Duolingo's doing a similar thing, and also can't admit that its previous system wasn't working at all at ACTUALLY teaching language, but claims the AI stuff will change that which...no. It won't.
I ill admit ChatGPT has been pretty good at generating language exercises for me daily, so I think you could make a genuinely useful thing out of it, but that's just an incremental improvement not a revolution.
And now I'm seeing where state education departments are already getting ready to ask for lots of money and resources for AI computer centers for schools.
They have no idea what those centers will look like, what will be in them, who will operate them, who will use them, or what they'll be used for, but they definitely need them.
The last genuine innovation in ed tech was the abacus. Change my mind.
I presume a lot of colleges will jump on the bandwagon because "personalized learning AIs" are even cheaper than adjuncts, making the academic labor market even worse. Meanwhile AIs will be grading essays that the students wrote using other AIs.
It’s funny - Khan Academy videos (and pre-recorded lectures etc more generally) imo *are* very useful tools… but the people who are motivated enough/positioned to do extended self-study (which is what theyre for, at bottom) aren’t poor kids in bad homes.
they’re a cheaper, more convenient way for the top 1/3 to get better, not for the bottom third to close the gap with the 50th percentile… because if the bottom third were positioned to effectively take advantage of self-study, they’d be doing it already.
E.g., in the legal world — I used youtube videos to study and review logic games for the LSAT during evenings/weekends, in lieu of a tutor or expensive LSAT class. Bar test prep is now fully remote, pre-recorded. Another example - UC Berkeley has had issues w/entry level computer science classes being oversubscribed and has at various points switched to streaming/recording lecture as. All seems to work great
But not remotely same population as middle schoolers in danger of failing 6th grade math. If they could teach themselves, they’d be reading the textbooks and doing the homework…making it a video or AI tool isn’t gonna change that
I've spent a lot of my career in small non-profit adult education (GED classes, etc..) and one particular ed tech worshipping charter school which will go unnamed, and I can report that Khan Academy is VERY popular with gullible/apathetic admin and overworked, burnt out educators.
(Almost all of the teachers and low-level admin I worked with were great and doing the best they could to survive. They're as skeptical of most of this stuff as anyone and it's not their fault they're caught in a bad system.)
"No revolutions are coming to education because school outcomes are dictated by
Inequalities of race and class in American society which ensure that students learn in profoundly different life environments, regardless of what happens in the classroom, and which 40+ years of effort have not been able to ameliorate through school-side reforms, and
the combination of genetic and environmental effects that together produce an inherent, intrinsic, more-or-less immutable level of academic potential for every individual student."
I would say that no revolutions are coming to American education, because education outcomes are first and foremost dictated by how motivated learners are to learn or at least jump through educational hoops.
It’s almost as if trying to control students’ education, as opposed to influencing their interests with experiential exposure and rudimentary social applications, will never work. Hmm…
If there is an interest in improving education and the outcomes for students, they would start teaching analytical skills from the first grade so that students could look at a text and understand what it is actually saying, what the framing is, what isn't being said, and what the underlying assumptions are. This is entirely doable, speaking as someone who has been botha parent, and an educator. What I don't see is anyone actually doing this.
The next step in your analysis is career outcomes which are governed by the same factors. Even if you’re able to educate someone with an IQ of 100 sufficiently to pass differential equations and get them an engineering degree, they are still going to flounder in their first engineering job as they just aren’t smart enough.
(Aside) I can't recall the name of the movie as it is over 30 years old, but at one point it showed a college classroom with a large number of students listening to a professor lecture. The progressed through a couple of transition steps until it ended with just a cassette recorder at each desk and a large tape player in place of the professor. How prescient.
A learning environment is a huge advantage for a child. Parents who are around, rested enough to think clearly and educated enough to challenge their children give those children a huge advantage that just can't be overcome by schooling and gadgets. Part of that advantage comes from the warm relationship it fosters between the parent and child. That warmth in the context of learning makes the child welcome and enjoy learning and seek out opportunities to learn.
For example: When my daughter was around 12 I showed her a soda bottle filled with water. I turned it over and timed how fast it took to empty. I then asked her if she could figure out any way to make the water come out faster. We then talked about how air needed to come in for the water to come out. We then discussed how the water trying to get out all at once blocked the air from coming in. We then discussed and tried various ways to let the air in faster. Swirling the bottle before turning it over caused the water to form a vortex and the bottle emptied in about 1/2 the time. This was a fun experience for both of us and it not only taught her some fluid dynamics, but it encouraged her to look at the world with curiosity and to investigate even everyday phenomena.
coursera and all that too. it was going to be a revolution around 2010? didn't happen :(
Just like Prezbo said on The Wire S4: it’s all about juking the stats. Straight bullshit.
Duolingo's doing a similar thing, and also can't admit that its previous system wasn't working at all at ACTUALLY teaching language, but claims the AI stuff will change that which...no. It won't.
I ill admit ChatGPT has been pretty good at generating language exercises for me daily, so I think you could make a genuinely useful thing out of it, but that's just an incremental improvement not a revolution.
It's incredible how often we'll fall for this.
And now I'm seeing where state education departments are already getting ready to ask for lots of money and resources for AI computer centers for schools.
They have no idea what those centers will look like, what will be in them, who will operate them, who will use them, or what they'll be used for, but they definitely need them.
My brain initially read it as Chaka Khan, which was infinitely more amusing.
The last genuine innovation in ed tech was the abacus. Change my mind.
I presume a lot of colleges will jump on the bandwagon because "personalized learning AIs" are even cheaper than adjuncts, making the academic labor market even worse. Meanwhile AIs will be grading essays that the students wrote using other AIs.
It’s funny - Khan Academy videos (and pre-recorded lectures etc more generally) imo *are* very useful tools… but the people who are motivated enough/positioned to do extended self-study (which is what theyre for, at bottom) aren’t poor kids in bad homes.
they’re a cheaper, more convenient way for the top 1/3 to get better, not for the bottom third to close the gap with the 50th percentile… because if the bottom third were positioned to effectively take advantage of self-study, they’d be doing it already.
E.g., in the legal world — I used youtube videos to study and review logic games for the LSAT during evenings/weekends, in lieu of a tutor or expensive LSAT class. Bar test prep is now fully remote, pre-recorded. Another example - UC Berkeley has had issues w/entry level computer science classes being oversubscribed and has at various points switched to streaming/recording lecture as. All seems to work great
But not remotely same population as middle schoolers in danger of failing 6th grade math. If they could teach themselves, they’d be reading the textbooks and doing the homework…making it a video or AI tool isn’t gonna change that
Hey now, to be fair...
I've spent a lot of my career in small non-profit adult education (GED classes, etc..) and one particular ed tech worshipping charter school which will go unnamed, and I can report that Khan Academy is VERY popular with gullible/apathetic admin and overworked, burnt out educators.
(Almost all of the teachers and low-level admin I worked with were great and doing the best they could to survive. They're as skeptical of most of this stuff as anyone and it's not their fault they're caught in a bad system.)
"No revolutions are coming to education because school outcomes are dictated by
Inequalities of race and class in American society which ensure that students learn in profoundly different life environments, regardless of what happens in the classroom, and which 40+ years of effort have not been able to ameliorate through school-side reforms, and
the combination of genetic and environmental effects that together produce an inherent, intrinsic, more-or-less immutable level of academic potential for every individual student."
I would say that no revolutions are coming to American education, because education outcomes are first and foremost dictated by how motivated learners are to learn or at least jump through educational hoops.
It’s almost as if trying to control students’ education, as opposed to influencing their interests with experiential exposure and rudimentary social applications, will never work. Hmm…
If there is an interest in improving education and the outcomes for students, they would start teaching analytical skills from the first grade so that students could look at a text and understand what it is actually saying, what the framing is, what isn't being said, and what the underlying assumptions are. This is entirely doable, speaking as someone who has been botha parent, and an educator. What I don't see is anyone actually doing this.
The next step in your analysis is career outcomes which are governed by the same factors. Even if you’re able to educate someone with an IQ of 100 sufficiently to pass differential equations and get them an engineering degree, they are still going to flounder in their first engineering job as they just aren’t smart enough.
(Aside) I can't recall the name of the movie as it is over 30 years old, but at one point it showed a college classroom with a large number of students listening to a professor lecture. The progressed through a couple of transition steps until it ended with just a cassette recorder at each desk and a large tape player in place of the professor. How prescient.
A learning environment is a huge advantage for a child. Parents who are around, rested enough to think clearly and educated enough to challenge their children give those children a huge advantage that just can't be overcome by schooling and gadgets. Part of that advantage comes from the warm relationship it fosters between the parent and child. That warmth in the context of learning makes the child welcome and enjoy learning and seek out opportunities to learn.
For example: When my daughter was around 12 I showed her a soda bottle filled with water. I turned it over and timed how fast it took to empty. I then asked her if she could figure out any way to make the water come out faster. We then talked about how air needed to come in for the water to come out. We then discussed how the water trying to get out all at once blocked the air from coming in. We then discussed and tried various ways to let the air in faster. Swirling the bottle before turning it over caused the water to form a vortex and the bottle emptied in about 1/2 the time. This was a fun experience for both of us and it not only taught her some fluid dynamics, but it encouraged her to look at the world with curiosity and to investigate even everyday phenomena.
The reason why scheisters exist, and will always exist, is because suckers have, do, and will always exist.
There ain’t no cure for stupid.
Regarding the next great idea, the book The Quick Fix by Jesse Singal is a good read.