"Stop Sending AI Videos of Dad"

Hey human,

There have definitely been some ethical arguments raised across the last week around AI, and it makes for some interesting conversation with people on AI use for personal and education use. Here’s what’s new in AI and education this week.

📚 AI+education news

• Daniel Willingham Reviews Learn Your Way > In this mini review Professor Willingham takes a bit of a deep dive into Learn Your Way, a personalisation tool from Google that utilises LLMs. He concludes that it has promise, but still some way to go. He outlines the importance of pupils needing to grapple with difficult texts and that a focus on deep structures of problems would be better than changing surface level detail.

• Search with Google Lens > Google has added some AI functionality into Google Lens that removes one more step of friction in homework support. Now when it detects a question, an additional user interface will appear and Gemini will solve the problem for you. No more screenshot and paste between two different applications.

• The Promises and Pitfalls of Personalisation > A great blog from Professor Becky Allen who employs the principles of three learning theories (Variation Theory, Legitimate Code Theory and Validity Theory) to critically analyse Google’s AI experiment ‘Learn Your Way’ and the public examples they have published. I recommend you look at the examples first, and then look at Professor Allen’s blog.

🌍 Wider AI updates

• Five Critical Essays on AI > This booklet offers a candid and accessible critique of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its impact on key areas of society. It spans topics from architecture and academia to data, ethics, and employment, raising important questions and concerns. Its aim is to help readers form their own informed opinions or explore the subject further.

• "Stop Sending AI Videos of Dad" > These are the words of Zelda Williams, the daughter of the late comedian/actor Robin Williams. The article reports on an Instagram story posted by her that calls out the ‘TikTok slop’ of AI creations taking over the feeds of the users. Her whole statement is worth a read.

• How OpenAI's ChatGPT Guided a Teen to His Death > A harrowing listen that outlines how poor the safeguards in ChatGPT are in protecting young people from the dangers of these AI chat tools. Since then, Open AI have upped their parental controls, but you have to question whether enough is being done. I do recommend sending it out to parents to listen to.

🎯Prompt

• Addition as augmentation. I have long been a fan of teaching specific structures of arithmetic ever since I saw Kieran Mackle talk about them at a MathsConf some years ago. I really do think they are key in helping pupils get better at solving problems, and as Willingham mentioned, sometimes focusing on the deep structure is better than changing the surface. This prompt does both, it takes the teacher through what the structure is and once reviewed changed the surface structure of the problem but keeps the the deep structure (augmentation) the same.

We are learning about augmentation, one of the structures of addition. Augmentation means starting with an amount and then increasing it by another amount to find a new total. For example, Amelia has 14 trading cards. Seb gives her 23 more. How many does she have now? Understanding this structure helps us recognise when addition represents an increase rather than simply combining two unrelated amounts.

You are a mathematician who creates story problems that show how quantities increase. Your task is to write clear augmentation stories using accurate mathematical language and to represent them with bar models and number sentences.

You have the following to help you:
	•	Definition: Addition as augmentation is where a quantity is increased by an amount, and addition is used to determine the new total.
	•	Sentence starters:
	•	“I had ___, then I got ___ more.”
	•	“There were ___, and ___ more came.”
	•	“A jug contained ___ litres of water. I poured in ___ more.”
	•	“The shop had ___ apples. The delivery brought ___ more.”
	•	A bar model template showing one bar split into two parts (starting amount + amount added = total).

Choose a real-life situation that involves getting or adding more of something. Write a short story problem that fits the augmentation structure. Identify and label the parts: the augment (starting amount), the addend (amount added), and the sum (new total). Draw a bar model to represent your problem, write the matching number sentence, and explain how your problem shows an increase or augmentation.

Use correct mathematical language such as increase, add, altogether, total, and augmented value. Avoid subtraction terms such as “take away.” Make sure your problem clearly shows one quantity being increased by another, and check that your bar model and number sentence match your story.

This activity helps you understand how addition as augmentation represents an increase. It also helps you recognise and label mathematical structures within problems, use bar models to support reasoning, and build a foundation for tackling missing-number and multi-step problems later.

By the end of the task, you will have written one complete augmentation story problem, drawn a labelled bar model to represent it, written the correct number sentence, and explained which part is the augment, addend, and sum.

Once I have reviewed it, you can generate 10 simple questions that are appropriate for Y1 pupils.

Till next week.

Mr A 🦾