What some students & teachers thought of PhotoMath

In the wake of all these interesting conversations surrounding PhotoMath, I figured it's actually a good conversation -- not only for us to have, but for students to have as well.

I have been pushing my students to think critically and to solve problems since the beginning of the semester.  I figured this topic is actually a good one to throw at them - in order to see what they think.

And so I showed the following video to students, without any prompts.  I also shared the video with my colleagues, without any prompts.  I didn't want any words to influence their ideas.

I will go over the teacher reactions first.  Since I didn't get an opportunity to speak to too many of them, and it was extremely brief each time, and so it will be quicker to describe.

Teacher reactions:

Three teachers immediately said "that's awesome!" Then they briefly mentioned the possibility of students checking their work with technology like this.  It's just a very cool thing that's being developed. Two teachers had some concerns.  One was worried about how there are incorrect sequences with this app - as well as the fact that one way is being represented.  The other one worried about how it won't benefit the students develop good thinking through the process.

Student reaction:
The student reactions were actually in much more detail.  I am attributing this to the fact that we had a bit longer to chat about it.  Students got excited, as the teachers did.  Then some of them downloaded the app immediately and tried it on our textbooks.

"Aw, it doesn't actually work for anything in here" (note that we're doing advanced functions, which the app is unable to handle at the moment)

"What? it's reading this wrong" (their excitement seemed to have faded a bit here)

"Oh look, it can do fractions" (this comment sounded more snarky than impressed)

After these initial reactions and a play with the app, I asked them to think about what this means for us.  What this means for mathematics classrooms.

In general, they chatted about what might be good, and what might be bad.  I will summarize a bit below:

What might be good
- It shows steps which might help some people
- It is attempting to recognize patterns, which might be able to be used for something else besides this
- It is like calculators in that it will gear people (students) to think more about conceptual things instead of calculations
- It would be awesome if we could put Desmos, Wolfram Alpha, and this together

What might be bad
- It only shows one set of steps which doesn't help us think about problems in different ways
- It would make people lazy and they won't actually understand anything

I've read a few of the articles out there, and I think there is a wide-spread sense of condescension. People look down on math (or mis-define it), people look down on the app, people look down on the teachers, people look down on the kids... etc.

Let's give each other more credit.  The kids thought about this deeply, and they make some good points.  In terms of a piece of technology - there is potential (if it works).  Personally, just the fact that it is bringing "what exactly is math education" to the table is a good thing to me.

There is no point in tackling the technology that comes up.

If guns don't kill people, and people kill people,

Then the same thing applies to photomath.

It's all about how we utilize and approach it.

Let's stop each other from slinging mud.