[HN Gopher] Teaching Machines: the history of personalized learning
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       Teaching Machines: the history of personalized learning
        
       Author : adrian_mrd
       Score  : 45 points
       Date   : 2021-06-26 06:38 UTC (2 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (mitpress.mit.edu)
 (TXT) w3m dump (mitpress.mit.edu)
        
       | knuthsat wrote:
       | I find all mainstream attempts lacking. I feel as if the app is
       | optimizing by AB tests across the whole population instead of
       | trying to find a proper descriptor of my learning behavior and
       | influencing the teaching actions according to that.
       | 
       | For example, Duolingo transformed into a tapping app where spaced
       | repetition took a backseat and learners are incentivized to tap
       | the same lesson until the badge tells them they know the lesson.
       | The lessons are skewed towards the easier target->source
       | questions because the population finds source->target too hard.
       | 
       | So the app becomes extremely useless to me but I guess useful for
       | the masses.
        
       | philliphaydon wrote:
       | I read a decent amount into B.F Skinner a few years ago after
       | learning about him from the movie Mr Nobody, the intro was about
       | Pigeon's Superstitous.
       | 
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4FMBN1Plzs
       | 
       | I find his stuff quite interesting. His Teaching Machine:
       | 
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTH3ob1IRFo
       | 
       | I ended up going down a rabbit hole of Operant Conditioning
        
       | mncharity wrote:
       | A peer fuzzy robot trial[1], illustrating both potential and
       | challenges.
       | 
       | [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWTXk3eHkVU&t=830s
        
         | gerner wrote:
         | Fascinating video. It's cool to see a collaboration of child
         | development and reinforcement learning in action and to hear a
         | research speak about both in an experimental context.
         | 
         | The comment in a different thread about Diamond Age comes to
         | mind, and here we see some of those elements playing out.
        
           | mncharity wrote:
           | Nod. I wonder what might be done with richer input, gaze and
           | pose, rather than just facial affect (and very limited
           | interaction context).[1] AR seems likely to make those much
           | more widely available - though it could be worked on now, but
           | for lack of institutional context.
           | 
           | On the other hand... there are other pressing bottlenecks to
           | a Primer. Status quo has people learning the Sun is yellow,
           | from Kindergarten teachers, college textbooks, and even
           | outreach. With only a very very few of them getting an "oops,
           | nope, our bad" correction years later in grad school,
           | discussing common misconceptions in astronomy education.
           | We're collectively not able, on a timescale of decades, to
           | even get Sun color right in the most popular college
           | textbooks. So if a Primer is to teach science and engineering
           | as a richly interwoven coherent tapestry... we'll need to
           | figure out socially how to transformatively improve our
           | creation of those stories.
           | 
           | The student in the video is learning the color lavender.
           | Learning color is common preK-6. And yet, even first-tier
           | physical-sciences graduate students are deeply steeped in
           | misconceptions about color. So a motivational peer robot
           | might help... at least with equity. But if we aspire to teach
           | color _successfully_ , a novel goal, attention seems needed
           | elsewhere. But there aren't great incentives to ask "What
           | might a greenfield tech-enabled preK-6 _successful_ approach
           | to teaching color look like? " Or at least, I've not seen it.
           | If anyone knows of a setting for such questions, I'd greatly
           | appreciate hearing of it.
           | 
           | [1] the paper: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sd
           | t=0%2C22&q=Imp...
        
       | CiceroCiceronis wrote:
       | For a novel touching on this subject matter see Neal Stephenson's
       | "The Diamond Age."
        
         | hcs wrote:
         | The teaching machine (the Primer) is named in the full title:
         | The Diamond Age: Or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer
        
       | alvarocc wrote:
       | Audrey Watters has really good insights on what she calls "The
       | History of the Future of Education Technology"
       | 
       | Her Hack Education blog, while on hiatus right now, has a lot of
       | supporting info.
       | 
       | https://hackeducation.com/
        
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