Parent's Guide to Supporting Child's Learning

As a former educator, I've seen it all. Students in classrooms that are learning and learning well, and students in classrooms that there's not really any learning happening or a classroom that can be disrupted by one or two, maybe rowdy or disrespectful students. Your child's education can depend on a lot of factors. It can depend on the quality of the teacher that's in there. It can depend on your kiddo, how they're responding to the way, the style of the teaching from that teacher, the environment they're in, how well the students are listening in that classroom, how the classroom's managed. There's a lot of factors that can impact your child's ability to learn or maybe ease ability to learn. And if you're finding that this is a year that they just aren't getting it, or they're struggling, or they say that they don't have enough time to learn or don't have enough time to get help or whatever the case may be, one of the ways that you can help them is by using AI to supplement what they're learning in the classroom, at home. It's really important if you do what I'm about to tell you that you make it clear to your student that this is to be used as a tool for them to enhance their learning, not a replacement for their learning. So what you'll do is you'll sit down at the computer with you and your child and you'll go to ChatGPT. Then you're going to plug in the questions and the lesson. Any notes that they have, any questions that they have, any work that they're doing, go ahead and plug that into ChatGPT. Now for this, I would make a separate chat and just have a homework chat. I would do a homework chat or a subject area chat for each subject area they're in. So let's say they have homework for their English, their English class, that's going to be in a different chat than, let's say, their math homework or their homework for something else, social studies, whatever. Then they'll say, I'm going to tell you everything I know about this lesson. So that's where they'd upload their notes. You can actually have them take a picture of their notes. They don't have to type it all in. I'm going to tell you about my note or I'm going to tell you everything I know about this lesson. And then I want you, I'm going to ask you some help questions. I want you to help me better understand this lesson. So they take a picture of their notes, they would upload it into ChatGPT and then they would say, I don't get this part, or I don't get that part. Or if they're like, yeah, I think I understand everything. But then homework is hard. They'll say, I think I understand this and this, I think this is what this means. But when I get to the homework piece and this question specifically, I'm not really sure what it's asking me. Now this is a really important part. Instead of just having them press enter there, we want to add a little bit extra to the prompt that's going to make sure they're not just using it to basically do their homework for them, but it's where they're using it to help them understand it better. You can add to the prompt, I'm having a hard time understanding this specific part. I want you to think like an award winning teacher and help me understand whatever it is. So this question or topic, I don't want you to give me the answers to my homework, but I do want you to help me understand what the question is asking and understand where I can find the information I'm looking for or help me understand the information so that I can confidently answer the question in a way that's correct, inaccurate. And then again, if you have put in a question that they're not getting on their homework, I would reiterate. Again, I don't want you to give me the answer. I want you to act like a great teacher and guide me to the answer that I can answer it competently, fully understanding why the answer is the way that it is. The problem with public schools, a lot of schools in general, the problem with a lot of schools is that the students are grouped together. So you'll have students in like a remedial class that's getting extra help or goes a little bit slower. Then you have students in just your average class where some are going to be moving faster, some are going to be moving slower. And then you have your advanced class again, some are moving faster, some are moving slower. And the problem with this is that the students that are moving faster often will get bored and have extra due and they're just sitting there waiting for the next step is the teacher has anywhere from 27 to 35 students that they're working with at one time and trying to keep everybody kind of same page before moving on. Because everyone comes from different backgrounds, different understanding, different levels of understanding that they're coming in with to begin with it can be really challenging to move everyone along at the same pace. Some students need extra help, some students don't need any help, and they're able to really move much faster. And so if your student is somebody that's like, I got this, and they're getting things done early, that means much of their school day might be spent waiting. And then likewise, if your students, your student needs extra help, maybe just on one particular subject I worked with, I was a teacher years ago. I had a student that asked me, they were like, why is it that I always seem that I'm slower than everybody else? And I was like, you know what? You're slower on this part. It doesn't mean you're going to be slower on every part. It just means on this particular topic, it's taking a little bit of extra time. And that's no problem at all. Some people need extra time on one thing, other people need extra time on another. Like, it's just how you're learning right now and that's okay. But a lot of students just don't realize that. And so if you have a student that feels like they're falling behind, that feels like they're not maybe getting the attention they need because somebody else is getting it, needs it even more, be really frustrating experience for them and they can feel discouraged. They can feel. Remember one time a student told me, like, I'm just so dumb. And that's definitely not the case. They're a brilliant student, but just need some extra time on some things. So student might be feeling some of these things in some of their classes, which can lead to behavior issues, it can lead to frustration, it can lead to them thinking, oh, I just don't like this subject. In reality, it could be that they're just having a hard time with it. And so doing something like this with your kiddo when they're home, helping them start to think a little bit differently. I think that this is something that could be really beneficial, almost like a private tutor student. Now, I want to reiterate that ChatGPT or any AI tool is not always going to be a hundred percent correct. It's going to tell you answers based on what's been fed. And so you want to be aware that you probably still want to check the word. You probably still want to ask it for reasoning. If there's something it says that feels off, then you can say, review your answer and tell me whether or not this is correct and why and ask it, or even ask it for its reasoning as well. The Other really cool thing about using a tool like AI to your students learning is that then they can ask questions of all right, this is what you said but I still don't understand that. Can you go more in depth or this is what you said but it sounds different than what my teacher is saying. This is what my teacher was saying. Can you help me understand why there's a difference here? Or you're saying makes sense, does that also mean and so it gives them the opportunity to go even beyond their current understanding of oh, if this is the case then does that mean you know is also the case? It gives the people that have students that are like I'm ready to learn more but they're not able to do that in class. It gives them the opportunity to learn more at home and their knowledge there too. My humble prediction is that AI is going to be used much more in education in the future. Already a school I think it's called Alpha School a few in person locations that uses AI to help with the students learning journey. Teachers that are there is more of guides tours versus your typical teacher and see more and more of this in the future and honestly I'm here for it. I think using this tools like NotebookLM are going to be incredibly helpful to students having a more in depth understanding, to having less wasted time and to learning topics that they're interested in in more in depth, more in depth perspective. As long as AI is being used as a support at the end all be all. We still need that critical thinking piece for students to say oh, is that right? Let me check. This is Brandon Brittany Long. I'm the creator of AI 200k and the AIM mastermind and I'll talk to you next time.