Because I'm using pretty small models (biggest option I've been working with is a 14B) and primary age kids writing is really different from adults, there's a lot of very targeted prompts around mechanics, vocabulary, sentence and paragraph structure, general encouragement and so on. I've also got LanguageTool feeding spelling and grammar analysis into it, since small language models just make up so much dumb stuff when it comes to spelling (it helps that we have an Amazon Echo and they're used to dumb AI so don't expect too much of it).

The kids can "submit" their draft to get a bit of summative feedback which runs it through the whole suite and they can go through the different feedback contexts (highlights relevant passages, suggests word choices, gives general feedback related to the writing purpose and prompt). Each draft takes a snapshot so my wife and I can see what the kids change about the draft after the feedback. This part actually works pretty well.

There's also a "nudge" mode where occasionally the LLM tutor will surface a bit of feedback with a subtle notification while they are writing. This aspect sounded pretty good in my head but since it's analysing a writing fragment sometimes it's not super helpful and even though the notification isn't too disruptive, it still breaks into the flow.

The more I think about it, the more useful this sort of model sounds useful for code too, since it doesn't need to just be about "does the code run, are the outputs correct" but could reason a bit more about program structure, naming of variables and functions and whether they are appropriate to the purpose, quality of comments and whether they indicate an understanding of the code and so on. Most of that you could get with a decent AST analysis, but relevance of comments etc is something that could be quite useful.

Good luck with teaching Python to your own kiddo. I'm finding my own are more interested in programming microcontrollers like the micro:bit than graphics. Gets you really comfortable with fairly simple code and immediate feedback about whether you gets things right. See the micro:bit Python editor for a really well scaffolded IDE too (https://python.microbit.org/v/3).

For example the `range` example in the second activity doesn't show a `for` loop's structure, how `range` is called, or what it does. One of the hints shows you the syntax for a `range` call, but nothing about loop syntax.

The hints are on request rather than at-need, and aren't linked to what's going wrong for them - doing some structural analysis of the code to decide what hint might be needed would make hints more useful. The couple of activities I looked at didn't have particularly useful hints that targeted real problems and were more of the "here's a snippet of completed code" variety, which doesn't teach anyone anything.

I'd recommend going and looking into some teaching pedagogy before building stuff, tbh.

The actual activity objectives don't look too bad, but the UI is a mess of the wrong sorts of information to help kids learn the principles.

I was curious about the tutor, but not curious enough to hand over an auth token to it. I've been building a writing tutor using local models for my kids, and it's been an interesting experience trying to provide helpful, structured information at the time they need it, rather than just asking for answers, or parsing generic advice.

Open gradebooks are amazing. You just need to have school leadership that sets realistic expectations with students and parents and backs up their teachers rather than caving to helicopter parents. I've had nothing but good feedback from parents and students about timeliness and transparency on marking feedback. Standardised testing on the other hand is goddamned menace that has done more to damage the value of assessment than transparency ever has. The value of open gradebooks is the feedback, not the numbers.

AI in schools feels like more of a fait accompli. Who provides most of the software infrastructure to schools? Microsoft and Google. Who is busy stuffing AI into all the things? Oh look, it's Microsoft and Google.

> At ages 1 and 1.5 years, which was conducted in a subsample, parents were asked to report the average amount of time that the child spent daily on television (TV) on weekdays and weekends within the past month. This was collected in 2010 to 2011 when TV was the primary source of screen viewing time for 97% of Singaporean families [38]. At ages 2, 3 and 6 years, parents were asked to report the amount of time, in 5-min increments, their child spent using screens on weekdays and weekend days. Three types of devices were considered separately: (1) TV and TV-related games consoles; (2) computers (desktop or laptop); and (3) hand-held devices including tablets, smartphones, and hand-held games consoles. At age 8 years, parents were asked to report on their child’s time spent sitting or lying down while watching screens on the most recent weekday (school days) and on the most recent Saturday and Sunday. Four types of devices/media were considered separately: (1) watching videos on a TV (TV programs, DVDs, Blu-ray); (2) watching videos or playing games on computers; (3) watching videos or playing games on tablets or smartphones; and (4) playing video games on consoles.

And here’s us, an online only school that serves kids that otherwise wouldn’t be able to access education at all or some types of classes at best, left wondering where that might leave us if our state decides to zombie its way into similar policy decisions.

Edit: Downvotes for pointing out that government policies without nuance around what "screen time" means hurts kids who have no alternative education options, apparently?

I’ve worked with a lot of professionals over the years who chose to work part time (and have done myself too). Various reasons, but mostly it boiled down to valuing their time and wellbeing more than grinding full time.

The thing about “living standards” is, like many standards they change depending on your priorities.

Edit: Having more of a look I see you’re making this freemium, which is a good thing.

Pretty sure my credit card got harvested from either them or the website purchase though

I’ve been watching some of the GitHub App promos, and it feels like because you have an app with access that knows how to agent, that’s the first method within reach, even if it isn’t necessarily the best one.

Since the micro:bit requires some file management for programming them, that’s been a good entry point to the file system.

Heh. I left teaching for three years to work in the private sector and the "25% more work" was honestly the best work life balance I've had in 20 years.

(Mind you here in Oz I think we have our own state politics involved, but I guess at least we have fewer states )

Copilot pulled something similar on me when I asked for some assistance with some other third party code for the same hardware - presented a fading out message (article paywall style) with some ethical AI disclaimer. Thought this one was particularly strange - almost like a request from either the third party or the original manufacturer.