[HN Gopher] To Supercharge Learning, Look to Play
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To Supercharge Learning, Look to Play
Author : dnetesn
Score : 105 points
Date : 2023-04-08 15:39 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (nautil.us)
(TXT) w3m dump (nautil.us)
| rpastuszak wrote:
| If you're interested in the subject you might enjoy reading my
| article dealing with procrastination, laziness and play:
| https://sonnet.io/posts/hummingbirds/
|
| I don't have ADHD but (for different reasons) I struggle with
| similar issues. I also run (free) coaching/ranting sessions for
| people with similar problems.
| jiggywiggy wrote:
| There are hands all over the Himalayans rocks. I saw many in
| Kham. In Tibetan tradition it's a sign of meditative
| accomplishment to leave ones handprint in the rocks (and melt the
| ice). Hard to believe, but the hands are everywhere. Even if the
| stone is old hard to date the handprint itself. Ice melting has
| been studied and proven.
| zachruss92 wrote:
| As a developer who struggles with attention at times, I found
| this article really interesting. It's cool to see that there are
| playful solutions being developed that can help kids with ADHD
| learn and develop important skills. I'm excited to see that video
| games like NeuroRacer and EndeavorRx are being recognized as
| tools for cognitive development. It's great to see that playful
| learning environments are being promoted as important for
| building skills like collaboration, critical thinking, and
| creativity. Overall, I think it's a positive step towards
| supporting people with different learning styles and differences.
| [deleted]
| fww wrote:
| For those interested in learning more about the link between
| Learning and Play, Project Zero from Harvard's Graduate School of
| Education recently published a free e-book, "A Pedagogy of Play:
| Supporting playful learning in classrooms and schools." It's
| written as a guide to help bring playful learning into more
| traditional classroom settings.
|
| https://www.popatplay.org/post/launching-a-pedagogy-of-play-...
| NoZebra120vClip wrote:
| When I was in the 5th grade or so, I had a Commodore VIC-20, then
| a C=64. These were, respectively, the second and third machines I
| learned to program in BASIC.
|
| One of my completed achievements was a sort of "typing tutor"
| game. I suppose I modeled it upon the game on my Casio calculator
| watch, and Missile Command. In my game, letters would fall from
| the sky, and pressing the correct key would destroy the letter
| and save Earth.
|
| My father belittled it because it was a game and so, it couldn't
| be serious learning. Well Dad, I seriously learned some BASIC in
| order to get to a finished product and do a literal tape-out.
| Raspberry Pi entered the chat
| crawfordcomeaux wrote:
| Here are some webinar videos for deathclowning methodology, which
| is meant for playing with anything, especially the taboo.
|
| https://youtube.com/watch?v=gn-85vl-t5s
|
| https://youtube.com/watch?v=yruvppEhBW0
|
| https://youtube.com/watch?v=WxPfCufFNZ8
| oytis wrote:
| > As Plato famously said, "You can discover more about a person
| in an hour of play than in a year of conversation."
|
| Is it a self-referential example of play?
| dchuk wrote:
| Sort of related...
|
| My wife is an educator (public 1st grade teacher in California).
| We just had the discussion that next year will likely be her last
| year in that profession. The stress is too high, support too low,
| kid's behavior issues are skyrocketing, parents are getting
| downright violent/threatening to the staff...it's just a fuckin
| mess. Many of her colleagues are leaving the profession. I expect
| there to be a growing deficit of teachers in the coming years.
|
| We're hoping we can get her working on education materials/maybe
| tutoring as a side business during her sabbatical (maybe
| retirement)?
|
| I bring this up because what I've been thinking about lately, is
| that with the recent explosion of Large Language Models and their
| inevitable rapid evolution, that to me it's pretty clear
| education needs to go down the path of AI-based, automatically
| customized and tuned and guided, computer based education for
| primary students. We're right around the corner from AI
| automatically generating highly interactive learning courses for
| children, that will fundamentally reshape the notion of
| classroom-based education.
|
| The path to adoption will probably be a mess because of the
| bureaucracy in education in general, but maybe that means more
| people will explore private/home-based education paths combined
| with outlets for social interaction for their kids (maybe there
| will be a boom in youth sports?)
|
| Random Saturday morning daydreaming here, curious what others
| think.
| xphilter wrote:
| We need less tech and more humans in education. All the things
| in your first paragraph are true problems, but the solution is
| 15 kids per class and discipline in the class room not AI.
| tornato7 wrote:
| LLMs have already done wonders for my own learning and I think
| it will have a huge effect in highschool education and beyond.
|
| But below that level, the topics that are being taught are very
| standardized and have been studied to death, and there already
| exists a ton of interactive learning tools, toys, projects, and
| games. Teachers below middle-school level are mostly
| babysitting and trying to just get kids to learn the rules and
| pay attention.
|
| I am concerned for the education of the next generation of
| kids. Stories like yours are all too common.
| operatingthetan wrote:
| >LLMs have already done wonders for my own learning and I
| think it will have a huge effect in highschool education and
| beyond.
|
| Can you explain your process for using it? Is it done in a
| session or do you ask random questions throughout the day?
| Specific topics or general?
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| I'm not the OP but the way chatgpt has enabled my learning
| last 2 months is:
|
| when I study or learn stuff, I have questions. I'm
| naturally curious and desire to fully understand something,
| but also a topic may encourage me to explore strange other
| avenues or branches or topics until I'm satisfied and can
| return.
|
| Reading from books or videos can be frustrating for obvious
| reasons. When tutored, I need an instructor who is not
| bound to "lesson one page one, now lesson one page two"
| blind and sequential approach.
|
| Chatgpt has been nothing less than a God send.
|
| E.g. I've tried to learn French 5 times over 25 years
| living in Canada. Always failed. I tried Michel Thomas self
| study, Berlitz group classroom, duolingo, even private
| tutor. They were serious efforts, but I hated the language
| and never felt I am even close to understanding it.
|
| Now whenever I have the remotest slightest question or
| curiosity I ask chatgpt. And then move on with the
| sequential class satisfied. It's both emotionally
| satisfying and encouraging, _and_ it allows me to have
| better understanding of each topic. It 's been a genuine
| force multiplier.
|
| Same with music theory (0.1% of piano teachers I've met are
| remotely capable or willing of answering questions "why".
| Two of them swore that "music theory" == "learning
| notation". Etc.) and, though far less, Python.
| jacobolus wrote:
| The only problem I have with this is that Chat GPT is
| entirely happy to make answers up out of whole cloth
| (including fake citations, etc. if you ask for follow-
| up), but present them with an air of certainty. It takes
| carefully tracking down each and every claim, and as
| often as not they turn out to be somewhere between
| misleading and outright wrong.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| Right, but the question is : what is the chance / risk /
| percentage?
|
| All the examples of hallucination I see on Internet
| are... Either controversial or pushy or edgy.
|
| When asked a simple question on factual well-covered,
| non-controversial items, success rate seems very high.
|
| Do we have a feel for safe and unsafe areas? Are there
| type of questions or ways of asking them that will
| produce high confidence?
| onos wrote:
| Access to information has not been the bottleneck in education
| for some time. As you noted here behavior issues are. --> fail
| to see how AI will help.
| Metacelsus wrote:
| So, basically the Young Lady's Illustrated Primer.
| 6438y44y4u wrote:
| I think you should talk with your wife more to be honest
| because I think you've missed the key elements of what she was
| telling you. I live in California myself and have a number of
| friends who are teachers at various grade levels. Your wife is
| spot on and AI is the last thing that's going to solve the
| issue. Children with behavioral problems (hint: 9.5/10 times
| it's their family's fault but you're not allowed to blame the
| parent as an educator) aren't going to cooperate with your
| automated learning. If they were a poorly performing student
| before, they also probably have a home situation that isn't
| going to be receptive to whatever pressure you try to apply on
| them to coerce their children. And even if you could find an
| angle to apply pressure from, what are you going to do if you
| discover that the solution is disproportionately necessary for
| certain minority groups? Now even if your solution works it's
| dead in the water because it's racist. The teachers aren't
| leaving because they lack solutions they are leaving because
| nothing effective is allowed and all the while they get to
| endure abuse from both parents and students. None of this is
| going to be solved by making it even easier to ignore school by
| replacing teachers.
| james4k wrote:
| What are you thinking about when you say "nothing effective
| is allowed"?
| another_story wrote:
| Not OP, but removal of problem children from the general
| classroom environment and clear and consistent consequences
| for actions.
| Baeocystin wrote:
| Have many teachers in my family. My only complaint with your
| statement is that 9.5 out of 10 is way too generous. The
| level of absolute bare basics decency and behavior is so bad
| that it's hard to believe.
| jacobolus wrote:
| I spend plenty of time around "normal" well-adjusted
| middle- and upper-middle-class kids, and I'd say kids are
| inherently little balls of emotion with their own ideas and
| personalities who haven't yet developed socially
| appropriate ways of dealing with frustration. They get into
| plenty of mischief despite their parents' best efforts and
| wide variety of parenting styles.
|
| Most families are doing their best, but being human is just
| hard sometimes.
| Baeocystin wrote:
| To be clear, I'm not talking about mischief. I'm talking
| about assault, battery, serious destruction of property,
| direct threats to the teachers during class, with less
| than zero support given to the staff by the
| administration. To give a specific example, one of my
| friends used to teach 5th grade. A student got angry with
| him, and when he turned to address another student,
| jumped him and literally pulled his arm out of his
| socket. Not only was the student not expelled, but my
| friend had to spend months while recovering from surgery
| refusing to sign papers the administration was pushing on
| him to make him accept all responsibility. This is not
| hyperbole in the least, it really happened, and it is way
| more common than anyone would think.
| jacobolus wrote:
| Okay, that's pretty messed up. Seems plausible the kid
| may come from some context of severe neglect/abuse. (I am
| guessing this kid is quite a bit older than the 1st
| graders the top-level comment was discussing?)
|
| I'm thinking more of 4-7-year-olds hitting each-other
| with sticks they pick up at the park, having temper
| meltdowns at trivial frustrations, refusing to follow
| instructions to stop doing obviously unsafe things, etc.
|
| What do you think should be done in this sort of case?
| How does it get to this point, and what could be done to
| help kids like this before they reach the point of
| literally assaulting their teachers or other criminal-
| level violence? Most kinds of school punishments
| (detention, extra homework, suspension, ...) seem
| unlikely to really solve whatever issues this kid has,
| but teachers don't have the extra bandwidth to be full-
| time social-worker caretakers of each specific kid.
| Baeocystin wrote:
| He was a 5th grader. Average size, just clear... issues
| across the board.
|
| With the foreword that I know this is a huge thorny mess
| of a problem with no easy solutions, there are three
| things that would make an immediate improvement.
|
| #1, by far: Administrations as they currently are live in
| existential fear of a lawsuit that will destroy the
| entire district. Teachers are thrown under the bus with
| almost rabid fervor, as they are seen as fungible. This
| _must_ stop, and real consequences need to be
| consistently enforced across the board. The genuinely
| unstable and violent need to be removed from the general
| school population. I do not know what to best do with
| them, and I will not even hazard a guess in this post.
| But I do know that they are holding the entirety of the
| education of the remaining 90% of the student body
| hostage to their whims, and that has to stop.
|
| #2: The student teacher ratio needs to drop from 30+:1 to
| below 15:1, ideally even lower with the addition of aides
| along with regular teaching staff. The money is there- if
| you look at the per capita spend, the US is very high,
| even compared to other Western nations. We just blow it
| on literally anything other than paying teachers.
|
| #3: Free, school-supplied breakfasts and lunches for the
| entire student body, no questions asked. Hunger is a huge
| deal, and hungry kids can't learn. Food instability
| affects somewhere between 20-50% of the students in the
| US, and it is a phenomenal return on outcome vs. $ spent.
| sdenton4 wrote:
| I mean, if we're worried about ai taking all the jobs and
| concentration of wealth, just raise taxes on the
| billionaires and hire more teachers...
|
| Getting class sizes to 10:1 or 5:1 is quite the jobs
| program, and will lead to amazing long term outcomes for
| the kids.
| elefanten wrote:
| I'm only half-joking (maybe _barely_ joking) when I say your
| comment made me think:
|
| "The movement that wants to pause AI development should just
| tell school boards and DEI activists that AI will allow every
| child to learn at their own pace. Probably no faster way to put
| a total ban in motion than an appeal to toxic 'anti-racism'
| activism."
| l33t233372 wrote:
| Alternatively, they should just tell school boards and state
| legislatures that AI will allow children to learn at their
| own pace. Probably no faster way to put a total ban in motion
| than an appeal to toxic "anti-wokeism' activism.
| [deleted]
| everydayentropy wrote:
| Socialization is far more important than any other skill that a
| child learns in primary and even secondary education.
|
| I don't see ever see the wide adoption of an AI homeschooling
| solution coming to fruition due to this fact.
| hosh wrote:
| I agree with this article, but this approach is incomplete.
|
| Animals, including humans, instinctively play to learn, both in
| free play and guided play. They work particularly well when the
| kid is young. I don't find "play" to have a negative connotation
| (in contrast to "work"). My hobbies as an adult often start with
| play.
|
| However, there is something to be said about discipline. That
| also has some mixed connotations, so I will be clear. I am
| talking about discipline to mean the various inner psychology to
| focus, and sharpen one's skills even through adversity. It
| includes what Angela Duckworth would call "grit". Instilling this
| kind of discipline is not something I'd do at an early age,
| because it requires a sufficient level of mindfulness.
|
| Discipline is how one can become truly great ... but it is play
| that allows for a kind of creativity that allows one to
| generalize from a solid foundation. You need both to attain
| mastery.
| frereubu wrote:
| I'm in general agreement, but I'd nuance it by saying that you
| need to take into account the underlying enthusiasm of the
| person. If there's something I need to get good at for my job
| but I find it very boring, then that's going to take a quite a
| bit of discipline. However, there are some other things in my
| life that I've had to extert almost not discipline to learn
| (and, IMNSHO get very good at) because I have an innate
| enjoyment of the subject.
| [deleted]
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