It was incredibly depressing. We decided to send our kids elsewhere.
[1] Nothing against digital art, but I strongly feel young kids should be working with actual physical materials.
We left appalled. We sent him to a public school instead, where they use screens much less (although they do use them, sadly) and they have books. I don't know to what extent this is a voluntary choice or just because they have less money to buy gadgets, but the result is better anyway.
On the other hand, these kids will eventually end up in a world saturated with displays and maybe even AR, so there's some argument for getting them involved with digital stuff at some point.
I think, if you went back to the origin of the term "AI" and tried to teach an introduction to the very fundamentals, this could actually be a fun and inspiring class - one that might not even need a lot of computer knowledge.
There are a number of board games with "self-playing" antagonists that are governed through clever sets of game rules.
There is also the historical predecessor of computer science, cybernetics, that dealt with self-governing analogous control systems, like thermostats.
Finally, there are the classical pathfinding algorithms (Depth-First/Breadth-First, Dijkstra, A*) which I still think are some of the most "bang for the buck" algorithms in terms of "intelligent-looking" behavior vs simplicity of the algorithm.
All that stuff could be engaging for high school students in the author's "hands-on" way.
All that of course if the "AI" class is really about giving a broad introduction to the field, and not just "we have to put ChatGPT into the curriculum somehow".
> After all, flashing screen surely release more endorphins than non-interactive physical exhibits
The irony is that this might not even be true. In the article, the author observed that the physical exhibits were much more interesting to the kids than the screens.
I'd love to be able to sell location-based XR experiences to museums: like you go to the paleontology museum and put on a headset and now the museum is a mixed reality Jurassic Park. For that matter I'd love to set up a multiplayer VR park in a big clean span space. There are a lot of difficulties like the cheap headsets don't really have the right tracking capabilities for a seamless location-based experience [1] plus getting together and paying a team which can deliver that sort of thing. A museum with really robust funding could probably afford an XR experience and subsidize development that transfers to other museums but I can't see the economics working for turning an old American Eagle at the mall into a VR experience park: malls have unrealistic ideas about their spaces can earn and most of them have posts in them that player would crash into.
[1] It already knows where it is the instant you put the headset on and it doesn't have to retrain like the MQ3 would.
The article was about real analogs or actual world objects. The Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago is a fantastic example, as is the Field Museum there. Kids are full of screen time already. Is that all there is?
Yes, Sweden was doing so as discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42715841
We also had a course in "computers" in high school. We had to know by heart the contents of "File" and "Edit" menus for Paint in Win3.1. Windows95 was just came out that year, so naturally the curiculum had not adapted yet. Anyway, guess how useful that was. The only one student who knew how to program got an F in the course :)
It was, of course, a way to teach nontechs how to use computers, as misguided as the material was. So, in that light, starting with AI makes sense. Would be nice to also include a bit more technical course, but apparently knowing where and when a poet was born is more important.
While I personally suspect that social media and by extension phones are detrimental: what you're writing here is opinion, not fact.
Just like adding tech was an experiment which seems to have been accepted all over, removing the tech again is - at least to my knowledge - in experiment phase, too.
And because a real experiment would take roughly 12-20 years (students performance from start to finish, until they're gainfully employed)... Neither of these approached have really been validated. It's all speculation, because there are so many other reasons that could explain the issues we currently have in our schools
And frankly - even though I honestly believe that social media is bad for them - I sincerely think its nowhere close to being the main reason for dropping performance, inability to take responsibilities or whatever else people are saying about the current children.
Do you not consider the period prior to the tech? It was a significant amount of time.
My hole point was that you cannot isolate it to phones. Phones probably are net negative, but even if you removed them: our society has changed and wherever the removal will be positive for their development is hard to isolate, hence it's purely based on opinion