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It is the oldest fallacy about students in the world-- my program is perfect, so if students are having trouble learning, they must be defective.

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Nice, succinct argument for refusing what Khanmigo and all the enthusiasts for using LLMs as personalized tutors are trying to convince us to buy. These are machines with new, interesting, and potentially educationally useful functions, but they do not replace the work that teachers do. And pulled together with a quote from the great book Nothing Personal by the great James Baldwin.

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Thanks as always, Rob. The Baldwin quote was just too perfect to pass up. And I've even toyed with writing a book or screenplay about the relationship he had with his teacher Orilla Miller.

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That would be a challenging and wonderful writing project. I would be first in line to read or watch that!

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I almost want to return to the profession after watching that video.

There is a mundanity in it - there's nothing TED-able about this.

The interactions by this teacher - deliberate, discreet are also fascinatingly repeatable - if not at scale, at least in quality.

I remain fascinated by what is missed by the ed-tech massive - that scale turns everything to shit. But we fund "scale" because VC and analytics - while ignoring the deeply important care and effort that enables what you see on the screen.

What allows that is time. Time to develop trust. Time to foster connections. To restore and heal them when they are damaged. If we optimise for time with humans (big and small) in focused, deliberate ways of care and vulnerability - how much richer our experiences in classrooms and community might be.

But that's you know messy and hard to measure. So you know...

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