| ▲ | cjs_ac 4 days ago |
| I'm a former physics teacher, and while I'm impressed by the technology, I think this is a low efficacy innovation. The real challenge in teaching Newton's laws of motion to teenagers is that they struggle to deal with the idea that friction isn't always there. When students enter the classroom, they arrive with an understanding of motion that they've intuited from watching things move all their lives, and that understanding is the theory of impetus: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_impetus An AI system that can interrogate individual students' understanding of the ideas presented and pose questions that challenge the theory of impetus would be really useful, because 'unteaching' impetus theory to thirty students at once is extremely difficult. However, what Google has presented here, with slides and multiple guess quizzes, is just a variation on the 'chalk and talk' theme. The final straw that made me leave teaching was the head of languages telling me that a good teacher can teach any subject. Discussions about 'the best pedagogy' never make any consideration of what is being taught; there's an implicit assumption that every idea and subject should be taught the same way. School systems have improved markedly since they were introduced in the nineteenth century, but I think we've got everything we can out of the subject-agnostic approach to improvement, and we need to start engaging with the detail of what's being taught to further improve. |
|
| ▲ | SJMG 4 days ago | parent | next [-] |
| > the head of languages telling me that a good teacher can teach any subject. Tell me this wasn't foreign languages? :face_palm: Okay, I was totally with you until this, > but I think we've got everything we can out of the subject-agnostic approach to improvement, and we need to start engaging with the detail of what's being taught to further improve I think if you walk into the bottom 80% of classrooms you would not see, interleaving, spaced repetition, recall-over-reread, or topic shuffling to avoid interference. There's a load of understanding we've gained in pedagogy and human learning that has not affected how we structure formal education yet. |
| |
| ▲ | cjs_ac 4 days ago | parent | next [-] | | > I think if you walk into the bottom 80% of classrooms you would not see, interleaving, spaced repetition, recall-over-reread, or topic shuffling to avoid interference. Where have you taught? I taught in Australia and the United Kingdom, where many of these things were mandated by the promulgation of spiral curricula by the relevant government departments. I'm aware in the US that, for example, algebra is taught as one or two block courses, but in the school systems I've taught in, algebra is taught as a few 'topics' of about a month in duration each, sprinkled throughout the whole four or five years in which mathematics is mandatory in secondary school. For Year 7 to 10 in Australia, there would be one or two topics for each of physics, chemistry, biology and earth sciences, covered across each year, building up from year to year. None of this was a choice by individual teachers or even schools; it was an artefact of the way the curricula are structured. | | |
| ▲ | all2 4 days ago | parent | next [-] | | I'd be curious to see how this is laid out in plan view. Are there any resources you can recommend on this topic? | |
| ▲ | SJMG 4 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Right, that specific claim should be understood with US high schools and higher education in mind. There the massed approach rules the day. Since these things I mentioned are well demonstrated to be effective and you don't think there's anything left to be had with a subject-agnostic approach, I infer you have a high opinion of how well these countries have implemented these "tactics". Is that right? |
| |
| ▲ | apsurd 4 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | You may not be wrong that tactics aren't sufficiently widespread, but that's the thing they're just tactics. Spaced-repetition is a good example. It's so objectively better than other forms of memorization, but it's just one tactic for learning. In this sense "teaching well requires a specific set of tools and tactics" is exactly how "a good teacher can teach anything" would make sense. The problem is it doesn't make sense. | | |
| ▲ | SJMG 4 days ago | parent [-] | | Yeah there seems to be some confusion. I agreed with the comment I replied to in the sense that teaching well requires specific domain knowledge and some specific pedagogy. Where I disagree is the assertion that the "tactics", to use your term, have been perfused through the system and there's nothing left to gain here. He specifically says, "I think we've got everything we can out of the subject-agnostic approach to improvement" So we all agree that subjects would benefit from specific interventions. The difference is he's going further and saying this is the only way forward; there are no general gains left to be had. From the strength of the claim alone, this is hard to believe. Where do you stand on this? | | |
| ▲ | apsurd 4 days ago | parent [-] | | Agree, it's unnecessarily limiting to say the well is entirely dried up re: improving status quo tools. Charitable pov though, i'd say it's about leverage. Learning outcomes globally suffer steep steep cliffs and it's inevitably due to socioeconomic factors. It's hard to argue that more chromebooks, spaced repetition, and catering to learning styles are the missing pieces johnny needs to get out of the hood. as a person in tech i believed for a long time that if only we had better learning materials, people could orient and better self motivate around subjects. (learning needs to be hard. it's biology. brain takes notice and retains new and challenging stimuli. so "making learning easier" is a misnomer. the insight becomes how do we get people to self-motivate into hard things?) I still think that's true, to your point, but all these takes are one of many many problems, and they aren't equal in leverage and i think that's where OP is coming from. there's outsized leverage in domain specific pedagogy. |
|
|
|
|
| ▲ | sky2224 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Yeah, as a student, I have to agree. The issue with learning things isn't that it hasn't been tailored to be interesting or relatable to me, it's just that it's a lot of content and it's hard. The solution is figuring out how to set up a type of spoon feed algorithm that checks that I'm understanding little bite size pieces along the way in addition to giving layman's terms for things that don't necessitate the formal description (e.g., deciphering math language). ChatGPT Study mode has actually been quite good at this when you prompt it correctly and are studying a subject that it's well trained on. |
| |
| ▲ | aDyslecticCrow 4 days ago | parent [-] | | Khan academy and brilliant are both excellent. They're hand crafted and limited in subjects and depth, but i think establish the current "roof" in how perfectly structured self-learning materials would look. I've heard from teachers using them in schools and found excellent results. AI rephrasing words better to each individual isn't interesting to me. Automatic Interactive small quizzes, puzzles, and self adjusting difficulty level would be amazing, but i don't see AI really reaching that level. When i see AI "quiz me on this" it gets stuck asking direct factual question about the text. But a good question challenges assumptions, and prod deeper understanding. | | |
| ▲ | sky2224 4 days ago | parent [-] | | Here's a conversation using ChatGPT Study Mode I had a little bit ago covering Linear Algebra concepts that I wanted to learn. The concepts that were gone over in this chat aren't the most complicated, but I think you might find it interesting to look over since I think it actually does show we'll likely reach the level you're seeking. This conversation is with 4o shortly before the GPT-5.0 rollout, which is why it's a little less concise and more emotive. https://chatgpt.com/share/68cc844a-14d4-8009-88e3-53f5d781b5... | | |
| ▲ | aDyslecticCrow 3 days ago | parent [-] | | That is indeed better than ive seen before. I do still find it does do what i dislike. "Here is the forumla for cosine similarty, try compute it" Id rather it approach it from "we would like to calculate difference in vector direction. Dot product is almost what we want, but cosine similarty is even better" The "Angle connection" of cosine similarty was instead of added as an extra note later. But i think its fundamental to its intuition that excluding it from the main explanation could lead to a misunderstanding. (Heck the definition section of Wikipedia makes the formula very clear, and the introductionsection is also excellent to descibe its utility) So we may reach is one day. But i still think its a ways off compared to a proper hand crafted learning materials. And this subject specifically is a best case scenario. (3b1b is amazing if you still want to get a more inutitive grasp on matrix transformatios) |
|
|
|
|
| ▲ | SiempreViernes 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Hush! Don't bring teaching experience into these discussions, you will trigger the EduTech people who have been promising a teaching revolution for 15 years already. |
| |
| ▲ | all2 4 days ago | parent [-] | | The 'teaching revolution' reaches much farther back than the last 15 years. It goes all the way back to the introduction of radio and television. It never did play out well. |
|
|
| ▲ | teaearlgraycold 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I'm not a teacher, but I think a simple change to "objects in motion stay in motion" could help with teaching it. Instead, tell students that any change in motion always has a cause, then ask them for the cause in different scenarios. Why does the ball stop rolling across the room? Why does the rocket launch into space? Why does the falling feather stop as it hits the ground? Then, ask what happens if there is no cause for change. Now you are left with the original law. That object will stay in motion. |
| |
| ▲ | ycombigators 4 days ago | parent [-] | | The issue is their intuition for the general case is actually gathered from a special case. You need examples that point at the general case - like Newton's cradle. Conservation of momentum helps. |
|
|
| ▲ | lawlessone 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Would simulation games work here? Just giving the students access to something that simulates a frictionless world to play around with? maybe with a simple on off switch. Something i've probably seen shared by others here in webgl at some point and far cheaper to run than genai |
| |
| ▲ | lo_zamoyski 4 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Why not a slippery surface? Simulations are less compelling (as they aren't the real thing and put the cart before the horse; the simulation presupposes physical laws, but doesn't demonstrate them) than a real example. | |
| ▲ | mrexroad 4 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Kerbal Space Program Has entered the chat |
|
|
| ▲ | ycombigators 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| You should have asked the head of languages to teach you tensor calculus. |
| |
| ▲ | layman51 4 days ago | parent [-] | | I don’t have a firm opinion one way or another about that idea that a “great teacher can teach any subject” but it does bring to my mind the other idea that teachers are increasingly becoming “learning coaches” who aren’t only transferring knowledge into the students, but who are rather encouraging them to develop self-awareness about their own learning. | | |
| ▲ | ycombigators 4 days ago | parent [-] | | That concept of teaching seems like a nice idea in a private school setting but wildly incompatible with most schools in the Anglosphere. |
|
|
|
| ▲ | lelanthran 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > The final straw that made me leave teaching was the head of languages telling me that a good teacher can teach any subject. Why would that cause you to leave teaching physics? Was he also the head of the science subjects? Did you report to him in any way? |
|
| ▲ | warofwords 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| What is terrifying , 'the best pedagogy' , OpenAI parents are not allowing chatgpt to curate pedagogy ... we all have a bookshelf thats it (our pedagogy) , but copyright strategies means the ai must mutilate / offuscate way best padagogy away ... they train on it and effectively say dont sound that good , too good is copyrighted |
|
| ▲ | 0xWTF 4 days ago | parent | prev [-] |
| My general experience with things like this from Google is to assume that this is at least one big step behind what they're doing now internally. Taking a position on how useful one finds this today effectively insulates from thinking more seriously about what could be done. If taken from a perspective of "what hints are laying around in this blog post or scientific articles about what's possible?" it's probably more effective use of time if you're going to invest time in reading it. As an example, as you're reading it, try posing a few relevant counterfactuals. |
| |
| ▲ | Workaccount2 4 days ago | parent [-] | | >My general experience with things like this from Google is to assume that this is at least one big step behind what they're doing now internally What they are doing internally after launching something like this is patting themselves on the back, updating their resumes, and promptly forgetting it exists. | | |
| ▲ | BoorishBears 4 days ago | parent [-] | | *leaving, raising a round because they worked on this, promptly not doing anything without Google's distribution behind them (see NotebookLM) |
|
|
