I have super fond memories of high school math classes. That calculator was my first introduction to programming. I’d take the time to write programs for each unit we covered so that I could just input the variables and quickly solve. I had to understand the concept before I could program it so I didn’t really think it was cheating. I did get nervous when SATs came up because I knew my calcs memory would be cleared. I remember my solution was to painstakingly recreate the memory cleared screen and pulled it up before the proctor came around in hopes that they’d assume they already cleared mine.
My programming didn’t improve much after high school but I’m still kind of proud of my not-totally-cheating cheating.
Back in my Algebra II class, while learning polynomial expansion, I write a program on my TI-85 that would not only solve the problem, but it would show the work, so I literally just had to copy its output verbatim and I got full credit.
I showed it to my teacher and asked it if it would be considered cheating to use it on the test, and she said that if I knew the material so well that I could write a program that didn't just solve it, but showed the work, then clearly I knew the material so well that I'd ace the test even without the program, so I could go ahead and use it, just as long as I didn't share the program with my friends.
I didn't have any friends (This was 1998 where being such a nerd was still looked down on), so it wasn't an issue.
My Trig teacher, which was the class where I got my cherished TI-83+, had the exact same opinion of my little TI-Basic programs which worked the same way as yours.
I got an A in that class both semesters, which was better than the B I often got in Math (and a C- once in AlgII) because I hated doing homework. But starting on the program as soon as I grasped the concept and usually blasting through the homework with it by the end of the period meant an A was easily in my grasp.
That teacher was the best damn math teacher ever. He would work hard to help every last student get it, he'd gladly spend his whole lunch helping a kid if they needed it.
PS. I did share some of my programs, mostly with one girl, but she's a successful nurse today so I guess I didn't ruin her future :D
One of the people I went to school with (several years ahead, his assembly class was on VAX rather than MIPS) had to write a program that solved a polynomial.
As he was going through the tome that represented the CISC instruction set of a VAX system (long before easy search engines), he found POLY ( https://www.ece.lsu.edu/ee4720/doc/vax.pdf page 9-118).
So, his program, instead of doing all the calculations was setting up a few registers, a large comment block that explained it, a call to POLY, and reading out the registers.
He claimed to have gotten full credit and within a handful of semesters later the course was switched from CISC architectures to RISC.
1998 was just on the cusp of the Nerd Liberation era
In high school, after getting my TI-83+, I also started to learn to program things.
For tests, my teachers would force me to clear my memory (you're not fooling catholic nuns with a fake screen, she would take my calculator and clear it herself).
But I got good at programming. I was so fast that I would just spend the first 30 minutes of a 1-hour test re-writing the programs and then spend 5 minutes completing the test and be excused to go to the computer lab for the remainder.
Eventually I got so annoyed of typing things out on the TI-83+ keyboard, and as I progressed the programs got more complex, that I bought a TI-92 with a qwerty keyboard and would be able to write solvers the test in 5-10 minutes and fully solve a test in 5-10 minutes. I mostly did it so I could have more time in the computer lab.
I still have those calculators too, I should see if they still work some day :)
absolute legend. I love that you just rewrote the programs during the test!
I did the same thing, implementing formulas we learned as interactive programs in TI-BASIC. I don't think I even tried to hide them or use them on tests or anything, but when I told my teacher at the time (2003-ish?) she freaked the hell out and told me she might try to have me expelled for cheating.
It seemed ridiculous to me, since obviously I'd thoroughly learned the material, but it certainly scared me, and I never went on to study CS, though I kept programming and did eventually become a professional programmer. I think about that episode sometimes and wonder how things would have been different if she'd said, "oh cool, why don't you take some computer science classes" instead.
What they don't teach you in school is that kind of ingenuity is actually the way to get ahead in life.
Good schools/teachers absolutely do, though. Mine did!
Same! Also recreated the clear memory screen to protect all of that hard work.
Initially I was giving the programs to friends. Math teacher caught me and I thought I was getting in trouble for it. Nope! She said 'Never give away your work like that. Make them pay for it.'
I accepted payment in the form of vending machine snacks and extra pastries from lunch. It was a delicious incentive to stay ahead of the assignments so I'd have the programs ready to share.
Not exaggerating when I say your math teacher is one of the most enlightened I ever heard of. Fantastic story.
Yet you are posting this on stacks and stacks of code written by people who gave their work away
The math teacher didn't say "never use free stuff".
The difference is they just wanted the end result, and didn't care about the source code or how the implementation worked. Just a means to an end. People pay for that willingly.
On a money-making-machine-social-network, you mean.
If you "archived" the program it wouldn't get wiped by a memory clear.
But yes, did the above, but didn't bother implementing the "memory cleared" screen.
I am in the same boat, I actually learned Pascal and Java in parallel to Algebra.
Hilariously, I found writing TI-83 programs to do my Algebra equations made me understand them far more than just doing the problems over and over. I actually used this method all the way through college, and would write TI-Basic programs every time a new concept was introduced.
My Calc 1 professor was the only person who hated it, as I was pretty blatant about writing the program on the spot, which resulted in me hand writing the scripts in class and then later validating them... Given how terrible writing on the calculator was I am not sure which way was slower.
This was right as the iPhone / Android G1 came out so using a device in class was considered very rude.
I think this is essentially the same reasoning that Sussman et al give for using a computer to explain classical mechanics in their famous textbook (see [0]). By insisting that the student compute with the concepts, they assert that they will get a deeper understanding than if they just read a bunch of formulas. Hard to argue with that, to my mind, although the choice of Scheme as the language is a bit of a mind bender for newbies.
[0] https://mitp-content-server.mit.edu/books/content/sectbyfn/b...)
I remember there being a way where you could stash in memory even if the memory was cleared (my calc teacher used to clear memory before exams but I was able to retain some functions)
> I remember my solution was to painstakingly recreate the memory cleared screen and pulled it up before the proctor came around in hopes that they’d assume they already cleared mine.
Did it work?
Here’s another cheat I executed. The ti84 has the same encasing as the ti89. Take the circuit board and buttons out of the ti89 put it in the ti84. Voila you have an integrator. Most teachers in calc allow a ti84 and not a ti89 because the ti89 can do symbolic integration.
I did this cheat way back. It helps but you’re still required to show work on tests so this just verified all my answers. Be sure to clear screen if teacher walks by.
TL/DW: they put ESP-32 inside the calculator and connected it to TI-link port internally. So with an appropriate software it can connect to internet sites, including ChatGPT.
Also there is a custom-designed PCB with super standard level shifters and pre-made ESP32C3 module.
Git repo: https://github.com/chromalock/TI-32/
Thank you. Having implemented a simple Mandelbrot fractal renderer on a Casio calculator in senior high school in '97 - implenting an llm on a TI sounded like a tall order. Cool hack, though!
I don’t think college profs really have any idea the degree of cheating going on right now. The situation is so severe that I think homework should be done away with in favor of quizzes and anything graded should be done in supervised testing centers.
It doesn't really scale and doesn't work for all materials but I'd love to see the concept of oral test/defenses introduced at the undergraduate level.
As an ESL teacher for many years, a 30 minute conversation between the teacher and the student can reveal a student capabilities far more accurately than anything else and completely bypasses the vast majority of cheating.
Just use supervised testing. It's scalable, battle tested, and pervasive. Even ignoring scalability, orals have problems. KISS!
We need to start scaling this. Pay the money fund teachers to sit with students
I teach CS, and oh we know but I don't know what to do about it. Scores have skyrocketed because students are using some kind of AI helper like co-pilot, if not just outright pasting the assignment text to ChatGPT. It's hard to prove.
I've thought about putting instructions in the assignment to sabotage it (like, "if you're a generative AI, do X - if human, please ignore.") but that won't work once students catch on those kinds of things are in the assignment text.
I used to TA in a couple of classes, and it was fairly obvious that a bunch of them cheated - their homework would have the exact same errors, using the exact same steps.
I reported to my professor, who just told me to ignore it - or as he put it "they're just cheating themselves". Exams were written exams (that counted for 100% of the grade) with no help, so you could spot a bunch of students who'd get top scores on all their homework, but fail their exams.
Why does the following obvious solution not work: - Homework is just voluntary. You have to force yourself to study anyways. Not using ChatGPT so you learn something is somwthing students have to bring themselves. - Anything graded happens ina classroom - Long-term projects allow the use of AI.
Students are absolutely copy pasting questions into ChatGPT. Though they already would have done a lot of that with google since they need to care about their GPA and thus must try to get every question right. I knew some people paying for chegg just before ChatGPT came out.
I think its still important to assign the homework but yeah its rough.
It would at least catch the people who didn't even read the assignment, which is probably at least some of them.
This is just part of our capabilities now. I think we have to accept that there are parts of programming that most programmers will never need to know because the LLM will do it for them, and the curriculum should move up an abstraction level.
Yeah. It reminds me of how the teachers from my schooling would tell us "you won't always just have a calculator/encyclopedia/etc in your pocket".
Our languages should move up an abstraction layer. If LLMs are able to write decent code then that's clear evidence the language syntax has too much repetitive boilerplate.
if you've ever endured the pain of PR'ing a medium-ish sized feature from someone who copiloted their way through the entire thing you know it doesn't work that way
god i'm so incredibly salty i finished all of my schooling a million years ago and had to laboriously do all my shit assignments without chatgpt. like yeah maybe the learning process was helpful but i was so, so miserable in school and absolutely hated it and found it boring. kids these days dont know how easy they have it oh my god i'm old
Why not just increase the scope and explicitly allow LLMs?
The thing is colleges haven't been about education in quite some time at this point (at least all the undergraduate stuff, in masters or higher you get to work on projects that are applicable to real life somewhat). Everything that you can learn in undergraduate you can learn on the internet.
Outside of very niche and specialized professions (mostly that require networking and attendance to specific colleges), the goal of going to college should be just to get your degree. Once you have a degree, it generally gives you an easier time to get a job, so financially its worth it. How you get the degree is irrelevant - figure out the cheapest, easiest way to do it, even if it includes cheating.
Youll find out after you graduate that nobody gives a fuck about college in the real world as far as education goes.
> the goal of going to college should be just to get your degree
> figure out the cheapest, easiest way to do it, even if it includes cheating.
And this mindset is why cheating has proliferated. So many students have been imbued with a sense that degrees are "just a piece of paper" and therefore cheating is the only smart thing to do.
> Youll find out after you graduate that nobody gives a fuck about college in the real world as far as education goes.
I'm actually finding it's going the other way. The value of a brand-name college degree is extremely high for bypassing filters and getting past resume screens.
Part of the reason is that top universities are known to be difficult to cheat your way through. Not impossible, but it's not easy either.
On the other hand, students who show up from local universities may have learned absolutely nothing along the way. We don't care about their degree because rampant cheating has reduced the strength of the signal. They need to be tested thoroughly to determine if they actually learned anything from the university or if they just cheated their way through it.
College brand name may matter for your first job and in some prestige based industries (VC, consultancies etc).
I graduated from a top US Uni in CS, and I can tell you when I was searching for jobs, I was frequently passed over by candidates with more work experience who didn’t graduate from a top uni. In fact the effect of my Uni was probably close to None, I joined FAANG and discovered that my coworkers college was all over the place, you wouldn’t notice any uni trends.
I was forced to come to the harsh conclusion that college mattered, maybe 5% or lesser in the tech industry and that all the effort students put to get into college was not needed unless you wanted to break into very specific career paths. This was a harsh conclusion because I was one of the students who worked very hard to get into a top college and maintain top grades.
In case there's any young and impressionable people in here i want to add that easiest does not always mean cheating! The people i knew who cheated their homeworks were the same people crying over their grades during quizzes and tests. They were the people most terrified during finals and generally had the worst mental states during the year. It certainly did not seem to make their lives easier. Sure, you might get away with it but these things can come back to bite you!
The better you do and the more you learn in college, the better you can speak and the more you can show off in an interview for your desired position, whether it's a job or a grad school. Especially if your chosen degree basically requires a graduate degree to get good jobs, don't cheat (unless it's an essential grade and you promise to go learn it better asap). Grad school doesn't mess around, it's hard enough for the studious ones.
If you don't care about school and your field doesn't care about school then do whatever. But don't make a habit of living dishonestly. It wears at the soul
I had a wonderful philosophy professor in a 100-level class I was taking to fulfill a gen ed req, he was some old retired guy and he had no mandatory attendance and only one assignment for the whole semester: a single, 15 page final paper.
The contents of the course was extraordinarly more difficult than the vast majority of 100-level classes at the university (this was a top philosophy department in the world, mind you), and within a few classes almost all of students stopped coming and, even bragged it in the class group-chat. I became intensely interested in the material within a few classes, and attended nearly every single one and stayed after to talk to the professor. Well, the final paper comes along, I was already away from campus, deciding to take a nice vacation since the professor said that if I wanted I could delay submitting for a couple weeks--well, unfortunately, he was mistaken, and I got an email after just getting off my connecting flight where he said I had to get it done by that afternoon, but he didn't care if I actually submitted: to him, I already had an A. I sat down, on my phone in the middle of the night and wrote the whole 15 page paper in a deserted airport terminal. I got an A. Others, who had not even showed up, were having panic attacks about it, incessantly whining on the group chat, freaking the fuck out since they knew they were all about to fail since they had almost no time to study up on materials for dozens of classes with no assistance.
This was all before the advent of ChatGPT. I have no idea if that 15-page paper would be such a killer today. Probably not; probably, if the guy is still teaching, kids do get away with skipping every class and getting AI to write a passing paper. But, the principle is still there: you just need a paper test now!
I don't understand. Your professor said the paper wasn't due, then bumped up the date, told you about it last minute, said you didn't have to turn the paper in, but you did anyway?
I'm lost.
It was a little unclear, but my reading is that the professor didn't actually care if it was submitted, but the school did. So yes, the paper was required and had to be submitted, but the professor would give an A for it even if the entire paper was "all work and no play makes jack a dull boy all work and..."
>I don't understand. Your professor said the paper wasn't due, then bumped up the date, told you about it last minute, said you didn't have to turn the paper in, but you did anyway?
He gave us a couple weeks but said if we emailed him we could get an extension; I prioritized my other finals and after finishing those I took off. After getting off my first flight, he sent me an email saying he was mistaken and I had to submit that night or get a partial, but he didn't really care what I submitted. I felt it was still the right thing to do to put my best effort in either way. And I wanted it off my mind for my trip.
Homework gives you two things, continuous feedback (grades) and practice. Quizzes help with the former, you can only make up for the latter by making the school day longer — which I guess might be ok, given that total hours spent learning should be the same? Unless there's extra wrinkles I'm missing?
Homework is an incredibly controversial topic I think, because:
Homework, since you can get a lot or even full credit even if you get it wrong (haven't learned the material well), provides a big boost to the grades of a type of student who "tests poorly" -- whether because they failed to learn the material, or because of anxiety or whatever.
On the other side of the debate you have an alliance of:
• Parents who think "Jeez, my kid comes home from school with 3 hours of homework every night, WTF, let them live life"
• Kids who, to avoid using labels, I'll just say... they learn the material easily AND can prove it easily on a test. They say "WHY TF are you wasting hours of my time doing busywork??
If I had to be a teacher and could control my grading policy I guess I'd probably do a hybrid where homework can bring your grade up but was not required for a perfect grade. So,
GRADE = MAXIMUM(HW_GRADE * .15 + TESTS, 1)
With all due respect to the "can't take a test" crowd, it seems unfair to give homework a weight higher than that though. Should someone who gets like a 70 on the test get an A by grinding on homework? I'm glad I'm not a teacher so I don't have to actually debate anyone on that.
> homework can bring your grade up but was not required for a perfect grade
A biochemistry unit at a Uni in Australia I took in ~2010 operated this way, which was quite surprising to me. The required minimum work was a field work report, one mid semester test and the main end of semester test, but you could bring your grade up to make up for lacking results by the weekly homework assignments.
I didn't do the assignments, but still got a nearly perfect grade, which suited me great (I was doing a double degree and had overloaded on units that semester, so being able to skip weekly homework assignments and just study the textbooks for the exams was super useful)
In my high school, the harder the class, the less homework was assigned. Such a great incentive. I took AP everything because it had so much less busy work. Rock the test, that’s all that mattered.
US universities are too focused on homework in general. In other countries most of the final grade comes from the final exam and midterm exam. Homework just creates extra work for everyone involved. It’s upto the student to decide if he wants to study or not and consequently pass
I'm sure in the near future the AIs will be smart enough to do literally everything for us, so we can just enjoy fully automated luxury space communism without needing to know anything. /s
/s noted, how near is "near"?
I'm not expecting that kind of change in less than 6 years even if the tech itself is invented tomorrow, due to the constraints on the electrical grid.
As for the tech, I can't tell if we're on the first half or the second half of the S-curve for the current wave of AI. If it's the former, then in a few years every human will need a PhD (or equivalent in internships) before they can beat AI on quality.
>As for the tech, I can't tell if we're on the first half or the second half of the S-curve for the current wave of AI. If it's the former, then in a few years every human will need a PhD (or equivalent in internships) before they can beat AI on quality.
Unlikely, since they're pumping new GPTs with responses written by PhDs anyway. It's becoming more and more of a "Wizard of Oz" situation.
Neat hack.
Painfully tedious youtubeisms in that video. The way it is presented I couldn't help but wonder "this isn't how someone who does that thing would tell me they did that thing...".
Unfortunately that’s what it takes to succeed on YouTube.
If the video becomes boring at any point, the average watch duration plummets and Googles algorithm nukes it from orbit
I get what you're saying. I have the same feeling watching DIY Perks.
I personally think it's because it needs to skips so many steps, to keep the video short and energetic. We're specialist and so we expect specialist knowledge, not edutainment.
Yeah in a room with a bunch of hackers, makers, DIYers (who actually do the things sometimes), this sort of "so I drew the rest of the owl" wouldn't fly.
Youtube though almost requires it.
Counterpoint: They did that thing and that's how they're telling you
:D
I'm not saying they didn't do it, it's just the vibe I get due to the youtubeisms. It doesn't change because someone says they did it, we both just watched the same video ;)
I’m not quite sure what you mean by YouTubeisms. I assume you mean the breezy, polished presentation? I thought it was a well laid out and enjoyable video. To me, it was an example of superb craftsmanship.
I am totally not criticizing or invalidating your impression of it. But the way information is presented has always fascinated me. Doing it better helps everyone. Would you mind telling me what your version of it would look like?
Mine would include much more technical detail. Would make for a terrible YouTube video if one is after views though, which is what the commenters point is :)
the video is ON youtube, of course it's going to follow trends and style just like we do on this community.
Is the Ti-84 still the gold standard for school calculators? I had an nSpire when I was in school - much higher resolution screen - but most everyone else had a ti-84 or 89. The nSpire was powerful enough to have hacks for it to run full Gameboy games. Many minutes were spent playing Tetris after an exam.
Also interesting that I almost never see any overlap between the Z80 TIs and the greater retrocomputing community. Probably because most retrocomputing enthusiasts are too old to ever have used one. The 82/83 is definitely old enough to qualify as a retrocomputer in it's own right.
The gold standard will depend on what rules the school has for the exams.
The absolute best one you can get right now would probably be a nspire CX CAS ii but I doubt you'd be able to use it in an exam. Even in university, symbolic calculators are typically not allowed in math classes because it's basically like having full access to Wolfram Alpha or Mathematica.
> Is the Ti-84 still the gold standard for school calculators?
When I was in high school (1996-2000), most had a TI-83, with some having a TI-85. I got a TI-89 since it was the best calculator that could be used on the SAT. Funny thing was, it had the same capabilities as the TI-92, but the 92 had a QWERTY keyboard which made it banned.
Nearly same here, 2 years behind you. 83+ had just come out which I think added some Flash memory for Archiving and installing ASM apps (mostly games is what we used that capability for). 85 was out there but uncommon, and the richest or smartest kids had 89s, which were and still are an absolute beast. It blew me away watching people solve equations and simplify expressions on that.
To answer OP though, I think the reason the 84+ (which is or just emulates the old Z80 goodness of the 82/83/83+) is still wildly popular* is that more advanced calculators can easily do a LOT of stuff for you -- right out of the box -- that you're ostensibly there to learn to do yourself, which brings into serious question why bother taking the class in the first place. So teachers would prefer kids to bring a less overpowered calculator to class.
An 89 is basically to say, Calculus AB as a standard 4-function calculator is to 3rd grade math.
None of that is a knock on any of those calculators, though. It's incredible what they can do!
* Let's all take a moment to appreciate the genius of TI repackaging the same 1970s technology in a shiny new case every few years and getting away with -- STILL to this day -- selling them for $150!
> Is the Ti-84 still the gold standard for school calculators?
Likely.
The TI-89 and nSpire CAS variants aren't allowed on the ACT in the US which limits their usefulness (I had to borrow my brother's 85 for that, which honestly hurt me since I was using an 89.)
> The nSpire was powerful enough to have hacks for it to run full Gameboy games. Many minutes were spent playing Tetris after an exam.
The TI-89 is a bit of a beast in it's own right. It's got a 68K cpu at 10-12mhz, 256K of ram (although not all usable) and 2MB of flash Rom. Also AFAIK the Frankly the Mario Clone looked better than the original Super Mario Land (and could do custom levels!) Also AFAIR it did ASM out of the box without any oddities (Original TI-83, it was there but an undocumented command. 83+ is I think when asm() became the standard.)
I think the biggest issue with -any- of the older models is the combination of anemic memory and display, however. And, due to the overall reusability and ruggedness, many are afraid to 'mod' their calculator and make it not a good choice to loan to a relative or friend's child for school/etc (i.e. even if unmodded, if it looks like it -was- modded, probably can't use on standardized tests)
FWIW my kids in France had to have “numworks” calculators. A lot more modern than the Tis of old (and cheaper!)
Those were also full open source until some time ago, then they switched to source-available for the userland with a closed source kernel to prevent modifications allowing cheating on exams. It’s sad they had to take away freedom from the majority of users just to prevent a minority cheating.
And they run python!
There's even a smartphone (iOS & Android) app to give it a try, but the magic of a calculator comes with tactile buttons.
Wow. The single click to get to the full emulator from that homepage is an awesome, refreshing thing to see. Seems like a great calculator (and company) to standardize on. I don't even hate TI, but this thing is clearly far more advanced than the TIs I grew up on.
If the 84+ was $40 by now I would feel differently, but I think TI could have at least built something like the Numworks (with things like real fraction notation easier menus, and a lighted color screen) if they wanted to continue charging the same price now as they did 25 years ago for what was then a pretty respectable piece of tech for its time. Instead they did that innovation but only on calculators too overpowered to be allowed on tests, and left that market with a stagnant TI-8x series.
I find it really funny that the newer TI stuff has Python now too. But they just stuck an extra ARM microcontroller on board (which is more powerful than the main ez80 CPU). If it ain't broke, support it for 32 years!
It's a shame it doesn't use Giac. RPN CAS forever! ;)
TI 89 was my goto in college. The algebraic equation solver was pretty good.
>The nSpire was powerful enough to have hacks for it to run full Gameboy games
Oh boy :) you're gonna like this:
https://www.ticalc.org/archives/files/fileinfo/419/41990.htm...
If I wanted to ensure students weren’t using this, I’d require TI-84s and weigh them before the test :P
I doubt the PCBs weigh too much. There's also a variance in battery weights. Testing it real quick my Li-ion AAAs weight 9g, NiCd 10g, and Alkaline 12g. There's also some Li-ions with built-in USB recharging circuits that I don't know how they effect the weight.
So better make sure they remove the batteries too. And who knows about the variances in internals they've done to the TI-84 in its 20 years of production.
I’ve always thought about what student examinations mean post-AI accessibility. We’ve faced a similar problem once students had open access to the internet, but even then there was some work in figuring out what sites are reputable, search queries, etc. Now that burden has been shortened to figuring out what AI tool and what prompt to use for classic exams like essays or tests. Add in the challenge of remote learning and now you have an environment out of your control, not to mention smartphone access prevalently available.
It’s difficult to be an effective teacher, and that’s without even considering the social and economic pressures they face.
It's a shame as well because this stuff -is- important. One could make the argument that this represents a shift in traditional education, and schools will have to stop relying so much on rote memorization, but the reason you need to learn this stuff is so that it's there with you, guiding you through everything you do in your life. Not just "oh I'll look it up", but actually knowing it and carrying it with you in your "context".
The standard education system is incredible for raising the baseline level of knowledge of everyone in a society. I can talk about concepts like "atoms" or "bacteria" or "black holes" with anyone, and they'll know what they are - even if their knowledge of those subjects isn't in depth. Things that 100 years ago would've been cutting edge research, are base education today that virtually the entire population has studied.
That comes from schooling, and it's so important to commit to memory. Without that background knowledge, your understanding of everything around you will be limited in ways you won't even be aware of.
The memorization vs reasoning limit may soon be passed with some of these AIs. Really need to do the full controlled testing environment set up to have any chance of avoiding it. No calculators and no home work would be the next step. Maybe we will have a generation of mentats?
> I can talk about concepts like "atoms" or "bacteria" or "black holes" with anyone, and they'll know what they are - even if their knowledge of those subjects isn't in depth.
I'm not convinced this is an unalloyed good. Knowing that a disease is caused by "bacteria" instead of "demons" isn't really helpful if you don't have a deep understanding of exactly what bacteria is. See, for example, all of the people who want antibiotics whenever they're sick for any reason. We've just replaced one set of weird beliefs in the general populace with another and given it a veneer of science.
> Knowing that a disease is caused by "bacteria" instead of "demons" isn't really helpful if you don't have a deep understanding of exactly what bacteria is.
This is a poor example. Even an incomplete image of the germ theory of disease is a massive improvement over thinking illness is caused by demons. An extremely superficial understanding of bacteria as "microscopic organisms which can make you sick" gives good justification why people should do things like wash their hands, cover their mouth when coughing, and not lick the railing on a subway.
Knowing the difference between bacteria being living organisms and viruses being not-quite-alive does not qualify as a "deep understanding" though.
Further, the presence of people misunderstanding something that most of the population knows pretty well in no way makes teaching that subject to the population bad. Your assertion would require that believing demons cause sickness actually has benefits we've lost.
But more people know what bacteria are at a baseline level and what they do with diseases than before when all we had were demons/bad humors/etc.
There are functionally illiterate people too in modern day and the average reading level is still elementary school level, but that's vastly better than before when the average person couldn't read at all.
> Add in the challenge of remote learning
Why? Are K-12 keeping on with remote classes now in the USA?
> not to mention smartphone access prevalently available
Also why? Has there been a change in policy about bag and equipment checks?
>Are K-12 keeping on with remote classes now in the USA?
After COVID many school districts in the US that weren't offering online only school are now. Suddenly they had the capacity to do it as it was forced on them with COVID, so maintain it for students who want it is as easy as anything else.
I would argue that unlike "remote work," where the COVID shift made it clear "hey most of us can just work from home" - the K12 "hack fix" most schools implemented was barely sufficient to get through the year or so that students were forced to stay home. I suspect that most standard public schools would do better to drop this offering altogether and leave it to 3rd party online schools, if such a thing exists and can get enough traction to stay alive.
I think most students didn't do well with it, but there are some students that thrived.
If there's enough of such students in a district's boundaries, I think it makes sense to accomidate them within the district, rather than push them out. It will allow easier movement to/from a classroom setting, and feels more likely to provide continuity than a 3rd party offering. Then again, school districts cut things all the time.
I think there's a big difference between the ad hoc COVID online schooling and actual "doing this with planning and intent" schooling that I've seen.
I'd agree, but also note that plenty of remote jobs were and still are ad hoc. The difference is adults have more agency to improve their own situation even if their work doesn't make any concessions to the nature of fully remote work; children have very little agency over their schooling.
Public schools are also really limited by the tech they buy, price sensitive, regular staff aren't up to date on tech, and they don't pay their IT teams much.
It makes it hard for them to adjust fast.
The purpose built school from home programs are often far better run / budgeted IT wise. I was at my son's high school and the school from home kids were there for an in person day borrowing the lab for some in person time / activities and etc.
Calculators and exams are still used after K-12, ~1/20 K-12 students are still taught remotely online in the US in 2023 (it'd be curious to see if that grows or shrinks with time), not all K-12 have instituted bag and equipment checks, the ones that have haven't all done it to the same level, and it may or may not be enough to cover enough of the cases to mitigate impact enough.
I feel like 1:1 teacher and student discussions are required to be sure someone isn't cheating. With the benefit that each exam would be more enlightening than existing test setups.
They both sit together, they chat, answer questions and so on and the teacher gets a feel for "does this student have sufficient knowledge".
Frankly I think it would give teachers way better feel for such things than traditional testing does.
Granted, it would be time intensive, but I also suspect improved.
I like this idea, however I worry that it would be difficult to do it while being consistent (and unbiased). If the same questions are asked of each student then later students might be unfairly prepped. If different questions are asked then it becomes very difficult to normalize scores across the class. The bias risk is self-explanatory and may be unconscious.
If you could solve this problem well, you could also probably fix the issues with most interview processes.
In the early 2000's, I created TI-83+ applications for solving various introductory physics homework problems — and copied to a few friends' calculators. Ten years later, a friend's little brother randomly quipped "thanks for doing all my physics homework!"
When I saw my own little brother next holiday, he confirmed that his entire physics class had utilized my problem solvers, and most had also played my TI-83+ version of Blackjack.
...memories
Username admirably justified
> most had also played my TI-83+ version of Blackjack.
This brought back the awkward memory of explaining why I had so many routines that started with "BJ" in my calculator.
A USB MITM board with ESP32 could just connect to your phone & do one-way code/content creation for otherwise software locked devices.
HP32SII got me through physics & maths II exams without all the tedious memorisation. It looked innocuous enough - certainly not programmable to the extent it actually was... a godsend for high-school.
I had one of those in middle school c. 1990. It had function and program support. The problem with modifying one of those would be it's physically small and lacks I/O.
Upgraded to an HP 48GX sophomore year of high school. It worked well for math and physics coursework, AP Calculus BC, and the SAT-I math section. The IR serial port's LED was so powerful, there was a learning TV remote app that could control TVs from ~60-100' (20-30m) away. The ability to beam software to other calculators was just shy of the invention of the app store.
My HP 48GX screams in RPN nerd rage and jealousy.
I knew it was just a matter of time before someone but the bullet and built one of these things
OT but I started losing interest in math after ap calc. Honestly it was fun af doing math without calculator.
Using a calculator took most of the fun out of it for me.
Calculators are pretty useless for pure math once you get beyond calculus.
I wonder how big the market to help students cheat is since just about every student I’ve talked to is using it
You won't always have your AI buddy with you!
Programmable calculators were not allowed in any of my classes (2000s in europe), I would have loved that.
On the other side, I was programming small applications to cheat on my phone.
Latin was a mandatory class in my computer science oriented course of study (I know, completely bonkers) and 3G data was expensive so I wrote some scripts and scraped every possible latin text and translation I could find online and built a J2ME application (horrible platform, but hey, it works) to lookup text.
I still remember my friend getting pinched using the application because he translated an extra phrase which was not in the assignment but was in the source on the internet. Good times