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Norway imposes near ban on AI in elementary school

reuters.com

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Re: Norway imposes near ban on AI in elementary school

#591

Post by ifwinterco »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #529
ifwinterco wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From a UK perspective it's very weird that kids in America don't learn to write joined-up. How can you write sufficiently fast in an English or History exam (where you have to write a whole essay in limited time) if you're writing one letter at a time like a 6 year old?

> How can you write sufficiently fast in an English or History exam (where you have to write a whole essay in limited time) if you're writing one letter at a time like a 6 year old? You use an ipad and keyboard or some other similar device. The only times in my life I have had to use cursive were in elementary school, pretty useless skill to have in this day and age.

iPads in exams? This just gets stranger and stranger

Re: Norway imposes near ban on AI in elementary school

#592

Post by ifwinterco »

aerhardt wrote: post #586
theptip wrote: post #558

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s one dimension, I agree. Though, for essay-based courses I’m a little skeptical about writing under time pressure. My thinking here is that you might want to also introduce more “viva voce” (verbal defense) style tests. These have been expensive to administer but my hunch is that you can scale these with AI administering the first round, random human review or participation. This feels like a better endpoint than…

I studied in a French Lycée in Spain. We did dissertations, brutal 3h live writing tests. There was no problem with it other than the difficulty. Kids didn’t come out screwed up or impaired.

Exactly, “write an essay under time pressure” used to just be called… an exam.

It’s normal and was done for centuries (and still done in many countries) for a reason, it works and it’s equally hard for everyone so it’s not unfair.

(3 hours straight is brutal though)

Re: Norway imposes near ban on AI in elementary school

#593

Post by mattnewton »

kelseyfrog wrote: post #408
tacomagick wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So your solution is to deanonymize the whole internet? Also can't teenagers ever vent? I would much rather them use websites such as Reddit or Facebook to socialize instead of Instagram or Tiktok to just scroll endlessly. We should target the social media apps for their predatory algorithms I believe.

Come up with a solution that works instead of a slogan. The last person who divulged any details about what he meant when he said 'parents should parent' went on to reveal that parents should learn to manually configure home routers, a solution that is technologically unattainable for most parents. Again I ask, do you have a solution or a slogan?

I do not need to have the real secret of immortality to say to the emperor that swallowing mercury is bad.

The burden of proof is on those who put forward a solution.

Re: Norway imposes near ban on AI in elementary school

#594

Post by bendriv »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #359
bendriv wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have three children in that age span in a Norwegian school. For the ages 10-13, ChatGPT and the like has frequently been used in the classroom to help with the cold start problem when doing writing assignments, and for getting feedback on written work before handing in to the teachers. Also frequently used as a brainstorming tool or for writing whole speaches or presentations that should be held in front of the cla…

Thank you for the first hand feedback. I am assuming that you did similar assignments at the same age. Yet, you did not have the same tools. When I think back on my own LLM-free educational experiences, brainstorming was a hard mental skill to master. Some might argue it is one of the hardest as it requires some imagination, then critical thinking skills to filter the ideas. Can you comment about this? To be clear, I…

Baiting accepted :-)

Well not all types of assignments are alike, I was not required to write nor hold a speech at school, as my eldest was at 13. I would be absolutely terrified to present in front of more than half my class, and they now speak to their whole school. But on the other hand, learning how to brainstorm effectively both alone and in groups is such a rewarding skill to have. And since brainstorming is something taught from elementary school all the way up to university level (I had it as part of a master’s degree), I would assume this means some pedagogs think it is both important and difficult. If you have learned about ‘anchoring’ in negotiations or brainstorming contexts, you would know how important the initial ideas or suggestions or proposals are for the rest of the process and the outcome. So I believe that it is very negative to be outsourcing the initial stage of using your own creativity. There have been studies showing negative effects on performance, learning and memory when outsourcing the initial stage or getting help from AI in this stage, while the opposite is true when using AI for review later. Do not remember the exact source, was something that popped into my feed. So I think you are correct.

Secondly, I started learning programming in elementary school at the age of 10 in the late 90s, we had a couple of hours in the computer lab a week doing creative open-ended projects. Today the local school teaches how to use an iPad with OneNote and Kahoot in 1st-4th, and performing predefined recipies for MicroBit or BlueBot in 5th-6th grade. Not sure how that is an improvement.

So in conclusion, I support the policy to restrict the use of tech in school. The tools should support the higher goals, and sometimes doing hard work is actually required.

Re: Norway imposes near ban on AI in elementary school

#595

Post by bendriv »

lelanthran wrote: post #445
bendriv wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have three children in that age span in a Norwegian school. For the ages 10-13, ChatGPT and the like has frequently been used in the classroom to help with the cold start problem when doing writing assignments, and for getting feedback on written work before handing in to the teachers. Also frequently used as a brainstorming tool or for writing whole speaches or presentations that should be held in front of the cla…

> ChatGPT and the like has frequently been used in the classroom to help with the cold start problem when doing writing assignments, and for getting feedback on written work before handing in to the teachers. Also frequently used as a brainstorming tool or for writing whole speaches or presentations that should be held in front of the class or school. Aren't those things critical thinking? We do we want to prevent th…

What things do you mean represent critical thinking?

Re: Norway imposes near ban on AI in elementary school

#596

Post by kelseyfrog »

mattnewton wrote: post #593
kelseyfrog wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Come up with a solution that works instead of a slogan. The last person who divulged any details about what he meant when he said 'parents should parent' went on to reveal that parents should learn to manually configure home routers, a solution that is technologically unattainable for most parents. Again I ask, do you have a solution or a slogan?

I do not need to have the real secret of immortality to say to the emperor that swallowing mercury is bad. The burden of proof is on those who put forward a solution.

You can say as much as you want about burden of proof and the way things should work. But society doesn't care. Trying to play Diplomacy like a chess game is a losing strategy.

Re: Norway imposes near ban on AI in elementary school

#597

Post by hyperpallium2 »

theptip wrote: post #241
simonw wrote: post #56

> Pupils from first through seventh grade, aged 6 to 13, should as a general rule not be using AI, while those in lower secondary school, aged 14 to 16, can cautiously adopt tools under teachers' supervision, the government said. Sounds right to me. Kids under 13 need to learn to read, write and comprehend text. Generative AI is not going to help them with those skills. They can play with AI at home, and after 13 the…

> Generative AI is not going to help them with those skills. I think it's more complex than this. AI is both the best technology ever invented for avoiding learning, and the best technology ever invented for learning. The cat is out of the bag. If teachers are asking for take-home essay assignments in 2026 then students are going to use AI and learn nothing. "AI detectors" are nowhere near reliable enough to be fair;…

Bloom's 2 sigma problem solved at last! But that's overestimating LLMs, our zeitgeist.

AI can't detect AI, not because AI undetectable, but because it lacks judgment. Its shtick is random generation; the proverbial monkey on a typewriter.

Re: Norway imposes near ban on AI in elementary school

#598

Post by hackable_sand »

padolsey wrote: post #405
WalterBright wrote: post #324

I'd ban all technology in the classroom. What works is chalkboard and chalk, pencil and paper. You'll never get strong by watching a video of people lifting weights. Similarly, you'll never understand math by watching a video or having an AI do the work for you. And, somehow, writing out the words and equations by hand is very effective for learning. https://www.holdenluntz.com/artists/keystone-press-agency/al...

Chalkboard, pencil and paper are also technology. Ban them. Instead rely purely on the vocal chords to tell stories of old.

Found the absurdum

Re: Norway imposes near ban on AI in elementary school

#599

Post by elasticeel »

wwweston wrote: post #22
jenthoven wrote: post #2

Surprised to read this as Norway also has Sikt AI for schools, where teachers can monitor how AI systems are used. Seems like it has both embraced AI and banned it.

I wonder if the struggle is really comprehending thoughtful selective adoption. Schools are the place where the product is a more fully developed person. There's no LLM shortcut for generating that. There are many ways you could use LLMs that would discourage it. There may be some that can encourage it. Personally, I can see aggressively keeping kids away from LLMs until they've learned effort, living in tension/frus…

Very well said. As someone who taught for 6 years it's hard enough to just stay on top of lesson planning, let alone opens my curriculum to incorporate a tool (LLMs) which I'm personally figuring out for my own use.

LLMs add the most utility to people who understand process and what a good result looks and feels like. To a novice they can't stunt the learning of this.

Re: Norway imposes near ban on AI in elementary school

#600

Post by KPGv2 »

WalterBright wrote: post #402
lazyasciiart wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They appear to be equating technology with products that did not exist when they were in elementary school.

That would be correct! And all the technology added since has resulted in no discernible improvement in educational results. In college, the classes were a lecture with a professor, 9 blackboards and colored chalk. Not even handouts (well, there was one on time dilation). Calculators utterly wiped out slide rules when I was in college, though nobody learned any math from a calculator. Calculators just made for quicke…

"back in my day, kids listened to their elders"

> all the technology added since has resulted in no discernible improvement in educational results.

I would say it's because it's used stupidly (also I'd take a Millenial's education over a Boomer's any day). One of the best things about technology is that my kids can carry one lightweight tablet instead of 50lbs of back-breaking books. They can look up reference materials immediately instead of spending an hour looking at World Books that end up having little to know information (insert essay about being assigned a report about the golden lion tamarin in elementary school and all libraries in my town put together had one paragraph.)

Yesterday while driving my kids from camp to a celebration lunch, they asked a question about science and I was able to talk to my car's AI (apparently this is a thing in new cars!) and model how one goes about getting an overview of a topic through curious inquiry.

But plopping a kid in front of a computer isn't a panacea. I just think it's the pedagogist's fault, not the tech's.

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