up by the lie-to-children phase ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lie-to-children ), demanding an explanation requiring advanced con…

Honestly, I think a lie would've been better than what I got. That might've kept my curiosity alive. The response I got made me detest chemistry for about 10 years.

Re: Learn Your Way: Reimagining Textbooks with Generative AI

#237

Post by theptip »

CodeMage wrote: post #136
joshvm wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure computer science has improved in high school over the last (gulp) 20 years, but when I did variations of IT and programming lessons before university, it was bad . This was peak "you must Microsoft Office"-era. I've been involved in outreach for almost as long at this point. A lot of kids ask sensible questions like 'when do I ever need to use trig in real life?', because the examples in lessons and exams ar…

"When do I ever need to use trig in real life" is an interesting question, because it points out certain flaws in the way our society approaches education. One of those flaws is the one you pointed out: the examples we use are not very interesting. But there's another flaw that gets overlooked most of the time, which is that we're raising kids to believe that "why are you teaching me something that you're not 100% su…

I agree this is a problem. The best reason I can come up with is “because it is fun/beautiful/interesting” (to some people).

But IMO that pushes you to making the curriculum more flexible and not forcing every student into the same sequence where math is the core IQ test for STEM. If a kid doesn’t find it interesting I struggle to justify forcing them.

Personally I also think trig and calculus are far inferior to statistics for most people. If you have an intuition for probability distributions, precision/recall, and a few other basic concepts, you’ll be guaranteed to apply them everywhere in your life.

Of course if you are interested in STEM then calculus must be available too, but it’s pretty specialized in practice.

Re: Learn Your Way: Reimagining Textbooks with Generative AI

#238

Post by mattlutze »

squigz wrote: post #97
mattlutze wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technology is a tool to expand the possible ways to educate, but isn't necessary for education to happen. i.e. we've been educating people for 1,000s of years even without textbooks. Education itself isn't primarily a technology problem. Treating it as such is an administrative failure, as is pursuing a technological solution in many scenarios that are first social in nature.

> i.e. we've been educating people for 1,000s of years even without textbooks. By using the tools available at the time we did, certainly. That involves physical tools like writing, but also non-physical tools like better ways of conveying and disseminating information, better ways of testing the efficacy of various approaches, etc, etc. Education has to evolve, as it always has. While I'm not sure TFA is it, I do th…

> By using the tools available at the time we did, certainly.

Yes, tools which help. But the point is that education occurs with any collection of tools, or even the simplest of all, if we want to go so broad as to call speech technology.

Technology is an augmenter of education, but not the fundamental problem of education.

> I do think

I'm not sure whether they should have a role, or what that roll should be, as such a feeling would be moralizing to some degree. But I agree that we will _make_ LLMs have a role, because the capitalism that drives our societies wants them to have a role.

Re: Learn Your Way: Reimagining Textbooks with Generative AI

#239

Post by palmotea »

squigz wrote: post #215
palmotea wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I recall my high school chemistry teacher's response when I was trying to understand why certain reactions happened: "just accept that these reactions happens and memorise them for the test. Don't try to understand it" > I did not become a chemist. That kinda sounds like you got tripped up by the lie-to-children phase ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lie-to-children ), demanding an explanation requiring advanced con…

This kinda sounds like you're blaming GP for their teacher being shit? Yes, you can't understand advanced chemistry concepts before establishing a basic understanding; that does not mean a teacher cannot help a student come to a better understanding with an answer. An answer better than "Do not try to understand it". I don't know how you could justify that answer being appropriate to give to a student.

> An answer better than "Do not try to understand it". I don't know how you could justify that answer being appropriate to give to a student.

"Do not try to understand it now," is a perfectly appropriate answer, if the answer is beyond the scope of the class and the lesson is focusing on something else. I would be ideal to identify when that topic would be covered, but it might have to be a hand-wave "in college," because it's quite possible the teacher doesn't actually know the particular "why" question (especially in a subject as empirical as Chemistry).

Re: Learn Your Way: Reimagining Textbooks with Generative AI

#240

Post by squigz »

palmotea wrote: post #239
squigz wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This kinda sounds like you're blaming GP for their teacher being shit? Yes, you can't understand advanced chemistry concepts before establishing a basic understanding; that does not mean a teacher cannot help a student come to a better understanding with an answer. An answer better than "Do not try to understand it". I don't know how you could justify that answer being appropriate to give to a student.

> An answer better than "Do not try to understand it". I don't know how you could justify that answer being appropriate to give to a student. "Do not try to understand it now ," is a perfectly appropriate answer, if the answer is beyond the scope of the class and the lesson is focusing on something else. I would be ideal to identify when that topic would be covered, but it might have to be a hand-wave "in college," b…

That isn't what the teacher said though. "just accept that these reactions happens and memorise them for the test. Don't try to understand it"

And in either case, there are far better ways to phrase that that aren't going to demotivate a kid to learn - "that's pretty advanced! We'll talk about that later in the year" or something along those lines.

More likely though, is that this teacher didn't know, didn't care, and couldn't stomach saying the words "I don't know; let's find out together" to a highschooler - which also would have been a far more productive answer!

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