How ChatGPT and Bard Can Empower Parents to Teach Child

The AI home tutoring assistants: ChatGPT and Google Bard.

When I asked my mother whether I was as smart as her grandkids, she laughed it off. You both (me and my sister) were born in a non-technological era and weren’t half as intelligent, she added.

It’s understandable. At least, when I see my three years old navigate through my smartphone, it makes sense.

Generally, I keep gadgets away. It’s some of those super distracting moments that the little monster gets away with them.

Consequently, you have to have an edge, especially when it comes to being their teacher.

Conversational AI

We all interact with search engines such as Google. Input a query and sieve through a truckload of results. While this worked till last year, 2023 changed all that.

Conversational AI engines like ChatGPT and Google Bard do all that hard work only if you ask. Currently based on machine learning, these tools provide a chatbox-like experience to do things like explanations, math, coding, poetry, summary, and much more.

People all over the globe use them for various job profiles. While 100% dependence on any AI tool isn’t recommended, ChatGPT and Bard can be worthy assistants.

Further sections share my experience about how to use ChatGPT or Bard for home tutoring your child.

Just so you know, ChatGPT has a free version that works wonders for routine prompts and a paid version for queries needing creative outputs. Google Bard, on the other hand, is completely free.

Mathematics

Math is mostly practice, but what comes even before is learning the underlying concepts. This is where a student gets to know about the principles for the very first time.

So let’s see how something like ChatGPT can be of help.

And while we all can think of similar examples like this, there is nothing overly special here; it’s about making the process effortless. This can be useful after a taxing workday when you can’t stress your intelligence anymore and yet want to deliver something useful for your kid.

Even for absolute beginners, ChatGPT has much to offer.

In addition, let’s not forget that you can regenerate responses to get the best match.

But can ChatGPT or the like handle slightly advanced questions?

To check this, I gave ChatGPT an SAT-level (used for college admissions in the USA) query.

The graph of y = (2x − 4)(x − 4) is a parabola in the xy-plane. In which of the given equivalent equations do the x and y coordinates of the 
vertex of the parabola appear as constants or coefficients?
A) y = 2x^2 − 12x + 16
B) y = 2x(x − 6) + 16
C) y = 2(x − 3)^2 + (−2)
D) y = (x − 2)(2x − 8)

Consequently, one should be confident about their efficacy in beginner and mid-level academics.

As a matter of fact, ChatGPT 4 has passed many exams with flying colors. Check the OpenAI blog for the complete list.

However, even after those achievements, I would advise caution and suggest using them only as assistants while the human always takes the driving seat.

So, this was math. Moving on to the others.

Science

People have a love-or-hate relationship with science. The latter category is mostly born out of sheer frustration because it just goes over their heads.

Not that you’ll have to explain Blackhole to a toddler; nevertheless, this is helpful. Especially the last sentence…” it’s like the best player in a cosmic tug of war,” because it pulls everything in. Straight to the point and an example I’ll personally never forget.

Let’s try another AI engine this time, Google Bard.

At this stage, I will recommend Bard for basic prompts. The major Bard superpower is its internet connectivity which helps extract the most updated information for the users.

But it’s still in beta. So its explanations might not make sense as of now. However, it’s completely free and a Google project which is bound to improve in the upcoming versions.

Coming back to ChatGPT for some more science queries.

I don’t remember my science book explaining Photosynthesis this clearly. However, it still is mostly a textbook definition, and science is much more than that.

How about a little experiment?

Overall, ChatGPT is good for elementary science and explains the concepts neatly with a much-needed practical touch.

And if it can do science and mathematics, I have little doubt about its literary skills.

English

The best use case I found to date is when you have a paragraph and are asked to draw conclusions or find errors in its sentences.

This works simply by pasting the section and querying the AI engine subsequently since it can keep context.

Needless to say, these tools are very efficient for basic literature tasks such as finding antonyms and synonyms or framing example sentences with a word.

In addition, ChatGPT is particularly excellent at making summaries with a predefined word limit. What’s more, AI tools such as ChatGPT can make for an above-average poet!

It even created a little song for my little one to help him get into the alphabet.

Social Studies

This can be the most tedious yet fun thing to teach your child. There is soo much to learn about this world, its inhabitants, oceans, lands, and countries, and not to forget history.

A simple thing like map reading can be taught from many angles, making it an interactive and memorable experience for the learners.

Moreover, ChatGPT is great at summarizing historical events. You can ask it anything up to its data cut-off in September 2021.

Additionally, it’s good for counting cities, states, rivers, etc., in a particular region.

Similarly, Google Bard is also good at responding to such queries.

Additionally, Bard can reply with images which is definitely a plus.

But to reiterate, using ChatGPT and Bard for fact-based queries might not be a good idea, especially if you don’t cross-check its results.

A Tutoring Assistant!

If you use search engines, you’ll love what conversational AI can do. It simplifies the process and is very creative (especially ChatGPT), which helps in finding various ways to teach kids.

I have tested two AI engines, ChatGPT 4 (paid version) and Bard (which is free). ChatGPT, in particular, displayed brilliance in whatever prompt I threw at it. Google Bard, however, is restricted at present and is best if you need current information.

Importantly, you can also provide internet access to ChatGPT (paid) by turning on a toggle in the settings. Although it’s a beta feature, this will remove the only problem with this top-notch conversational AI. And yeah, one can also try ChatGPT free version, which should perform competent enough in comparison to Bard, but has no internet connectivity options as of now.

Finally, you should know about some ChatGPT plugins to make it even more powerful.