I Tried AI Tutoring for an Elementary School Student (1-Month Experiment Results)
I ran a one-month experiment to see if AI tutoring works for my niece in 4th grade.
The tools were the paid version of ChatGPT plus a math learning app. Every day, she spent about 20 minutes asking the AI to solve math problems. At first, she was fascinated and asked questions readily. When she asked, "Why is this solved this way?" the AI explained in detail.
But problems emerged over time.
- ChatGPT sometimes gave wrong answers with full confidence, and my niece believed them as-is because she lacked the ability to verify.
- She developed the habit of asking the AI right away instead of thinking through a problem on her own.
- Since she never felt the satisfaction of solving problems herself, she said math became even more boring.
So from the second week, I changed the rules. I set up a prompt telling the AI to give only hints, not answers. That shifted her to attempting problems first and checking hints only when she was stuck.
In the end, AI tutoring isn't entirely bad, but I think if parents don't set clear usage rules, it can actually be worse than a cram school. Especially because elementary school kids have no way to verify what the AI says. If anyone has experience with AI education for kids, please share your tips.
7 answers
Agreed, asking for just hints really seems to be the important thing.
Wow, this is totally about my nephew lol. When you give kids an AI, the first thing they do is figure out how to just get the answers out of it.
Well, that's a bit... if it's 20 minutes each, wouldn't it be better to just solve a page from a workbook? The need for AI seems a bit weak.
I tried something similar too, and adding 'never say the answer' to the prompt definitely made a difference. But it got too lazy to even give hints, so in the end I stopped using it...
AI confidently giving wrong answers is so relatable lol. Even as an adult, I sometimes fall for it.
For a one-month experiment, isn't the sample size too small? I think it's a bit early to draw conclusions based on just one kid and a specific app.
It would be great if a teacher could be there to guide them, but since that's not possible, at least they're using AI, right? Still, after reading this post, I'll take away the lesson that I shouldn't just hand it over to kids carelessly.