[HN Gopher] 1 in 4 U.S. Teachers Say AI Tools Do More Harm Than ...
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       1 in 4 U.S. Teachers Say AI Tools Do More Harm Than Good in K-12
       Education
        
       Author : sarimkx
       Score  : 12 points
       Date   : 2024-05-30 21:05 UTC (1 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.pewresearch.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.pewresearch.org)
        
       | artninja1988 wrote:
       | Damn. Only 1 in 4 U.S. Teachers Say AI Tools Do More Harm Than
       | Good in K-12 Education? Better than expected
        
       | hi-v-rocknroll wrote:
       | Buried the lede. Most teachers are unsure.
        
       | wiseowise wrote:
       | Only 1 out of 4?
        
       | jmeyer2k wrote:
       | As someone working on an AI tool for education, I think it's
       | going to be one of the hardest industries to get right, but also
       | the most important.
       | 
       | - It's going to be tricky for AI tutors to make an impact.
       | Teachers are better at inspiring students to do better than
       | computers ever will be, but for those already motivated, AI will
       | provide a great study tool.
       | 
       | - Students have access to LLMs as well now, so any writing
       | assessment will have to be timed and closely monitored, or in-
       | class, otherwise students can easily cheat.
       | 
       | - Teacher-facing tools will come before student-facing tools
       | because of the safety aspect.
       | 
       | We're building an AI grading assistant for teachers
       | (https://automark.io) that helps them provide more writing
       | feedback to students. Papers are extremely time consuming to
       | grade and give feedback on, which is detrimental to both the
       | teacher and the student. Giving students unlimited practice
       | essays before the scored essay is one area where AI will really
       | move the needle.
       | 
       | Grading is also one of the main shortcomings of online courses,
       | so I'm guessing we'll see more in that area in the future where
       | high quality courses can scale to 10k-100k+ students.
        
       | infamouscow wrote:
       | 3 in 4 U.S. teachers say AI tools do more good than harm in K-12
       | education.
       | 
       | The idiot(s) that came up with this headline should be
       | embarrassed for being so biased. I hope LLMs take their job. This
       | undermines the credibility of the institution.
        
         | jsheard wrote:
         | If you clicked on the article you'd see that only 6% said they
         | think AI tools do more good than harm, it wasn't a binary
         | choice.
        
       | datavirtue wrote:
       | I thought all teenagers would be at 100% adoption of AI chat for
       | homework and projects at this point.
        
       | philip1209 wrote:
       | The only thing this shows is that the education system actively
       | resists preparing students to succeed in a modern economy.
       | 
       | This is the modern equivalent of saying "keyboards hurt
       | penmanship education."
        
         | nebula8804 wrote:
         | >This is the modern equivalent of saying "keyboards hurt
         | education, penmanship education is suffering."
         | 
         | Ironically if I had listened to my teachers more I wouldn't be
         | peck typing as a programmer and my penmanship would be more
         | like cursive than the chicken scratch that I currently write.
        
         | greenthrow wrote:
         | I get you're going for the "AI is a tool" thing, but the
         | problem with your analogy is that LLMs hallucinate and many
         | students use them in lieu of doing reading and reasoning about
         | the content.
         | 
         | LLMs are to english class as a car would be to running class.
         | Yes, the tool exists and is useful but it prevents you from
         | getting the intended benefit.
        
       | forgot-im-old wrote:
       | Unfortunately the Pandora's box has already been opened.., we are
       | going to have to get better at thinking critically and judging
       | evidence if we are to survive into in the sea of LLM generated
       | content.
        
       | analog31 wrote:
       | Educational software has always been an abyss. While in college,
       | my summer internships (early 1980s) were at an educational
       | computer facility. They had a "lab" with a variety of available
       | computers and software for teachers to try out. Virtually all of
       | it was abysmal -- glorified flash cards.
       | 
       | It wasn't much different when my kids were in high school.
        
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       (page generated 2024-05-30 23:01 UTC)