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Making flashcards may be the learning
The efficiency pitch
AI is marketed on efficiency. Teachers can have it write lesson plans, generate quizzes, and send emails to parents, which frees them to spend more time with students. Students can have it make their flashcards and then simply study.
Where the learning happens
A student making flashcards has to decide what goes on them and what the answers are. That thinking may be where the learning happens, and the finished flashcards may be the least useful part. A tool built for speed skips the whole process.
What schools are for
Tech's gods of scale, speed, and efficiency raise a larger question: what is public schooling for? If the tech industry dictates or heavily influences what happens in classrooms, the question becomes how to get AI into schools faster, which is a product question. What kids should learn, how best to teach it, and where the studies show a role for tech are different questions.
Why does effort make memories stick?
In 1978, psychologists Norman Slamecka and Peter Graf showed that people remember words they generate themselves better than words they only read. The finding is called the generation effect. Robert Bjork of UCLA later described such helpful hurdles as desirable difficulties, because they slow learning in the moment while strengthening it over the long term. Bjork introduced the term in 1994.
Why does testing beat rereading?
Pulling an answer out of memory strengthens the memory, while rereading mostly produces a feeling of familiarity. In a 2006 study, psychologists Henry Roediger and Jeffrey Karpicke had students read a passage and then either reread it or take a recall test. Students who reread did better on a test five minutes later. After a week, students who had been tested remembered more.
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