Even with GitHub classroom using CodeSpaces students can add AI as an extension. Maybe there’s a solution to that, but I haven’t found it yet.
I am aware that once you put the correct devcontainer.json file you should not be able to install new extensions, are you sure?
I was hoping something like that was the case. I’ll have to try it out. Thanks for the info. 
1 Like
Awesome, can you let me know if it works? because I am not sure yet.
What teachers “should” do cannot by most, especially at the primary and secondary levels be pivoted in an instant. School change occurs gradually in one year intervals. Entire curriculums exist which are trivialized by AI assistance in its current form. Moreover, these are designed not with the idea of building real world projects and applications in the early phases of learning but rather with the idea of teaching students how to think and solve problems. We scale up from there and the point when it is appropriate, even expected, to use an AI assist for development should be governed and controlled for the students by the educators. Input is welcome on that point and research is currently under way to determine when where and how AI should enter into the curriculum.
1 Like
Really? You apparently have no clue how cognition and learning works.
3 Likes
+1 here I completely agree.
AI is separate from programming. Imagine if instead of learning Python, Node, CPP, and others you learned how to go to ChatGPT and say “How to make discord bot”? How will that help you?
The whole point of programming is not just the composition of code, but also the problem solving skills that you develop, similar to solving math problems. Without that (Problem solving skills), you CANNOT code.
4 Likes
(not a teacher) I feel like teachers should leave replit because of the following quote
"Our roadmap for the near future can be summarized in one sentence: AI will redefine every single Replit feature. It won’t be necessary to mention that AI plays a fundamental role every time software is being edited or deployed – soon we will take it for granted.
As part of this, we are saying goodbye to “Ghostwriter” as the name for our AI features. Replit will become a synonym of AI for software creators – only then we will have accomplished our mission."
https://blog.replit.com/ai4all
Replit seems to be going all in on AI if the quote "AI will redefine every single Replit feature. " Isn’t worrying, I don’t know what to say
4 Likes
Leaving replit is so much easier said than done. Entire courses of content, most made from scratch, with hundreds of lessons, unit tests or IO tests, instruction files… None of which is exportable or transferrable in a simple manner.
Replit Teams for Edu is free and includes collaboration, feedback loop, submission and assessment. Students don’t need a specific operating system or device. It’s all stored in the cloud.
For middle school and high school there’s no one tool that does this aside from Replit (for free).
All we’re asking for is the ability to hide the AI tools for the students. If a student goes and uses a different AI tool, they are actively cheating and that’s a different conversation. As it stands, however, the AI is in their face and the students don’t even have to try to cheat. It cheats for them.
Yes, we need to teach appropriate use of new tech. Yes, there’s a time and place for AI along with anything else in education. But teachers are already overwhelmed and this kind of change in the middle of a semester is almost life-changing for us. It destroys our flow and interrupts our schedule in a way that non-educators can’t understand. It happened without warning, similar to the new console (don’t get me started on the changes to the templates and console mid-semester).
We’re asking for a toggle switch. That’s it. “Education Mode” on or off that turns off certain parts of Replit in order to make the coding environment cleaner, less busy, and provide opportunity for students to learn how to write and debug code so that they will know what is going on when they use AI to code for them in the future.
Believe it or not, our request is not because we hate students - it’s because we love them and want them to be as educated and experienced as possible.
I’ve said my piece on this in a few threads here and we’ve had no direct communication from replit staff. We used to have a teams for edu liaison - someone we could talk to and learn from. I miss that.
8 Likes
frustrating enough, but for my middle schoolers, some just try to listen to the AI and think they can get what we are aiming at getting done by just following it so they don’t have to type the code. Then they have 20 imported libraries that have absolutely nothing to do with what we are doing and they ask me what they need to do because they weren’t listening. Instead, they were too busy just trying to listen to the AI and going exactly the wrong direction lol
4 Likes
I’ve seen that happen. And I won’t even get started on the time that AI suggested a curse word started defining “add”, “subtract”, “multiply”, and “divide” functions.
4 Likes
I remember reading recently another post talking about the AI feature suggesting that. Sort of humorous, but also, something my IT department, who I had to work with to get replit unblocked, wouldn’t take too kindly to.
Thankfully, none of my students have come to me with an example of this in the wild, so I am, so far, in the clear.
I’ve resorted to recording a video the night before for the class (changes each trimester as different students have different needs and speeds.) This way, they can just watch the video and I shake my head and say “watch the video again” lol. Also helpful so that they don’t just rush across it and lose track of where they’re supposed to be.
4 Likes
Hey all, wanted to give an update here. We are working on adding controls for Team Admins to turn AI functionality on and off for an entire Team for Edu for this in the near term.
Thanks for sharing your feedback about the addition of AI to all Replit accounts. We know major changes like this can be disruptive to you and your students and we should have given you a heads up about this change. We’ll do better.
12 Likes
Thank you for working on AI controls for Team Admins. Do you happen to know a timeline for when these changes might be published?
4 Likes
Yes thank goodness you are, Replit is fab. Really really need this asap - what is your timeframe please so that us teachers can plan and not stress out! Are we waiting a few days or a few weeks?
3 Likes
We are hoping to have this shipped within the next week or so. As always, this timeline may change if any emergencies or unexpected contingencies come up, but I’ll be sure to keep you updated here!
9 Likes
A weird request? I’m guessing the OP is not a teacher.
Generative AI is only usable if you’re already able to string together a sentence and can already read. You only learn how to communicate using conventional human languages by practing the basics for thousands of hours, first starting with simple words and phrases and then by stringing them together to communicate more advanced ideas. You don’t start by being able to write an essay and then magically, through osmosis, learn how to understand or use the language.
In my life I’ve learned two languages as a second language learner. In neither case did I start by reading novels or listening to people and then magically learned the language. In the case of French I had to learn the vocab and grammar first and then practice. In the case of German I got my start by watching TV, but, I did not start to be able to communicate in the language until I started learning it in school.
Coding is the same. Sure, now with a generative AI you can use a query to “write” a program. But, you’ll not be able to look at the code that was generated and understand what it is.
AI code autocomplete robs students of the need to learn the same way relying on an automatic translator robs a language learner of the deep learning that comes with struggle.
Besides, the unrelenting autocomplete suggestions are extremely distracting, even for experienced programmers.
Problem solving is also a transferrable skill that gets developed through programming, and, the AI code autocomplete robs learners of the experience of struggling through the problem. Thus they never develop those skills in the first place.
For now, at least, AI autocomplete renders Replit almost useless as a learning tool. At best replit has now been relegated to simple practice. For real student work I’ve migrated offline back to Thonny.
I’m no purist by any stretch of the imagination.
A certain level of autocomplete could be useful, I think, especially for a beginner to get them past the initial learning curve. For example, flagging indent errors, variable spelling errors, == vs. =, value = variable_name. These are language-specific quirks or beginnger conceptual mis-understandings and I’m not sure much is gained by beginners struggling with them as they are taking their very first steps.
4 Likes
i already said that to learn programming, u need pen and paper or a notepad, thats exactly for that purpose.
also you won’t be spectating him live for hours on cloud based IDE, then whats the point of starting debate on Ai?
1 Like
this only makes cheating slower, not impossible – best you can do is to somehow stop use of replit.com on the browser, which is easier of course in time-limited, classroom conditions.
2 Likes
I’m thinking anonfaded is perhaps a student and not yet familiar with the responsibilities of the educator.
Cheating is not the problem. The primary person who suffers in the long run from cheating is the person doing the cheating.
Learning is the problem! Learning is hard work. And, if there’s an easy way out–code auto-complete or generative AI–then a certain style of student will take that out.
If they are offered the solutions, unprompted, then the software is cheating the student out of their own learning. That’s the problem with using the current replit editor.
FWIW I’ve played a little with the editor. Yeah, it’s neat and I certainly would use it, but, I have the luxury of already having learned all the stuff that it’s doing so I can “read the code”. Someone in the early stages of their learning could perhaps do what I can do with the help fo the AI but they’ll have no clue what they produced and they won’t have the opportunity to develop the understanding necessary to make use of it.
Ultimately AI will be useful tool (the same way the Mac interface and computing paradigm from 1984 is still very distinctly recognisable in all of today’s operating systems), but, let’s not pretend that it’s super important that kids learn how to use the current generation of poorly implemented generative AIs at such an early stage of their learning.
3 Likes