I teach 18 year olds who range in reading levels from preschool to college, but the majority of them are in the lower half that range. I am devastated by what AI and social media have done to them. My kids don’t think anymore. They don’t have interests. Literally, when I ask them what they’re interested in, so many of them can’t name anything for me. Even my smartest kids insist that ChatGPT is good “when used correctly.” I ask them, “How does one use it correctly then?” They can’t answer the question. They don’t have original thoughts. They just parrot back what they’ve heard in TikToks. They try to show me “information” ChatGPT gave them. I ask them, “How do you know this is true?” They move their phone closer to me for emphasis, exclaiming, “Look, it says it right here!” They cannot understand what I am asking them. It breaks my heart for them and honestly it makes it hard to continue teaching. If I were to quit, it would be because of how technology has stunted kids and how hard it’s become to reach them because of that.
My kids don’t use LLMs because they take longer and do a worse job (still) than just writing it up themselves.
They DO use LLMs like people used to use Wikipedia, and Encyclopedia Brittanica before that: to surface information to investigate.
But I’ve taught them that writing is a method to communicate your knowledge, not to pass some sort of educational hurdle. So using ChatGPT would be useless anyway, as it doesn’t contain their insights.
That’s what I use it for. A slightly better Wikipedia, which is funny because when Wikipedia came out, schools were threatening punishment.
nah they dont threaten punishments, they just wont recognize wikipedia as a source in essays. if you go into a writing lab, sometimes the “moniter” will try to lecture if they see you using wikipedia.
Just copy the source from the Wikipedia article after you check that it clears the bar.