Content-type: text/html Downes.ca ~ Stephen's Web ~ Photomath is NOT Cheating

Stephen Downes

Knowledge, Learning, Community

This discussion is reflective of the great calculator debates of the 1980s. "Now we have moved from 'no calculators' to 'no Google' or 'No Photomath,'" writes Alice Keeler. But I think the logic behind such restrictions is misrepresented a bit here. Keeler writes, "Knowing how to calculate the square root by hand was essential because what is going to do it for you??.. you're not going to carry around reference books of square root values." Well, true, but that wasn't the point. Working in stores, I'd see people mistype '10x11' and get '1100' and not realize this was an error because they didn't know how math worked. And that's the point of knowing how to do it: to develop enough intuition to sense when the machine, for whatever reason, is wrong. I could draw a similar analogy about geography and Google Maps. So, mostly, while it's true that Photomath is not cheating, we're missing the point if we simply skip over learning what it is exactly that Photomath is supposed to do.

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Stephen Downes Stephen Downes, Casselman, Canada
stephen@downes.ca

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Last Updated: May 03, 2024 05:20 a.m.

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