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mac-chaffee | 1 year ago

Some of the use-cases mentioned would mean FERPA applies: https://studentprivacy.ed.gov/faq/i-want-use-online-tool-or-...

Surprised FERPA wasn't mentioned explicitly. At least this version doesn't use the data for training, but I shudder to think of all the college administrators dumping student information into their personal ChatGPT accounts right now...

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ModernMech|1 year ago

Seemingly, edu solutions from big tech are developed without ever asking input from actual educators. They usually come from a "I went to school, so I know what educators need" perspective, which is often wrong. The offerings are typically half baked, buggy, and deaf to the needs of educators. Github classroom comes to mind. ChatGPT is apparently the next example, where none of the features are educator focused, but instead are focused on bringing their products to students.

Educators have to be especially wary of these efforts, because every tech company comes up with the bright idea of "let's give it to students for free, they'll get hooked, and then when they make money they will buy our product." So we are inundated with spam messages for edutech the way doctors are spammed by big pharma reps. I've got messages in my inbox right now offering me $$$$ to blog about some AI startup. I've got some tech rep hounding me to push some online C++ tool. Now add OpenAI to the list.

aleph_minus_one|1 year ago

> They usually come from a "I went to school, so I know what educators need" perspective, which is often wrong.

Change it to "I knew that educators would need if they were like me", and it (surprisingly) gets mostly correct. For example in the past, I volunteered to prepare talented pupils in math for studying this subject at a university, so I do claim that I have some experience in education.

I think I know some things about what would make sense for educating children, but the kind of people who actually become educators are a quite different kind of breed than me. So educators would likely not like my ideas (they don't fit the political climate and/or desired style of education), even though I think they do make sense (and would dogfood them). The latter is evidenced by the fact that I was told by work colleagues that they would love my ideas to be put into a textbook form. Thus, my ideas seem to fall on much fertile ground for an audience of gifted parents who would love for their children to become gifted, too, than for people who become educators.

nunez|1 year ago

Agreed. I'm biased because my wife is an educator, but so so SO many edtech companies would benefit from hiring former teachers into business development/product roles instead of only hiring Ed.D/Ph.Ds for those roles, many of whom have limited field experience.

That said, maybe OpenAI did this?