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Learn Your Way: Reimagining Textbooks with Generative AI

(research.google)
359 points FromTheArchives | 2 comments | 18 Sep 25 17:42 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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Imnimo ◴[18 Sep 25 19:05 UTC] No.45293673[source]▶
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"

Maybe I'm over-estimating the taste of 7th graders, but I feel like I would get sick of this really quickly.

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floatrock ◴[18 Sep 25 19:22 UTC] No.45293849[source]▶
It's a cute "how do I reach these kids?" idea -- find what they like and explain the concepts with custom-tailored analogues.

I don't think the failure mode here is really "7th graders will see through the superficiality of this really quick". I think the failure mode here will be:

> Explain computer science basics for a 7th grader interested in poop and butt-sniffing

Although who knows... maybe this will unleash a generation of memes of the likes we have never seen before. And if the side-effect is more people are at least conversant in more topics, well, maybe that's not a failure mode at all

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1. non_aligned ◴[18 Sep 25 21:08 UTC] No.45295042[source]▶
> It's a cute "how do I reach these kids?" idea

But... which kids? Do we have a fundamental problem reaching kids who are interested in basketball? My kid had a period of being interested in dinosaurs, but I never felt the need to reframe everything in dinosaur-terms because of that. In fact, you kinda want them to broaden their horizons beyond dinosaurs?

The real challenges in education are elsewhere, and a lot of it has to do with socioeconomic status and bad influences early in life.

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2. rhetocj23 ◴[18 Sep 25 22:02 UTC] No.45295552[source]▶
"a lot of it has to do with socioeconomic status and bad influences early in life."

Haha, you think most Googlers understand this? No chance.

This is why products like this fail, dead on arrival - the person leading the charge simply doesnt get it.

But hey go ahead and burn the cash of shareholders.