AI tutoring with Khanmigo in a two-year school experiment(edworkingpapers.com) |
AI tutoring with Khanmigo in a two-year school experiment(edworkingpapers.com) |
Link: https://workspaceupdates.googleblog.com/2026/08/gemini-in-go...
My advice: read lots of real books. Go to the library and study with real books even (especially) if it takes longer.
Talk to lots of humans too. Friendships would be a nice bonus, but your real goal is to prepare for the next step after high school. Because no one else will prepare you.
College, job, trade school, military: networking will be more important than ever in a world where any non-verbal communication will have scrutiny behind it. You don't need to be a social butterfly, but get really comfortable holding conversations and listening (or at least, pretending to listen) to others' experiences. That's increasingly becoming the only way to truly stand out if you don't already own capital. We're increasingly moving away from the world where a high INT stat can carry you through life like my generation.
https://blog.comini.in/p/why-khanmigo-will-fail
It's just quite obvious when you run a school (we do). It's because AI is focused on making the mechanics easy. But as long as we focus on measurement (how much are they learning) and start from there, the near-term focus is inevitable on the surface mechanics of learning (can they decode or encode when reading, do their tables etc)
Meaning > Motivation > Mechanics > Measurement
The natural order of learning is when we are allowed to discover, explore, find meaning. This motivates us to focus on getting better, mastery, which is where mechanics should come in. And finally, because it is helpful to know where we are generally, we measure some outcomes. But schooling systems have completely inverted this!
More here if anyone's interested: https://blog.comini.in/p/schooling-has-a-meaning-crisis-para...
Meaning > Motivation > Mechanics, but Measurement is how you know that Meaning > Motivation > Mechanics, and, more importantly, Measurement is how you prove to anyone else that Meaning > Motivation > Mechanics (or even that you've built any motivation in your students at all).
Measurement is how you prove that your approach (as opposed to anyone else's) is worth people investing their time and money with you.
Trust > Meaning > Motivation > Mechanics. How do you earn trust from a stranger? Measurement.
This is page 4-11
The abstract is also AI generated. Good god people.
Why Sal Khan’t: On Learning by Making but Teaching by Telling https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49409862
Sal Khan: The amazing AI super tutor for students and teachers [video] | Hacker News https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35791433
New York City Bans A.I. in Elementary and Middle Schools https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/01/nyregion/ai-ban-schools-n...
Tutoring company tells parents to save their money and ‘use AI instead’ https://www.afr.com/policy/health-and-education/tutoring-com...
How about a more assertive and active AI tutor and some consequences for not doing work? That is one thing about a human tutor. They are physically right there versus an AI that is waiting for the student to do something.
So for remedial students try a system that has timers for inactivity and real life consequences for ignoring the system.
Need to do a study with students that are average or above average.
This has been my observation in university as well. LLMs can be valuable in digesting proofs into smaller, workable pieces (e.g researching the origin of a particular linear algebra property). This however requires solid fundamentals and the ability to dissect proofs. In spite of this people with neither usually reach straight to the solution out of sheer desperation (myself included).
This seems backward. Engaging students should be the primary goal, not AI tutoring. Great teachers engage students. Perhaps AI can somehow aid teachers in becoming better? [Though, I doubt it]
Some kids will be able to learn at a record pace with AI, others will need to be brought along in the usual ways via good teaching that fosters engagement.
So, if some kids do prefer studying with this AI tutor, that's as good as studying without it. Whichever approach gets them to put the study time in.
I find that surprising. I would expect the AI tutor to add noticeable value over studying static written material.
Those other 95% are going to generally have either a lack of motivation or a lack of intelligence. And for these kids a good teacher can do a lot, but actually teaching the material itself is a relatively small part of it. It's about giving them that motivation, or adjusting the material for slower students. And most importantly, it's about doing all of this without making it apparent that you're doing this, since keeping it feeling 'natural' is an important part of making it feel interesting and also helping to build a better rapport with the kids. That rapport/connection building is critical, and completely outside the domain of LLMs.
Have there been cases where kids in the 95% did end up being self-driven about a particular topic that they had an interest in? Or did they always need to be given motivation?
You are absolutely doing it wrong.
My experience is completely different. It doesn’t take a frontier model to give a good explanation (likely plagiarized from a textbook or a “blank for dummies” article).
Try a bit harder to tell it your background and the kind of analogies you want and don’t want.
Possibly this is topic-dependent. Most of my queries are about science and math.
What sometimes helps is to ask them to make something interactive and visual. Like 3B1B does
University is definately more interest based but my success was still very influenced by the quality of instructor. The materials and methods are important but not nearly as much as the quality of instructor.
"...unless you’re chaining kids to a desk and not letting them leave until they finish some quota of problems."
Uhm, hey, could we talk for a quick minute after this meeting? No, no worries - it's just that the other teachers and I were wondering if we could have a quick chat about what "engagement" means :)
Humor aside, your point is very valid - interest in a topic is often a prerequisite to someone engaging with a topic. Even stuff like "I hate this class, but I gotta do well if I want to become a doctor someday" is based on an interest in that longer-term goal.
You said “I would expect…” and posited something that sounds reasonable but might not be true. Questioning a hunch seems like a good reason to look at data.
Does one paper ever resolve a question fully, beyond doubt? Rarely.