Yes it’s for the worse. Not necessarily because AI in general but because it’s all so new no one knows what the result of using it in the classroom will be. So, consider yourselves an experiment of the “disruptive education” enterprise.

My advice: read lots of real books. Go to the library and study with real books even (especially) if it takes longer.

Can you talk more about this? This is super interesting! You should write a blog post about this.

Parents are collectively sending their children to the wolves to fend for themselves, all because a little YAML touched them where they didn't want to and couldn't handle it.

I hope the kids remember this.

Where is this slop coming from, mainly? From publishers or the teachers themselves? Who are the worst offenders?

I think that I might be just 1 year elder than you but I am in first year of college and we had a prof com exam (just yesterday)

while preparing for it, aside from the slides, our sir had also given us a pdf and I just had the vibe because of the law of triads (AI talks much more in threes) and so I decided to give it to pangram to find out it was 77% written by AI.

The sir himself said that chatgpt is a tool and should be used in a good way rather than a bad way but seeing this and other things, I am unsure if how he used it was entirely good or not. In plain words, after finding that, I was unable to discover how much real effort was put in the pdf by sir and how much of it was just replacable (if not even better) if people just prompt it directly themselves.

I am going quiet frequently to the library and otherwise and the amount of ChatGPT/Claude which is opened is quite staggering and nearly every exam is involving that in some form or other and I was discussing just that or similar with my friends yesterday. AI has changed education in this sense (for better or for worse), I think slightly for worse in terms of that its making people lose trust in connections/relationships (teachers for students and students for teachers and vice versa)

But is also providing a way to customized learning when all else fails. I use it in my own studies and I think that it's good but also it makes me sometimes feel like I am learning something when I might not accurately be doing so and I think that learning still involves struggling with hard problems yourselves which well, the AI can't do it for you. Also I really really hate how sycophantic these models have become and I am observing slightly them being more dumb in the web intefaces

Example: chatgpt made an error within johari window and made hidden/blind swap their places in it yet still said that self-disclosure/feedback was vertical/horizontal respectively, so it was actually wrong in saying so and only because I had known the slides and read it all that I caught it.

Also welcome to hackernews, I hope you enjoy your stay and stay curious, I hope that you don't get hackernews addiction like I have gotten, haha :-D

This is a category error.

Meaning > Motivation > Mechanics, but Measurement is how you know that Meaning > Motivation > Mechanics, and, more importantly, Measurement is how you prove to anyone else that Meaning > Motivation > Mechanics (or even that you've built any motivation in your students at all).

Measurement is how you prove that your approach (as opposed to anyone else's) is worth people investing their time and money with you.

Trust > Meaning > Motivation > Mechanics. How do you earn trust from a stranger? Measurement.

I rather think it might fail because it adds not much above what Codex or Claude already adds. What won't happen is kids not using LLMs to learn. I doubt anyone would disagree with this.

Actually, the most important thing about learning is caring. "Why should I care about algebra? Oh, it can help me in my business? OK, will learn!".

I wondered how he didn't see this coming from a mile away, but in looking up more about Sal Khan himself, the surprising thing is that he never had any 'normal' teaching experience, and that explains everything. In a normal classroom, good kids don't need teachers. You could give them a book (or some Khan Academy videos, or a reliable LLM) and they'd learn the material far faster than you can teach it. Now let's talk about the other 95% of kids...

Those other 95% are going to generally have either a lack of motivation or a lack of intelligence. And for these kids a good teacher can do a lot, but actually teaching the material itself is a relatively small part of it. It's about giving them that motivation, or adjusting the material for slower students. And most importantly, it's about doing all of this without making it apparent that you're doing this, since keeping it feeling 'natural' is an important part of making it feel interesting and also helping to build a better rapport with the kids. That rapport/connection building is critical, and completely outside the domain of LLMs.

It probably isn't a good tutor, I'm using frontier SOTA models and whenever I ask them to explain anything they don't consider my question and don't display any understanding but just spam out unrelated simplistic metaphors, can only imagine how much worse the models the kids had access to were, LLMs don't have understanding and can't fake it either, there's no conception of how a memory might be formed or something might be understood, without that qualia it can't be a good teacher it can only output text that looks like it might be a good explanation until you read it

My strongest subjects where I showed the most interest were based on like 25% natural interest and 75% how I vibed with the teacher and they vibed with me, atleast in High School.

University is definately more interest based but my success was still very influenced by the quality of instructor. The materials and methods are important but not nearly as much as the quality of instructor.

"the cause appears to be a lack of engagement"

"...unless you’re chaining kids to a desk and not letting them leave until they finish some quota of problems."

Uhm, hey, could we talk for a quick minute after this meeting? No, no worries - it's just that the other teachers and I were wondering if we could have a quick chat about what "engagement" means :)

Humor aside, your point is very valid - interest in a topic is often a prerequisite to someone engaging with a topic. Even stuff like "I hate this class, but I gotta do well if I want to become a doctor someday" is based on an interest in that longer-term goal.

the matrix got it wrong. we aren't being put into a virtual world so that our value can be extracted. the real world is being made more virtual by the day.

clearly gen AI prose sadly

Maybe the AI can help them not quit in their first two years, when they realize what the job really entails. It’s a profession powered by idealism but the long-timers often have the cynicism of former idealists. Not always! But it’s a tough gig that attracts dreamers.

My son does not have a great opinion of any edtech -- AI or not. I would wager that if you asked any kid his age they'd rather have better air conditioning than another expensive bit of software they hate using.

> The authors estimate that time spent using the AI tutor is as effective as time spent studying without AI assistance, which is around one fourth as effective as studying with a real tutor.

I find that surprising. I would expect the AI tutor to add noticeable value over studying static written material.

Understood, but please don't post unsubstantive comments to Hacker News. We're trying for something else here.