Teacher in private school using AI for everything.

[ShakespeareSallo]

As the title says really.

My now teenage child has attended a private school since 11, they are now in Year 10. It has been a great experience for them and worth the money. We aren’t rich by any means but afford it by making cut backs, we haven’t been on holiday for 5 years. VAT has hugely impacted us.

My child now has a teacher for a core subject which they haven’t had before. They bring their book home every week, and it is very obvious that the whole scheme of work and all of the worksheets and homework are AI generated. I am not a dinosaur, and I do use AI myself. However, this level of usage coming from my child’s teacher seems excessive, and I am not sure how much actual teaching is going on? My child has also said all of the PowerPoints used in lessons are obviously AI generated, and even that it has appeared as though the things on the PowerPoints the teacher is seeing for the first time alongside the students?!

Less of an issue, but I’ve also had some suspiciously AI looking and sounding emails from other members of staff in the school.

WIBU to arrange a meeting with the Head of Year to raise these concerns, or is this just the modern era of teaching?

Huh?

how on earth is that unprofessional?

if I’m teaching a class on an aspect of maths and there is something they don’t understand I’ll spend more time on it and we’ll do more discussion and questions on it.

that’s me responding in the lesson to what the students need extra support with.

how is taking those decisions 5 mins before the lesson or indeed in the lesson unprofessional?

No - the teacher said they couldn’t provide my friends sixth former (at the same school), with information about the topics being covered this term because they decide what to do ‘5 minutes before the lesson’. They were not saying they adapt the lesson or add things in for those who are struggling.

A lot of my son’s homework has come straight from Twinkl.
Using AI, or Twinkl, as a resource? It sounds the same to me.

I'm not in education, but I haven't hand-designed a PowerPoint deck in over a year. It is no longer worth my time to manually create slides when I have productivity tools that can do it faster. That doesn't mean the detailed analysis and content are not mine. We have corporate templates, and the tools can use them to create slides that meet the standards. I'm so much more productive and can even dictate when I'm travelling, etc.

I now spend much more of my day on work that really adds value, and I no longer waste time on manual, mundane tasks.

If it means the teacher can spend more time on teaching, I am all for it, there does seem to be a reluctance to learn/use AI skills in education. My children are at university, and they aren't teaching them the skills they need for the workplace.

My children are at university, and they aren't teaching them the skills they need for the workplace.

That would be because outsourcing your thinking makes you more stupid. Schools aren't in the business of making kids more stupid.

@Seashor because it gets things wrong.

I’m a GP, and increasingly hospital outpatient clinic letters are being AI generated. They’re full of errors. The sex of the patient changes multiple times during the course of a letter. The diagnoses are often made-up words. The clinical plans are contradictory. I keep having to send them back asking for a human being to re-write it.

Do you not find that worrying?

I have a teacher friend confirm they use a lot of AI in school. I don't agree with it but the result is what matters - is your child making progress and learning?

If yes, then does it matter how and what method is used to produce her worksheets?

If not, is your child's lack of progress due to the use of AI being used?

I don't agree with it at all, but that's the way we are moving forward and I am pretty sure one day teachers will even be replaced by AI

Teachers will be one of the last things replaced by AI, because AI can't make children do the work.

I think you are right!

I would speak to the school about this OP.

It sounds as if the teacher doesn't really know her subject, and is hiding behind AI. I wouldn’t want to be sacrificing holidays to pay for that!

They’re full of errors. The sex of the patient changes multiple times during the course of a letter. The diagnoses are often made-up words. The clinical plans are contradictory

One of my colleagues' clinic letters look like that. Shes a competent clinician but hates doing clinic notes so uses cut and paste on old letters. Drives the rest of us bonkers but AI massively improved the readability of her paperwork.

I use AI to analyse assessments and then I go through them to check for accuracy. AI does the first sift and I interpret the data. I still write my own clinic letters but some of them are so formulaic it's easy to see how AI could speed up the process.

By contrast, its ability to construct a diagram is dismal and under no imaginable circumstance would I trust any anatomical diagram that it created.

It's like any tool. Garbage In; Garbage Out. The person using the AI has to know what they're doing.

Yes, they don't even need the same level of qualifications as that required in state schools.

One of the teachers at my sons private school in year 11 was doing this last year. He was furious about it, one of the many reasons he left to a different 6th form. Said it was obvious the teacher hadnt prepared and didnt have the depth of knowledge his other teachers had, also it was boring.

I presume that Twinkl resources have at least been originated, designed and checked by qualified, intelligent, competent humans... but then, if they go the way that every other company seems to be going, what's the betting that they too will just do everything with AI before very long (if they aren't already)?

But what is the actual point of them doing any work - if AI can be used to do everything they need in life, and there are no jobs left for humans, even if they wanted one anyway?

Well then we end up like the fat useless blobs in Wall-E.