English professors double down on requiring printed copies of readings
zkmon
>This academic year, some English professors have increased their preference for physical copies of readings, citing concerns related to artificial intelligence.
I didn't get it. How can printing avoid AI? And more importantly is this AI-resistance sustainable?
secabeen
You can't easily copy and paste from a printout into AI. Sure, you can track down the reading yourself online, and then copy and paste in, but not during class, and not without some effort.
Flavius
This approach is just cheap theater. It doesn't actually stop AI, it just adds a step to the process. Any student can snap a photo, OCR the text and feed it into an LLM in seconds. All this policy accomplishes is wasting paper and forcing students to engage in digital hoop-jumping.
coffeefirst
The students were reading AI summaries rather than the original text.
Does this literally work? It adds slightly more friction, but you can still ask the robot to summarize pretty much anything that would appear on the syllabus. What it likely does it set expectations.
This doesn't strike me as being anti-AI or "resistance" at all. But if you don't train your own brain to read and make thoughts, you won't have one.
everybodyknows
> This semester, she is requiring all students to have printed options.
What could it mean for an "option" to be "required"?
bko
Who is behind this over digitization of primary school? My understanding is that in the Us pretty much all homework and tests are done on computers or iPads.
This obv isn’t a push by parents because I can’t imagine parents I know want their kids in front of a screen all day. At best they’re indifferent. My only guess is the teachers unions that don’t want teachers grading and creating lesson plans and all the other work they used to do.
And since this trend kid scores or performance has not gotten better, so what gives?
Can anyone comment if it’s as bad as this and what’s behind it.
el_benhameen
My kids are in elementary school in the SF area (although pretty far in the ‘burbs) and this is not my experience.
The older one has a chromebook and uses it for research and production of larger written projects and presents—the kind of things you’d expect. The younger one doesn’t have any school-supplied device yet.
Both kids have math exercises, language worksheets, short writing exercises, etc., all done on paper. This is the majority of homework.
I’m fine with this system. I wish they’d spend a little more time teaching computer basics (I did a lot of touch typing exercises in the 90’s; my older one doesn’t seem to have those kind of lessons). But in general, there’s not too much homework, there’s good emphasis on reading, and I appreciate that the older one is learning how to plan, research, and create projects using the tool he’ll use to do so in future schooling.
michaelt
A few decades ago:
People needed to be taught digital skills that were in growing demand in the workplace.
The kids researching things online and word-processing their homework were doing well in class (because only upper-middle-class types could afford home PCs)
Some trials of digital learning produced good results. Teaching by the world's greatest teachers, exactly the pace every student needs, with continuous feedback and infinite patience.
Blocking distractions? How hard can that be?
Mathnerd314
If you are flipping through the reading to find a quote, then printed readings are hard to beat, unless you can search for a word with digital search. But speed reading RSVP presentation beats any kind of print reading by a mile, if you are aiming for comprehension. So, it is hard to say where the technology is going. Nobody has put in the work to really make reading on an iPad as smooth and fluid as print, in terms of rapid page flipping. But the potential is there. It is kind of laughable how the salesman will be saying, oh it has a fast processor, and then you open up a PDF and scroll a few pages fast and they start being blank instead of actually having text.
anilakar
At 150 eurobucks apiece, printed freshman coursebooks were prohibitively expensive in uni. We just pirated everything as a consequence.
Flavius
That's the whole point. They don't care about students or education, they care about wasting resources and making a lot of money in the process.
Symbiote
At my university in actual Europe, many copies of the required textbooks were available in the library. Printing was free.
jmclnx
While I fully agree with this, this quote bothers me:
>Shorter packets can cost around $20, while longer packets can cost upwards of $150 when ordered with the cheapest binding option
Does a student need to print out multiple TYCO Packets ? If so, only the very rich could afford this. I think educations should go back to printed books and submitting you work to the Prof. on paper.
But submitting printed pages back to the Prof. for homework will avoid the school saying "Submit only Word Documents". That way a student can use the method they prefer, avoiding buying expensive software. One can then use just a simple free text editor if they want. Or even a typewriter :)
recursivedoubts
I have mentioned this in a few comments: for my CS classes I have gone from a historical 60-80% projects / 40-20% quizzes grade split, to a 50/50 split, and have moved my quizzes from being online to being in-person, pen-on-paper with one sheet of hand-written notes
Rather than banning AI, I'm showing students how to use it effectively as a personalized TA. I'm giving them this AGENTS.md file:
And showing them how to use AI to summarize the slides into a quiz review sheet, generate example questions with answer walk throughs, etc.
Of course I can't ensure they aren't just having AI do the projects, but I tell them that if they do that they are cheating themselves: the projects are designed to draw them into the art of programming and give them decent, real-world coding experience that they will need, even if they end up working at a higher level in the future.
AI can be a very effective tool for education if used properly. I have used it to create a ton of extremely useful visualizations (e.g. how twos complement works) that I wouldn't have otherwise. But it is obviously extremely dangerous as well.
"It is impossible to design a system so perfect that no one needs to be good."
buckle8017
hopefully you've also modified the quizzes to be handwriting compatible.
I once got "implement a BCD decoder" with about a 1"x4" space to do it.
thenipper
How do you handle kids w/ a learning disability who can't effectively write well?
softwaredoug
Do you find advocating for AI literacy to be controversial amongst peers?
I find, as a parent, when I talk about it at the high school level I get very negative reactions from other parents. Specifically I want high schoolers to be skilled in the use of AI, and particular critical thinking skills around the tools, while simultaneously having skills assuming no AI. I don’t want the school to be blindly “anti AI” as I’m aware it will be a part of the economy our kids are brought into.
There are some head in the sands, very emotional attitudes about this stuff. (And obviously idiotically uncritical pro AI stances, but I doubt educators risk having those stances)
crazygringo
> TYCO Print is a printing service where professors can upload course files for TYCO to print out for students as they order. Shorter packets can cost around $20, while longer packets can cost upwards of $150 when ordered with the cheapest binding option.
This made sense a couple of decades ago. Today, it's just bizarre to be spending $150 on a phonebook-sized packet of reading materials. So much paper and toner.
This is what iPads and Kindles are for.
nine_k
No, the cost of the paper, toner, and binding is the cost of providing of a provably distraction-free environment.
To make it more palpable for an IT worker: "It's just bizarre to give a developer a room with a door, so much sheetrock and wood! Working with computers is what open-plan offices are for."
azinman2
Computers have not advanced education — the data shows the opposite. I think we should just go back to physical books (which can be used!), and pen and paper for notes and assignments.
dlcarrier
In pretty much any school system, just complain that the printout is not compatible with your text-to-speech engine, and the instructor will be required to provide an electronic version, no questions asked.
raincole
If textbooks weren't so expensive I'd be more cheering on them.
> TYCO Print is a printing service where professors can upload course files for TYCO to print out for students as they order. Shorter packets can cost around $20, while longer packets can cost upwards of $150 when ordered with the cheapest binding option.
Lol $150 for reading packets? Not even textbooks? Seriously the whole system can fuck off.
ageitgey
> “Over the years I’ve found that when students read on paper they're more likely to read carefully, and less likely in a pinch to read on their phones or rely on chatbot summaries,” Shirkhani wrote to the News. “This improves the quality of class time by orders of magnitude.”
This is the key part. I'm doing a part-time graduate degree at a major university right now, and it's fascinating to watch the week-to-week pressure AI is putting on the education establishment. When your job as a student is to read case studies and think about them, but Google Drive says "here's an automatic summary of the key points" before you even open the file, it takes a very determined student to ignore that and actually read the material. And if no one reads the original material, the class discussion is a complete waste of time, with everyone bringing up the same trite points, and the whole exercise becomes a facade.
Schools are struggling to figure out how to let students use AI tools to be more productive while still learning how to think. The students (especially undergrads) are incredibly good at doing as little work as possible. And until you get to the end-of-PhD level, there's basically nothing you encounter in your learning journey that ChatGPT can't perfectly summarize and analyze in 1 second, removing the requirement for you to do anything.
This isn't even about AI being "good" or "bad". We still teach children how to add numbers before we give them calculators because it's a useful skill. But now these AI thinking-calculators are injecting themselves into every text box and screen, making them impossible to avoid. If the answer pops up in the sidebar before you even ask the question, what kind of masochist is going to bother learning how to read and think?
arnavpraneet
I might be wrong but I fear this strategy might unfairly punish e-readers which imo offer the best of both worlds
sodality2
I've brought my kindle to even the most strict of technology-banned lectures (with punishments like dropping a letter grade after one violation, and failing you after two), and never have they given me a problem when asked. They realize the issue isn't the silicon or lithium, it's the distractions it enables. I'm sure I could connect to some LLM on it, it's just that no one ever will.
PlatoIsADisease
Its obvious they don't care.
That said, I always thought exams should be the moment of truth.
I had teachers that spoke broken english, but I'd do the homework and read the textbook in class. I learned many topics without the use of a teacher.
zkmon
>This academic year, some English professors have increased their preference for physical copies of readings, citing concerns related to artificial intelligence.
I didn't get it. How can printing avoid AI? And more importantly is this AI-resistance sustainable?
secabeen
You can't easily copy and paste from a printout into AI. Sure, you can track down the reading yourself online, and then copy and paste in, but not during class, and not without some effort.
Flavius
This approach is just cheap theater. It doesn't actually stop AI, it just adds a step to the process. Any student can snap a photo, OCR the text and feed it into an LLM in seconds. All this policy accomplishes is wasting paper and forcing students to engage in digital hoop-jumping.
coffeefirst
The students were reading AI summaries rather than the original text.
Does this literally work? It adds slightly more friction, but you can still ask the robot to summarize pretty much anything that would appear on the syllabus. What it likely does it set expectations.
This doesn't strike me as being anti-AI or "resistance" at all. But if you don't train your own brain to read and make thoughts, you won't have one.
everybodyknows
> This semester, she is requiring all students to have printed options.
What could it mean for an "option" to be "required"?
bko
Who is behind this over digitization of primary school? My understanding is that in the Us pretty much all homework and tests are done on computers or iPads.
This obv isn’t a push by parents because I can’t imagine parents I know want their kids in front of a screen all day. At best they’re indifferent. My only guess is the teachers unions that don’t want teachers grading and creating lesson plans and all the other work they used to do.
And since this trend kid scores or performance has not gotten better, so what gives?
Can anyone comment if it’s as bad as this and what’s behind it.
el_benhameen
My kids are in elementary school in the SF area (although pretty far in the ‘burbs) and this is not my experience.
The older one has a chromebook and uses it for research and production of larger written projects and presents—the kind of things you’d expect. The younger one doesn’t have any school-supplied device yet.
Both kids have math exercises, language worksheets, short writing exercises, etc., all done on paper. This is the majority of homework.
I’m fine with this system. I wish they’d spend a little more time teaching computer basics (I did a lot of touch typing exercises in the 90’s; my older one doesn’t seem to have those kind of lessons). But in general, there’s not too much homework, there’s good emphasis on reading, and I appreciate that the older one is learning how to plan, research, and create projects using the tool he’ll use to do so in future schooling.
michaelt
A few decades ago:
People needed to be taught digital skills that were in growing demand in the workplace.
The kids researching things online and word-processing their homework were doing well in class (because only upper-middle-class types could afford home PCs)
Some trials of digital learning produced good results. Teaching by the world's greatest teachers, exactly the pace every student needs, with continuous feedback and infinite patience.
Blocking distractions? How hard can that be?
Mathnerd314
If you are flipping through the reading to find a quote, then printed readings are hard to beat, unless you can search for a word with digital search. But speed reading RSVP presentation beats any kind of print reading by a mile, if you are aiming for comprehension. So, it is hard to say where the technology is going. Nobody has put in the work to really make reading on an iPad as smooth and fluid as print, in terms of rapid page flipping. But the potential is there. It is kind of laughable how the salesman will be saying, oh it has a fast processor, and then you open up a PDF and scroll a few pages fast and they start being blank instead of actually having text.
anilakar
At 150 eurobucks apiece, printed freshman coursebooks were prohibitively expensive in uni. We just pirated everything as a consequence.
Flavius
That's the whole point. They don't care about students or education, they care about wasting resources and making a lot of money in the process.
Symbiote
At my university in actual Europe, many copies of the required textbooks were available in the library. Printing was free.
jmclnx
While I fully agree with this, this quote bothers me:
>Shorter packets can cost around $20, while longer packets can cost upwards of $150 when ordered with the cheapest binding option
Does a student need to print out multiple TYCO Packets ? If so, only the very rich could afford this. I think educations should go back to printed books and submitting you work to the Prof. on paper.
But submitting printed pages back to the Prof. for homework will avoid the school saying "Submit only Word Documents". That way a student can use the method they prefer, avoiding buying expensive software. One can then use just a simple free text editor if they want. Or even a typewriter :)
recursivedoubts
I have mentioned this in a few comments: for my CS classes I have gone from a historical 60-80% projects / 40-20% quizzes grade split, to a 50/50 split, and have moved my quizzes from being online to being in-person, pen-on-paper with one sheet of hand-written notes
Rather than banning AI, I'm showing students how to use it effectively as a personalized TA. I'm giving them this AGENTS.md file:
And showing them how to use AI to summarize the slides into a quiz review sheet, generate example questions with answer walk throughs, etc.
Of course I can't ensure they aren't just having AI do the projects, but I tell them that if they do that they are cheating themselves: the projects are designed to draw them into the art of programming and give them decent, real-world coding experience that they will need, even if they end up working at a higher level in the future.
AI can be a very effective tool for education if used properly. I have used it to create a ton of extremely useful visualizations (e.g. how twos complement works) that I wouldn't have otherwise. But it is obviously extremely dangerous as well.
"It is impossible to design a system so perfect that no one needs to be good."
buckle8017
hopefully you've also modified the quizzes to be handwriting compatible.
I once got "implement a BCD decoder" with about a 1"x4" space to do it.
thenipper
How do you handle kids w/ a learning disability who can't effectively write well?
softwaredoug
Do you find advocating for AI literacy to be controversial amongst peers?
I find, as a parent, when I talk about it at the high school level I get very negative reactions from other parents. Specifically I want high schoolers to be skilled in the use of AI, and particular critical thinking skills around the tools, while simultaneously having skills assuming no AI. I don’t want the school to be blindly “anti AI” as I’m aware it will be a part of the economy our kids are brought into.
There are some head in the sands, very emotional attitudes about this stuff. (And obviously idiotically uncritical pro AI stances, but I doubt educators risk having those stances)
crazygringo
> TYCO Print is a printing service where professors can upload course files for TYCO to print out for students as they order. Shorter packets can cost around $20, while longer packets can cost upwards of $150 when ordered with the cheapest binding option.
This made sense a couple of decades ago. Today, it's just bizarre to be spending $150 on a phonebook-sized packet of reading materials. So much paper and toner.
This is what iPads and Kindles are for.
nine_k
No, the cost of the paper, toner, and binding is the cost of providing of a provably distraction-free environment.
To make it more palpable for an IT worker: "It's just bizarre to give a developer a room with a door, so much sheetrock and wood! Working with computers is what open-plan offices are for."
azinman2
Computers have not advanced education — the data shows the opposite. I think we should just go back to physical books (which can be used!), and pen and paper for notes and assignments.
dlcarrier
In pretty much any school system, just complain that the printout is not compatible with your text-to-speech engine, and the instructor will be required to provide an electronic version, no questions asked.
raincole
If textbooks weren't so expensive I'd be more cheering on them.
> TYCO Print is a printing service where professors can upload course files for TYCO to print out for students as they order. Shorter packets can cost around $20, while longer packets can cost upwards of $150 when ordered with the cheapest binding option.
Lol $150 for reading packets? Not even textbooks? Seriously the whole system can fuck off.
ageitgey
> “Over the years I’ve found that when students read on paper they're more likely to read carefully, and less likely in a pinch to read on their phones or rely on chatbot summaries,” Shirkhani wrote to the News. “This improves the quality of class time by orders of magnitude.”
This is the key part. I'm doing a part-time graduate degree at a major university right now, and it's fascinating to watch the week-to-week pressure AI is putting on the education establishment. When your job as a student is to read case studies and think about them, but Google Drive says "here's an automatic summary of the key points" before you even open the file, it takes a very determined student to ignore that and actually read the material. And if no one reads the original material, the class discussion is a complete waste of time, with everyone bringing up the same trite points, and the whole exercise becomes a facade.
Schools are struggling to figure out how to let students use AI tools to be more productive while still learning how to think. The students (especially undergrads) are incredibly good at doing as little work as possible. And until you get to the end-of-PhD level, there's basically nothing you encounter in your learning journey that ChatGPT can't perfectly summarize and analyze in 1 second, removing the requirement for you to do anything.
This isn't even about AI being "good" or "bad". We still teach children how to add numbers before we give them calculators because it's a useful skill. But now these AI thinking-calculators are injecting themselves into every text box and screen, making them impossible to avoid. If the answer pops up in the sidebar before you even ask the question, what kind of masochist is going to bother learning how to read and think?
arnavpraneet
I might be wrong but I fear this strategy might unfairly punish e-readers which imo offer the best of both worlds
sodality2
I've brought my kindle to even the most strict of technology-banned lectures (with punishments like dropping a letter grade after one violation, and failing you after two), and never have they given me a problem when asked. They realize the issue isn't the silicon or lithium, it's the distractions it enables. I'm sure I could connect to some LLM on it, it's just that no one ever will.
PlatoIsADisease
Its obvious they don't care.
That said, I always thought exams should be the moment of truth.
I had teachers that spoke broken english, but I'd do the homework and read the textbook in class. I learned many topics without the use of a teacher.
>This academic year, some English professors have increased their preference for physical copies of readings, citing concerns related to artificial intelligence.
I didn't get it. How can printing avoid AI? And more importantly is this AI-resistance sustainable?
You can't easily copy and paste from a printout into AI. Sure, you can track down the reading yourself online, and then copy and paste in, but not during class, and not without some effort.
This approach is just cheap theater. It doesn't actually stop AI, it just adds a step to the process. Any student can snap a photo, OCR the text and feed it into an LLM in seconds. All this policy accomplishes is wasting paper and forcing students to engage in digital hoop-jumping.
The students were reading AI summaries rather than the original text.
Does this literally work? It adds slightly more friction, but you can still ask the robot to summarize pretty much anything that would appear on the syllabus. What it likely does it set expectations.
This doesn't strike me as being anti-AI or "resistance" at all. But if you don't train your own brain to read and make thoughts, you won't have one.
> This semester, she is requiring all students to have printed options.
What could it mean for an "option" to be "required"?
Who is behind this over digitization of primary school? My understanding is that in the Us pretty much all homework and tests are done on computers or iPads.
This obv isn’t a push by parents because I can’t imagine parents I know want their kids in front of a screen all day. At best they’re indifferent. My only guess is the teachers unions that don’t want teachers grading and creating lesson plans and all the other work they used to do.
And since this trend kid scores or performance has not gotten better, so what gives?
Can anyone comment if it’s as bad as this and what’s behind it.
My kids are in elementary school in the SF area (although pretty far in the ‘burbs) and this is not my experience.
The older one has a chromebook and uses it for research and production of larger written projects and presents—the kind of things you’d expect. The younger one doesn’t have any school-supplied device yet.
Both kids have math exercises, language worksheets, short writing exercises, etc., all done on paper. This is the majority of homework.
I’m fine with this system. I wish they’d spend a little more time teaching computer basics (I did a lot of touch typing exercises in the 90’s; my older one doesn’t seem to have those kind of lessons). But in general, there’s not too much homework, there’s good emphasis on reading, and I appreciate that the older one is learning how to plan, research, and create projects using the tool he’ll use to do so in future schooling.
A few decades ago:
People needed to be taught digital skills that were in growing demand in the workplace.
The kids researching things online and word-processing their homework were doing well in class (because only upper-middle-class types could afford home PCs)
Some trials of digital learning produced good results. Teaching by the world's greatest teachers, exactly the pace every student needs, with continuous feedback and infinite patience.
Blocking distractions? How hard can that be?
If you are flipping through the reading to find a quote, then printed readings are hard to beat, unless you can search for a word with digital search. But speed reading RSVP presentation beats any kind of print reading by a mile, if you are aiming for comprehension. So, it is hard to say where the technology is going. Nobody has put in the work to really make reading on an iPad as smooth and fluid as print, in terms of rapid page flipping. But the potential is there. It is kind of laughable how the salesman will be saying, oh it has a fast processor, and then you open up a PDF and scroll a few pages fast and they start being blank instead of actually having text.
At 150 eurobucks apiece, printed freshman coursebooks were prohibitively expensive in uni. We just pirated everything as a consequence.
That's the whole point. They don't care about students or education, they care about wasting resources and making a lot of money in the process.
At my university in actual Europe, many copies of the required textbooks were available in the library. Printing was free.
While I fully agree with this, this quote bothers me:
>Shorter packets can cost around $20, while longer packets can cost upwards of $150 when ordered with the cheapest binding option
Does a student need to print out multiple TYCO Packets ? If so, only the very rich could afford this. I think educations should go back to printed books and submitting you work to the Prof. on paper.
But submitting printed pages back to the Prof. for homework will avoid the school saying "Submit only Word Documents". That way a student can use the method they prefer, avoiding buying expensive software. One can then use just a simple free text editor if they want. Or even a typewriter :)
I have mentioned this in a few comments: for my CS classes I have gone from a historical 60-80% projects / 40-20% quizzes grade split, to a 50/50 split, and have moved my quizzes from being online to being in-person, pen-on-paper with one sheet of hand-written notes
Rather than banning AI, I'm showing students how to use it effectively as a personalized TA. I'm giving them this AGENTS.md file:
https://gist.github.com/1cg/a6c6f2276a1fe5ee172282580a44a7ac
And showing them how to use AI to summarize the slides into a quiz review sheet, generate example questions with answer walk throughs, etc.
Of course I can't ensure they aren't just having AI do the projects, but I tell them that if they do that they are cheating themselves: the projects are designed to draw them into the art of programming and give them decent, real-world coding experience that they will need, even if they end up working at a higher level in the future.
AI can be a very effective tool for education if used properly. I have used it to create a ton of extremely useful visualizations (e.g. how twos complement works) that I wouldn't have otherwise. But it is obviously extremely dangerous as well.
"It is impossible to design a system so perfect that no one needs to be good."
hopefully you've also modified the quizzes to be handwriting compatible.
I once got "implement a BCD decoder" with about a 1"x4" space to do it.
How do you handle kids w/ a learning disability who can't effectively write well?
Do you find advocating for AI literacy to be controversial amongst peers?
I find, as a parent, when I talk about it at the high school level I get very negative reactions from other parents. Specifically I want high schoolers to be skilled in the use of AI, and particular critical thinking skills around the tools, while simultaneously having skills assuming no AI. I don’t want the school to be blindly “anti AI” as I’m aware it will be a part of the economy our kids are brought into.
There are some head in the sands, very emotional attitudes about this stuff. (And obviously idiotically uncritical pro AI stances, but I doubt educators risk having those stances)
> TYCO Print is a printing service where professors can upload course files for TYCO to print out for students as they order. Shorter packets can cost around $20, while longer packets can cost upwards of $150 when ordered with the cheapest binding option.
This made sense a couple of decades ago. Today, it's just bizarre to be spending $150 on a phonebook-sized packet of reading materials. So much paper and toner.
This is what iPads and Kindles are for.
No, the cost of the paper, toner, and binding is the cost of providing of a provably distraction-free environment.
To make it more palpable for an IT worker: "It's just bizarre to give a developer a room with a door, so much sheetrock and wood! Working with computers is what open-plan offices are for."
Computers have not advanced education — the data shows the opposite. I think we should just go back to physical books (which can be used!), and pen and paper for notes and assignments.
In pretty much any school system, just complain that the printout is not compatible with your text-to-speech engine, and the instructor will be required to provide an electronic version, no questions asked.
If textbooks weren't so expensive I'd be more cheering on them.
> TYCO Print is a printing service where professors can upload course files for TYCO to print out for students as they order. Shorter packets can cost around $20, while longer packets can cost upwards of $150 when ordered with the cheapest binding option.
Lol $150 for reading packets? Not even textbooks? Seriously the whole system can fuck off.
> “Over the years I’ve found that when students read on paper they're more likely to read carefully, and less likely in a pinch to read on their phones or rely on chatbot summaries,” Shirkhani wrote to the News. “This improves the quality of class time by orders of magnitude.”
This is the key part. I'm doing a part-time graduate degree at a major university right now, and it's fascinating to watch the week-to-week pressure AI is putting on the education establishment. When your job as a student is to read case studies and think about them, but Google Drive says "here's an automatic summary of the key points" before you even open the file, it takes a very determined student to ignore that and actually read the material. And if no one reads the original material, the class discussion is a complete waste of time, with everyone bringing up the same trite points, and the whole exercise becomes a facade.
Schools are struggling to figure out how to let students use AI tools to be more productive while still learning how to think. The students (especially undergrads) are incredibly good at doing as little work as possible. And until you get to the end-of-PhD level, there's basically nothing you encounter in your learning journey that ChatGPT can't perfectly summarize and analyze in 1 second, removing the requirement for you to do anything.
This isn't even about AI being "good" or "bad". We still teach children how to add numbers before we give them calculators because it's a useful skill. But now these AI thinking-calculators are injecting themselves into every text box and screen, making them impossible to avoid. If the answer pops up in the sidebar before you even ask the question, what kind of masochist is going to bother learning how to read and think?
I might be wrong but I fear this strategy might unfairly punish e-readers which imo offer the best of both worlds
I've brought my kindle to even the most strict of technology-banned lectures (with punishments like dropping a letter grade after one violation, and failing you after two), and never have they given me a problem when asked. They realize the issue isn't the silicon or lithium, it's the distractions it enables. I'm sure I could connect to some LLM on it, it's just that no one ever will.
Its obvious they don't care.
That said, I always thought exams should be the moment of truth.
I had teachers that spoke broken english, but I'd do the homework and read the textbook in class. I learned many topics without the use of a teacher.
>This academic year, some English professors have increased their preference for physical copies of readings, citing concerns related to artificial intelligence.
I didn't get it. How can printing avoid AI? And more importantly is this AI-resistance sustainable?
You can't easily copy and paste from a printout into AI. Sure, you can track down the reading yourself online, and then copy and paste in, but not during class, and not without some effort.
This approach is just cheap theater. It doesn't actually stop AI, it just adds a step to the process. Any student can snap a photo, OCR the text and feed it into an LLM in seconds. All this policy accomplishes is wasting paper and forcing students to engage in digital hoop-jumping.
The students were reading AI summaries rather than the original text.
Does this literally work? It adds slightly more friction, but you can still ask the robot to summarize pretty much anything that would appear on the syllabus. What it likely does it set expectations.
This doesn't strike me as being anti-AI or "resistance" at all. But if you don't train your own brain to read and make thoughts, you won't have one.
> This semester, she is requiring all students to have printed options.
What could it mean for an "option" to be "required"?
Who is behind this over digitization of primary school? My understanding is that in the Us pretty much all homework and tests are done on computers or iPads.
This obv isn’t a push by parents because I can’t imagine parents I know want their kids in front of a screen all day. At best they’re indifferent. My only guess is the teachers unions that don’t want teachers grading and creating lesson plans and all the other work they used to do.
And since this trend kid scores or performance has not gotten better, so what gives?
Can anyone comment if it’s as bad as this and what’s behind it.
My kids are in elementary school in the SF area (although pretty far in the ‘burbs) and this is not my experience.
The older one has a chromebook and uses it for research and production of larger written projects and presents—the kind of things you’d expect. The younger one doesn’t have any school-supplied device yet.
Both kids have math exercises, language worksheets, short writing exercises, etc., all done on paper. This is the majority of homework.
I’m fine with this system. I wish they’d spend a little more time teaching computer basics (I did a lot of touch typing exercises in the 90’s; my older one doesn’t seem to have those kind of lessons). But in general, there’s not too much homework, there’s good emphasis on reading, and I appreciate that the older one is learning how to plan, research, and create projects using the tool he’ll use to do so in future schooling.
A few decades ago:
People needed to be taught digital skills that were in growing demand in the workplace.
The kids researching things online and word-processing their homework were doing well in class (because only upper-middle-class types could afford home PCs)
Some trials of digital learning produced good results. Teaching by the world's greatest teachers, exactly the pace every student needs, with continuous feedback and infinite patience.
Blocking distractions? How hard can that be?
If you are flipping through the reading to find a quote, then printed readings are hard to beat, unless you can search for a word with digital search. But speed reading RSVP presentation beats any kind of print reading by a mile, if you are aiming for comprehension. So, it is hard to say where the technology is going. Nobody has put in the work to really make reading on an iPad as smooth and fluid as print, in terms of rapid page flipping. But the potential is there. It is kind of laughable how the salesman will be saying, oh it has a fast processor, and then you open up a PDF and scroll a few pages fast and they start being blank instead of actually having text.
At 150 eurobucks apiece, printed freshman coursebooks were prohibitively expensive in uni. We just pirated everything as a consequence.
That's the whole point. They don't care about students or education, they care about wasting resources and making a lot of money in the process.
At my university in actual Europe, many copies of the required textbooks were available in the library. Printing was free.
While I fully agree with this, this quote bothers me:
>Shorter packets can cost around $20, while longer packets can cost upwards of $150 when ordered with the cheapest binding option
Does a student need to print out multiple TYCO Packets ? If so, only the very rich could afford this. I think educations should go back to printed books and submitting you work to the Prof. on paper.
But submitting printed pages back to the Prof. for homework will avoid the school saying "Submit only Word Documents". That way a student can use the method they prefer, avoiding buying expensive software. One can then use just a simple free text editor if they want. Or even a typewriter :)
I have mentioned this in a few comments: for my CS classes I have gone from a historical 60-80% projects / 40-20% quizzes grade split, to a 50/50 split, and have moved my quizzes from being online to being in-person, pen-on-paper with one sheet of hand-written notes
Rather than banning AI, I'm showing students how to use it effectively as a personalized TA. I'm giving them this AGENTS.md file:
https://gist.github.com/1cg/a6c6f2276a1fe5ee172282580a44a7ac
And showing them how to use AI to summarize the slides into a quiz review sheet, generate example questions with answer walk throughs, etc.
Of course I can't ensure they aren't just having AI do the projects, but I tell them that if they do that they are cheating themselves: the projects are designed to draw them into the art of programming and give them decent, real-world coding experience that they will need, even if they end up working at a higher level in the future.
AI can be a very effective tool for education if used properly. I have used it to create a ton of extremely useful visualizations (e.g. how twos complement works) that I wouldn't have otherwise. But it is obviously extremely dangerous as well.
"It is impossible to design a system so perfect that no one needs to be good."
hopefully you've also modified the quizzes to be handwriting compatible.
I once got "implement a BCD decoder" with about a 1"x4" space to do it.
How do you handle kids w/ a learning disability who can't effectively write well?
Do you find advocating for AI literacy to be controversial amongst peers?
I find, as a parent, when I talk about it at the high school level I get very negative reactions from other parents. Specifically I want high schoolers to be skilled in the use of AI, and particular critical thinking skills around the tools, while simultaneously having skills assuming no AI. I don’t want the school to be blindly “anti AI” as I’m aware it will be a part of the economy our kids are brought into.
There are some head in the sands, very emotional attitudes about this stuff. (And obviously idiotically uncritical pro AI stances, but I doubt educators risk having those stances)
> TYCO Print is a printing service where professors can upload course files for TYCO to print out for students as they order. Shorter packets can cost around $20, while longer packets can cost upwards of $150 when ordered with the cheapest binding option.
This made sense a couple of decades ago. Today, it's just bizarre to be spending $150 on a phonebook-sized packet of reading materials. So much paper and toner.
This is what iPads and Kindles are for.
No, the cost of the paper, toner, and binding is the cost of providing of a provably distraction-free environment.
To make it more palpable for an IT worker: "It's just bizarre to give a developer a room with a door, so much sheetrock and wood! Working with computers is what open-plan offices are for."
Computers have not advanced education — the data shows the opposite. I think we should just go back to physical books (which can be used!), and pen and paper for notes and assignments.
In pretty much any school system, just complain that the printout is not compatible with your text-to-speech engine, and the instructor will be required to provide an electronic version, no questions asked.
If textbooks weren't so expensive I'd be more cheering on them.
> TYCO Print is a printing service where professors can upload course files for TYCO to print out for students as they order. Shorter packets can cost around $20, while longer packets can cost upwards of $150 when ordered with the cheapest binding option.
Lol $150 for reading packets? Not even textbooks? Seriously the whole system can fuck off.
> “Over the years I’ve found that when students read on paper they're more likely to read carefully, and less likely in a pinch to read on their phones or rely on chatbot summaries,” Shirkhani wrote to the News. “This improves the quality of class time by orders of magnitude.”
This is the key part. I'm doing a part-time graduate degree at a major university right now, and it's fascinating to watch the week-to-week pressure AI is putting on the education establishment. When your job as a student is to read case studies and think about them, but Google Drive says "here's an automatic summary of the key points" before you even open the file, it takes a very determined student to ignore that and actually read the material. And if no one reads the original material, the class discussion is a complete waste of time, with everyone bringing up the same trite points, and the whole exercise becomes a facade.
Schools are struggling to figure out how to let students use AI tools to be more productive while still learning how to think. The students (especially undergrads) are incredibly good at doing as little work as possible. And until you get to the end-of-PhD level, there's basically nothing you encounter in your learning journey that ChatGPT can't perfectly summarize and analyze in 1 second, removing the requirement for you to do anything.
This isn't even about AI being "good" or "bad". We still teach children how to add numbers before we give them calculators because it's a useful skill. But now these AI thinking-calculators are injecting themselves into every text box and screen, making them impossible to avoid. If the answer pops up in the sidebar before you even ask the question, what kind of masochist is going to bother learning how to read and think?
I might be wrong but I fear this strategy might unfairly punish e-readers which imo offer the best of both worlds
I've brought my kindle to even the most strict of technology-banned lectures (with punishments like dropping a letter grade after one violation, and failing you after two), and never have they given me a problem when asked. They realize the issue isn't the silicon or lithium, it's the distractions it enables. I'm sure I could connect to some LLM on it, it's just that no one ever will.
Its obvious they don't care.
That said, I always thought exams should be the moment of truth.
I had teachers that spoke broken english, but I'd do the homework and read the textbook in class. I learned many topics without the use of a teacher.