A high schooler writes about AI tools in the classroom

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.

I'm surprised the answer of doing all exercises (including essay writing) in class is apparently not obvious.

High school me was a moron and should not be trusted to do the real work and people who know better should force him to practice the skills lol

Once he's grown and has a job he will one day realize and be thankful for the teachers that forced him to do the work.

Obviously not true for all students but I don't think it harms anyone inverting it but please point out if I'm wrong!

  > I'm surprised the answer of doing all exercises (including essay writing) in class is apparently not obvious.

Because that results in less education time. If you do homework in class then you have to give up lecture time.

Of course, the other option is to extend school time.

Here's a good litmus test: if something seems very obvious, you're likely missing some hidden complexity.

It's not a perfect test, but if it's obvious to you and not to the people closer to the problem then there really should be alarm bells going off in your head. That feeling of "this is weird" is your brain telling you "I'm missing something" not "everyone is so dumb" (well... not mutually exclusive)

> Because that results in less education time. If you do homework in class then you have to give up lecture time.

Homework is the real education time. The lecture is less than half the ingredients. You can't learn without engaging with the material. The best lectures follow a question-trytoanswer-getrightanswer pattern where students are basically doing homework as part of the lecture.

We wrote all graded essays during class. It was great. Nice and timeboxed. When you're done you're done. Also forces you to keep it short enough that the teacher doesn't drown in stuff to grade because how much can you really write by hand in 2 hours?

  > The best lectures follow a question-trytoanswer-getrightanswer pattern where students are basically doing homework as part of the lecture.

Are you referring to the Socratic Method?

I agree that homework is where a significant chunk of learning happens but I'm highly skeptical that the utility is preserved through such a short timeframe. Spaced repetition is highly effective for memory, and this is baked into any method which has take home assignments. A collaborative style lecture is good, but this serves a different purpose.

  > We wrote all graded essays during class.

Sorry, you jumped a little here. Who is "we"? Is there a "when" and "where" to this too? Are you a current high schooler? Recent grad? Was this years ago? I've lost the context here.

> Sorry, you jumped a little here. Who is "we"?

Right, this was in high school some 20 years ago in Slovenia and also in college after. Anything graded happened at school. All tests were open answer where you have to write 2 or 3 sentences. We also had oral exams in front of the whole class where the teacher asks you questions and you answer. In college the orals were more private because the classes were huge and the exam periods more condensed.

Homework was graded in that you’d get a + for doing it and a - for not doing it. Collect enough - and you get an F. This was more to make us do the homework than to actually check the work.

Afaik this hasn’t changed but I don’t know any recent school children in Slovenia so maybe it has.

> Are you referring to the Socratic Method?

I don’t know what it’s called. The approach where you challenge students to try figuring out the answer/explanation before you explain it to them because that has been shown to lead to better learning outcomes even though, or because, it’s harder and slower.