I’m entirely with you on this, but schools are notorious for just banning/hating tools instead of teaching how to properly use the appropriate tools at your disposal. This is just going to be another tool to add to that pile.
When you never teach students how to properly use tools, the most frequent use you see will be improper or cheating. This just makes schools feel more justified in banning tools.
I personally think it would be a lot more beneficial not to ban tools, but to actually use tools as a part of education. Tools in many different forms are going to be present throughout life, and while it’s important to understand the core material without the need for assistive tools, it’s also important to know how to use assistive tools.
But I don’t have any evidence for this, it’s just an opinion formed by what I’ve seen, experienced, and heard corroborated by others.
Correct me if I am wrong with current teaching methods, but I feel like the way you outlined things is how school is taught. Calculators were “banned” until about 6th grade, because we were learning the rules of math. Sure, we could give calculators to 3rd graders, but they will learn that 2 + 2 = 4 because the calculator said so, and not because they worked it out. Calculators were allowed once you get into geometry and algebra, where the actual calculation is merely a mechanism for the logical thinking you are learning. Finding the answer to 5/7 is so trivially important to finding that that value for X is what makes Y = 0.
I am not close to the education sector, but I imagine LLM are going to be used similarly, we just don’t have the best way laid out yet. I can totally see a scenario, where in 2030, students have to write and edit their own papers until they reach grade 6 or so. Then, rather than writing a paper which tests all your language arts skills, you will proof-read 3 different papers written by LMM, with a hyper focus on one skill set. One week, it may be active vs passive voice, or using gerunds correctly. Just like with math and the calculator, you will move beyond learning the mechanics of reading and writing, and focus on composing thoughts in a clear manner. This doesn’t seem like a reach, we just don’t have curriculum ready to take advantage of it yet.
The experience I had was that they were banned until absolutely necessary. I remember in some of my first algebra classes, we were doing many repetitive equations by hand, when a calculator would be used in a real world scenario. I understand when and how it’s necessary to teach without the use of assistive tools first, so the fundamental understanding of a subject isn’t left out, I’m not of the opinion that should change.
The way the schools treat this stuff likely changes region to region, even school to school. I’m mainly speaking from my own experience, I don’t feel I got enough education about properly using assistive tools until later in high school, and even then there were a lot of things I found important that I had to learn on my own.
Honestly, I think there were definitely students where this was the right pace for them. I think this is one of the symptoms of needing to teach a classroom in a way that everybody can keep up. Those that understand material quicker end up getting frustrated, and using time repetitively instead of continued education. That’s not to say I have a viable solution, nor can I confirm this is a symptom of that.
I’m entirely with you on this, but schools are notorious for just banning/hating tools instead of teaching how to properly use the appropriate tools at your disposal. This is just going to be another tool to add to that pile.
When you never teach students how to properly use tools, the most frequent use you see will be improper or cheating. This just makes schools feel more justified in banning tools.
I personally think it would be a lot more beneficial not to ban tools, but to actually use tools as a part of education. Tools in many different forms are going to be present throughout life, and while it’s important to understand the core material without the need for assistive tools, it’s also important to know how to use assistive tools.
But I don’t have any evidence for this, it’s just an opinion formed by what I’ve seen, experienced, and heard corroborated by others.
Correct me if I am wrong with current teaching methods, but I feel like the way you outlined things is how school is taught. Calculators were “banned” until about 6th grade, because we were learning the rules of math. Sure, we could give calculators to 3rd graders, but they will learn that 2 + 2 = 4 because the calculator said so, and not because they worked it out. Calculators were allowed once you get into geometry and algebra, where the actual calculation is merely a mechanism for the logical thinking you are learning. Finding the answer to 5/7 is so trivially important to finding that that value for X is what makes Y = 0.
I am not close to the education sector, but I imagine LLM are going to be used similarly, we just don’t have the best way laid out yet. I can totally see a scenario, where in 2030, students have to write and edit their own papers until they reach grade 6 or so. Then, rather than writing a paper which tests all your language arts skills, you will proof-read 3 different papers written by LMM, with a hyper focus on one skill set. One week, it may be active vs passive voice, or using gerunds correctly. Just like with math and the calculator, you will move beyond learning the mechanics of reading and writing, and focus on composing thoughts in a clear manner. This doesn’t seem like a reach, we just don’t have curriculum ready to take advantage of it yet.
The experience I had was that they were banned until absolutely necessary. I remember in some of my first algebra classes, we were doing many repetitive equations by hand, when a calculator would be used in a real world scenario. I understand when and how it’s necessary to teach without the use of assistive tools first, so the fundamental understanding of a subject isn’t left out, I’m not of the opinion that should change.
The way the schools treat this stuff likely changes region to region, even school to school. I’m mainly speaking from my own experience, I don’t feel I got enough education about properly using assistive tools until later in high school, and even then there were a lot of things I found important that I had to learn on my own.
Honestly, I think there were definitely students where this was the right pace for them. I think this is one of the symptoms of needing to teach a classroom in a way that everybody can keep up. Those that understand material quicker end up getting frustrated, and using time repetitively instead of continued education. That’s not to say I have a viable solution, nor can I confirm this is a symptom of that.