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I teach a technology class to students from Kindergarten to fifth grade. The accelerated development of truly impressive AI models recently — especially ChatGPT and Stable Diffusion — has made it clear to me how dramatically different technological literacy will be when my students eventually enter the world as adults.
As we move into a future with increased technological automation, forward-looking curricula across all subject matters must focus on fostering creativity in students. Although AI can make new connections between elements in its training data, it is humans alone that are capable of generating truly novel ideas.
I believe teaching young students how to code will continue to be important to some extent. However, with the rise of code generation technologies like GitHub CoPilot, the most durable programming skills might be spec-writing, debugging, and revising. Physical electronics and robotics will arguably rise in relevance for the foreseeable future. Understanding and debugging systems will be an important skill here, too.
It would be great to hear from other educators that are thinking through similar topics right now.
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Zero Trust Homework
Here’s an example of what homework might look like under this new paradigm. Imagine that a school acquires an AI software suite that students are expected to use for their answers about Hobbes or anything else; every answer that is generated is recorded so that teachers can instantly ascertain that students didn’t use a different system. Moreover, instead of futilely demanding that students write essays themselves, teachers insist on AI. Here’s the thing, though: the system will frequently give the wrong answers (and not just on accident — wrong answers will be often pushed out on purpose); the real skill in the homework assignment will be in verifying the answers the system churns out — learning how to be a verifier and an editor, instead of a regurgitator.
I am not sure I fully agree with Ben’s proposal here but, at the same time, I am having trouble coming up with any coherent solutions for homework / assessments that truly account for the AI we have today — let alone what we will have 10 years from now.
Ultimately, I am hopeful these advances in AI will push us to re-evaluate our current approach to education and lead us towards more meaningful, interdisciplinary, and practical approaches in the future.
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