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A high schooler writes about AI tools in the classroom

(www.theatlantic.com)
222 points dougb5 | 1 comments | 04 Sep 25 02:37 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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djoldman ◴[04 Sep 25 21:36 UTC] No.45132499[source]▶
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, you fail the test. Caught twice you fail the class.

The non-story beatings will continue until morale and common sense improve.

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godelski ◴[04 Sep 25 21:53 UTC] No.45132650[source]▶
Are you suggesting kids spend longer times in school or suggesting kids spend less time on education?
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ofjcihen ◴[04 Sep 25 22:05 UTC] No.45132749[source]▶
I’m not sure where the OP said that. Can you show us?
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godelski ◴[05 Sep 25 05:31 UTC] No.45135254{3}[source]▶
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 students on exams, but considering how terrible of an idea this is, I'm assumed that's not what's being suggested.

Now I'll be fair, I interpreted "testing and grading" as including homework. Why? Well...

1) exams are already performed (primarily) in the classroom. Everyone is already aware of how supervised settings reduce (but not eliminates) cheating. I'm assuming the OP isn't so disconnected that they are aware of this. I'm assuming they also went to school and had a fairly typical education. I'm also assuming that the OP isn't making the wild assumption that the majority of school teachers and news reporters aren't comatose, so capable of understanding this rather obvious solution.

2) I assumed the OP RTFA

The entire problem that's constantly talked about, including THE ARTICLE, is HOMEWORK. No one is talking about 1) for the aforementioned reasons. *Everyone is talking about homework.* It has been the conversation the entire time. So I restate, if you are evaluating /homework/ in class, then what are we giving up? It really doesn't take a genius to figure out something has to give, right?

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ofjcihen ◴[05 Sep 25 13:06 UTC] No.45138089{4}[source]▶
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.
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1. godelski ◴[05 Sep 25 21:38 UTC] No.45143933{5}[source]▶
Sure, you're right, we don't have to treat time as a zero sum game (normally I'm upset about non-zero sum games being treated as zero sum lol). But that's a different problem. Yes, we don't need to worry about time if our goal is to meet a fixed quality of education. You can increase the quality of education, getting more done in less time.

But that's a different optimization problem. My assumption here is that we want to maximize education, not meet a specific threshold. Especially if we're talking about the US. Maybe there is a specific threshold we want to reach, but I don't think we're close enough that this is the main concern.

So that's why I'm treating time as a finite and scarce resource.

And you're right to point this out. We're making different assumptions about what problem to solve and we should make sure we're not talking past one another. So I hope this helps clear up some of my assumptions.