Comment by simonw
8 hours ago
> I believe that explicitly teaching students how to use AI in their learning process
I'm a bit nervous about that one.
I very firmly believe that learning well from AI is a skill that can and should be learned, and can be taught.
What's an open question for me is whether kids can learn that skill early in their education.
It seems likely to me that you need a strong baseline of understanding in a whole array of areas - what "truth" means, what primary sources are, extremely strong communication and text interpretation skills - before you can usefully dig into the subtleties of effectively using LLMs to help yourself learn.
Can kids be leveled up to that point? I honestly don't know.
Agreed that a huge part of effectively using LLMs in education will be teaching proper evaluation of sources and what does/doesn't constitute a primary source.
A lot of this feels like the conversation when Wikipedia was new. (Yes, I'm from that grade-school generation)
The key lesson was Wikipedia isn't a primary source and can't be used to directly support a claim. It can absolutely be used to help locate a primary source in the research process though!
Granted, LLM use is a bit trickier than Wikipedia, but fundamentally it's the same: if a paper needs citations, and kids understand that LLMs aren't valid sources, then they'll figure it out.
To me, the more critical gap will be in the thinking process, and I expect "no computer" assignments and in-class exercises to become more popular.