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ChatGPT is similar to a calculator. We don't let 3rd graders use calculators on their arithmetic homework, even though there's no way to detect if they used one

ChatGPT is similar to a calculator. We don't let 3rd graders use calculators on their arithmetic homework, even though there's no way to detect if they used one. The point of a 3rd grader adding fractions is not because we care about the result of 3/4 + 1/3, but because the 3rd grader should learn how to add fractions. If you think of ChatGPT as a fancy calculator, you can just apply the same techniques we've been using for a while: tell students not to use them on homework, make homework only a small % of the grade, and rely on in-class, paper only exams for most the grade.

namaria 4y ago
I think text generators will do two things: reduce the average quality of published text, and reduce the average text writing skills. It thus increases the value of writing skills. I count that as a win.
seanmcdirmid 4y ago
So like...writing an essay in class. That could be useful, although they won't be able to do any research or anything.
- janalsncm 4y ago
  Students could print out their sources and turn them in with the essay. Of course this would require knowing ahead of time what sources you’d need.
- stephencanon 4y ago
  The best class I had in high school (Mr. Hecker’s English class), required writing an essay in class every week. All my college essays were easy by comparison.
  - seanmcdirmid 4y ago
    To each their own. I didn’t really learn how to write until in grad school, when I had things I really wanted to write about. I can imagine how much joy would have been sucked out of writing if I just had to write some essay every week that I didn’t have much interest in.
    - stephencanon 4y ago
      I don’t enjoy arithmetic or typing much either, but they are skills you have to learn in school so you can do things you _do_ enjoy. I think “writing an essay” is about the same.
      - seanmcdirmid 4y ago
        I went to a high school when and where typing was required as a pre-requisite to programming. The only C I got in my four years of high school. I think we make kids hate school via "sucking it up" when we really don't have to. Learning to write in the right context is much more effective than learning in the wrong context. But our educational system is so standardize that we have to fit most kids into the same interest peg.
        klyrs 4y ago
        Hah, I took a "keyboarding" course before programming was taught in my school. I typed a stretch at 60wpm. The teacher dryly remarked that I had just taken the 5wpm test and I'd need to work my way up to 60. Good times, good times...
        seanmcdirmid 4y ago
        I was just surprised we were graded on speed. Like, the girls (who...had thinner fingers on average?) would all get As by reaching 80 WPM, I'm stuck with fat fingers at 20-30 WPM (mind you, just copying text from one screen to another)...which is plenty of speed for programming and even writing comments on hacker news. These days, that would be considered insane! But in 1989...
        klyrs 4y ago
        Take a look at Itzhak Perlman's hands[1] and listen to him play Paganini's 24 Caprices... I am positive that you could type faster if you tried. But, I agree, one does not need to be a champion speed typist to write good code. Think more, type less. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Itzhak_Perlman#/media/File:Itzhak_Perlman_violinist_1984.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Itzhak_Perlman#/media/File:Itz...
  - ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
    I’m a big proponent of doing difficult things regularly. If we habitually do hard things, then we generally have no problem, stepping up to the plate, for when it’s showtime. Same reason that musicians practice scales, all the time. I write code, every day. I walk 5K, every day. I solve problems, every day (detect a pattern, here?). It makes showtime a lot less stressful, and folks seem happy with my work.
    - bogdanoff_2 4y ago
      I'm really curious what your schedule looks like
      - ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
        5AM-9PM weekdays, 5:30AM-10PM on weekends. First thing I do, is a 5K brisk walk. Gets the exercise quota satisfied. I tried running, but kept injuring myself, so walking, it is. I can do that, seven days a week. Takes a bit less than an hour (I walk about 10min/Km). I usually "triage" my day, on these walks. I mentally sort through the tasks ahead, and scope out my plans. Sometimes, it's straightforward, other times, I have to develop a plan. When I get home, I hit the shower, and generally start coding, right away. I code throughout the day, taking breaks as I need/want. I have no issue, stopping work for a couple of hours, and watching some TV or even taking a short nap. I'll code at any time. I don't have a "set" workday. I have found that I am most productive in the morning, and most creative at night, but I sometimes find myself losing focus, towards the end of the day. When that happens, I generally wrap things up, as I do more damage than good. I'll often fix a bug in my head during my walk, that was confounding me the night before. I believe in F^3 - Finite, Focused, and Finished. - Finite: I know what "done" looks like. Tasks have a discrete beginning and end, though the schedule may be fuzzy. - Focused: No distractions. I stay on beam, and devote full attention to the task at hand. - Finished: I don't stop, until I have reached a point that I can wrap things. I usually punctuate this with a final tagged commit. It's also important to scope things reasonably. Stretch, but not too much. I write about that stuff here: https://littlegreenviper.com/miscellany/thats-not-what-ships-are-built-for/ https://littlegreenviper.com/miscellany/thats-not-what-ships... I probably have a life a lot of folks around here would not find attractive. I find it WFM. YMMV.
  - klyrs 4y ago
    I had a teacher like that in middle school. It was terrifying but after her class writing was never a sweat until 5-paragraph essays were no longer acceptable.
- balderdash 4y ago
  A competitive admissions high school I know requires prospective students to write the admissions essay in a set amount of time when they come to tour and interview in order to avoid parents/tutors/etc. from writing these essays, and leveling the playing field…think it’s a fantastic system
- kfajdsl 4y ago
  Yes, we had this all the time in English class in high school. It would be a prompt about the book we were reading or some texts he would print out and give us then and there.
MisterBastahrd 4y ago
When I was in third grade, I had to show the intermediate steps I used to formulate an answer to prove that I knew how to do the task. This has two benefits: (1) it gets students in the habit of working through a problem methodically, and (2) it lets teachers assign partial credit when students get the methodology correct but make a simple error. Similarly, this is why we students have been required to cite sources instead of simply rendering an opinion on a topic. Most of these AI bots are just fancy plagiarism machines.
- m463 4y ago
  I wonder if you can get them to cite their sources too?
  - roywiggins 4y ago
    ChatGPT will usually just confidently hallucinate references that sound like they might exist, but don't.
    - rsfern 4y ago
      For queries in my field (materials science), chatGPT actually seems pretty good about citing real sources, often one of the canonical sources for the topic An acquaintance who works in the NLP space says this is done in post processing, where GPT probably hallucinates a reference but they run a web query or something to try to fix it up.
- tester457 4y ago
  > make paper with gpt > find appropriate sources and cite them later
  - asdff 4y ago
    That's almost more work than just writing the paper yourself as you find the sources the first time
LouisSayers 4y ago
Or create escape rooms for kids. In each room is all the information you need to solve the puzzle and escape. The final room you get to within an allotted time period determines your grade. Edit: by Escape Room, I mean like the fun kind you would go to with friends or colleagues. I'm not saying we should torture children... Google if you haven't heard of one.
- TeMPOraL 4y ago
  The problem is, any idea like this stops being fun the moment there are meaningful consequences attached to it. About the only way I can imagine such Escape Room working is if it's either ungraded, or the lowest outcome is an A, and anything above just gets praise or some "karma points" that have no value beyond giving kids something they can tease or challenge each other about.
- ihatepython 4y ago
  You mean like the movie Escape Room?
spike021 4y ago
I would say more similar to Wolfram Alpha. Definitely used that (not for cheating!) a few times in college to double-check math problem work, etc.
lupire 4y ago
The problem with "no graded homework" (which has to include "no sneaking homework into school"), is that it means that it's impossible to grade anything substantial like a thesis project, so grades only cover trivialities, and have a huge bias for rewarding speed over depth and quality.

namaria 4y ago

I think text generators will do two things: reduce the average quality of published text, and reduce the average text writing skills. It thus increases the value of writing skills. I count that as a win.

seanmcdirmid 4y ago

So like...writing an essay in class. That could be useful, although they won't be able to do any research or anything.

janalsncm 4y ago
Students could print out their sources and turn them in with the essay. Of course this would require knowing ahead of time what sources you’d need.
stephencanon 4y ago
The best class I had in high school (Mr. Hecker’s English class), required writing an essay in class every week. All my college essays were easy by comparison.
- seanmcdirmid 4y ago
  To each their own. I didn’t really learn how to write until in grad school, when I had things I really wanted to write about. I can imagine how much joy would have been sucked out of writing if I just had to write some essay every week that I didn’t have much interest in.
  - stephencanon 4y ago
    I don’t enjoy arithmetic or typing much either, but they are skills you have to learn in school so you can do things you _do_ enjoy. I think “writing an essay” is about the same.
    - seanmcdirmid 4y ago
      I went to a high school when and where typing was required as a pre-requisite to programming. The only C I got in my four years of high school. I think we make kids hate school via "sucking it up" when we really don't have to. Learning to write in the right context is much more effective than learning in the wrong context. But our educational system is so standardize that we have to fit most kids into the same interest peg.
      - klyrs 4y ago
        Hah, I took a "keyboarding" course before programming was taught in my school. I typed a stretch at 60wpm. The teacher dryly remarked that I had just taken the 5wpm test and I'd need to work my way up to 60. Good times, good times...
        seanmcdirmid 4y ago
        I was just surprised we were graded on speed. Like, the girls (who...had thinner fingers on average?) would all get As by reaching 80 WPM, I'm stuck with fat fingers at 20-30 WPM (mind you, just copying text from one screen to another)...which is plenty of speed for programming and even writing comments on hacker news. These days, that would be considered insane! But in 1989...
        klyrs 4y ago
        Take a look at Itzhak Perlman's hands[1] and listen to him play Paganini's 24 Caprices... I am positive that you could type faster if you tried. But, I agree, one does not need to be a champion speed typist to write good code. Think more, type less. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Itzhak_Perlman#/media/File:Itzhak_Perlman_violinist_1984.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Itzhak_Perlman#/media/File:Itz...
- ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
  I’m a big proponent of doing difficult things regularly. If we habitually do hard things, then we generally have no problem, stepping up to the plate, for when it’s showtime. Same reason that musicians practice scales, all the time. I write code, every day. I walk 5K, every day. I solve problems, every day (detect a pattern, here?). It makes showtime a lot less stressful, and folks seem happy with my work.
  - bogdanoff_2 4y ago
    I'm really curious what your schedule looks like
    - ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
      5AM-9PM weekdays, 5:30AM-10PM on weekends. First thing I do, is a 5K brisk walk. Gets the exercise quota satisfied. I tried running, but kept injuring myself, so walking, it is. I can do that, seven days a week. Takes a bit less than an hour (I walk about 10min/Km). I usually "triage" my day, on these walks. I mentally sort through the tasks ahead, and scope out my plans. Sometimes, it's straightforward, other times, I have to develop a plan. When I get home, I hit the shower, and generally start coding, right away. I code throughout the day, taking breaks as I need/want. I have no issue, stopping work for a couple of hours, and watching some TV or even taking a short nap. I'll code at any time. I don't have a "set" workday. I have found that I am most productive in the morning, and most creative at night, but I sometimes find myself losing focus, towards the end of the day. When that happens, I generally wrap things up, as I do more damage than good. I'll often fix a bug in my head during my walk, that was confounding me the night before. I believe in F^3 - Finite, Focused, and Finished. - Finite: I know what "done" looks like. Tasks have a discrete beginning and end, though the schedule may be fuzzy. - Focused: No distractions. I stay on beam, and devote full attention to the task at hand. - Finished: I don't stop, until I have reached a point that I can wrap things. I usually punctuate this with a final tagged commit. It's also important to scope things reasonably. Stretch, but not too much. I write about that stuff here: https://littlegreenviper.com/miscellany/thats-not-what-ships-are-built-for/ https://littlegreenviper.com/miscellany/thats-not-what-ships... I probably have a life a lot of folks around here would not find attractive. I find it WFM. YMMV.
- klyrs 4y ago
  I had a teacher like that in middle school. It was terrifying but after her class writing was never a sweat until 5-paragraph essays were no longer acceptable.
balderdash 4y ago
A competitive admissions high school I know requires prospective students to write the admissions essay in a set amount of time when they come to tour and interview in order to avoid parents/tutors/etc. from writing these essays, and leveling the playing field…think it’s a fantastic system
kfajdsl 4y ago
Yes, we had this all the time in English class in high school. It would be a prompt about the book we were reading or some texts he would print out and give us then and there.

MisterBastahrd 4y ago

When I was in third grade, I had to show the intermediate steps I used to formulate an answer to prove that I knew how to do the task. This has two benefits: (1) it gets students in the habit of working through a problem methodically, and (2) it lets teachers assign partial credit when students get the methodology correct but make a simple error. Similarly, this is why we students have been required to cite sources instead of simply rendering an opinion on a topic. Most of these AI bots are just fancy plagiarism machines.

m463 4y ago
I wonder if you can get them to cite their sources too?
- roywiggins 4y ago
  ChatGPT will usually just confidently hallucinate references that sound like they might exist, but don't.
  - rsfern 4y ago
    For queries in my field (materials science), chatGPT actually seems pretty good about citing real sources, often one of the canonical sources for the topic An acquaintance who works in the NLP space says this is done in post processing, where GPT probably hallucinates a reference but they run a web query or something to try to fix it up.
tester457 4y ago
> make paper with gpt > find appropriate sources and cite them later
- asdff 4y ago
  That's almost more work than just writing the paper yourself as you find the sources the first time

LouisSayers 4y ago

Or create escape rooms for kids. In each room is all the information you need to solve the puzzle and escape. The final room you get to within an allotted time period determines your grade. Edit: by Escape Room, I mean like the fun kind you would go to with friends or colleagues. I'm not saying we should torture children... Google if you haven't heard of one.

TeMPOraL 4y ago
The problem is, any idea like this stops being fun the moment there are meaningful consequences attached to it. About the only way I can imagine such Escape Room working is if it's either ungraded, or the lowest outcome is an A, and anything above just gets praise or some "karma points" that have no value beyond giving kids something they can tease or challenge each other about.
ihatepython 4y ago
You mean like the movie Escape Room?

spike021 4y ago

I would say more similar to Wolfram Alpha. Definitely used that (not for cheating!) a few times in college to double-check math problem work, etc.

lupire 4y ago

The problem with "no graded homework" (which has to include "no sneaking homework into school"), is that it means that it's impossible to grade anything substantial like a thesis project, so grades only cover trivialities, and have a huge bias for rewarding speed over depth and quality.