Today I read a few articles by Dan Meyer:
- AI Tutors Don’t Know When to Stop Shutting Up
- Part of good tutoring is to know when to interject and what to say. AI tutor bots, right now, can’t pick up on the subtle cues of a student’s hesitation.
- This quote was a 💎
In the science-fiction novel The Diamond Age, author Neil Stephenson described “The Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer,” an interactive book that helps students learn asynchronously and remotely. That vision has, of course, enraptured huge numbers of education technologists since its publication. It was interesting, then, to find a decade-old Reddit “Ask Me Anything” thread where a user tells Stephenson, “My ultimate goal in life is to make the Primer real. Anything you want to make sure I get right?” Stephenson’s response goes straight to the heart of education: “Kids need to get answers from humans who love them.” via Andrew Sutherland.
- The Misunderstanding About Education That Cost Mark Zuckerberg $100 Million: Personalized learning can feel isolating. Whole class learning can feel personal. This is hard to understand.
- Dan gives an example of a classroom lesson where the teacher invites the whole class to participate in activity meant to generate ideas.
- ChatGPT-4o Will Be Great for Certain Math, Certain Thinking, and Certain Kids: Here are the important questions about OpenAI’s product announcement that few people are asking right now.
- Certain math: calculation might be GPTs strong spot.
But calculation is to mathematics what chopping onions is to hosting a dinner party. It is important, but it is not central. It is not a prerequisite for other kinds of work. If chopping onions were a person’s primary association with hosting a dinner party, they would host many fewer dinner parties.
In addition to calculating with math, students need to argue, estimate, sketch, notice, wonder, construct, speculate, describe, evaluate, play, and so on.
- Certain thinking: very small ideas instead of big ideas
To me it looks like someone has successfully diced an onion without understanding why we’re hosting the dinner party, what we hope our guests experience, or how we’re going to structure the evening. We can focus students on larger ideas by asking other questions. What is the question asking you to do? What do you know about that? What is special about this triangle? What do you know about sine?
- Certain learners: Tech giants take it for granted that every student wants to talk to a computer about their learning.
Many people describe generative AI as an infinitely patient tutor. They don’t understand that this makes generative AI an ineffective tutor.
It’s true that GPT-4o will patiently wait for you to ask for help. But effective teachers do not wait to be asked. Effective teachers know that many students will never ask for help, preferring to pass the time from bell to bell without bothering or being bothered by their teacher. Effective teachers are a bother! In these videos, you see GPT-4o waiting reactively for the learner’s invitation whereas a skilled teacher will proactively create their own invitation.
- Certain math: calculation might be GPTs strong spot.