Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Worst Ed-Tech Debacles of the Decade

hackeducation.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 126 posts

Re: Worst Ed-Tech Debacles of the Decade

#31

Post by johnsimer »

pg_bot wrote: post #12

Instead of buying more/better equipment, teachers, or technology why hasn't anyone tried to buy a better student? I'm fairly certain that if you paid elementary students cash for better grades you would see a huge jump in achievement for the average student. A small amount of money to us feels like a huge amount to a kid, and there are plenty of studies showing that rewards increase performance for basic and mechanic…

rewards increase performance for basic and mechanical skills.

But for complex skills, e.g. learning, they decrease intrinsic motivation, and thus performance.

Re: Worst Ed-Tech Debacles of the Decade

#32

Post by jcranmer »

The interactive whiteboard story I have:

My school system decided to introduce those interactive whiteboards into every classroom. Including the computer room. Where all the computers ran Linux or Solaris [1], which operating systems the software couldn't support. Without the computer to run it on, those things are worse than regular whiteboards since you can't even draw on them with real markers.

[1] Sun had yet to be bought by Oracle at that time.

Re: Worst Ed-Tech Debacles of the Decade

#33

Post by hinkley »

duxup wrote: post #7
seattle_spring wrote: post #3

While I understand I only met a small fraction of the people trying to "disrupt" education, my experience with Ed-Tech was that the absolute wrong people were behind it. I interviewed at Coursera in 2012, and much of the interview focused on my academic background. Every round I'd sit down with an interviewer and they'd look at my transcript and say, "hmm what happened here!?" as they would point to my C+, the only g…

> "hmm what happened here!?" as they would point to my C+ Man that would be an instant turn off for me. Having said that I'm unlikely to end up in a room with folks who would say something like that anyway, mostly because I wouldn't make it past the resume filter... for good reason, and a good outcome for everyone involved probabbly.

Which is weird. Because as GP inpugned, how are a bunch of hyper-conventional learners going to 'disrupt' education? We have a lot of people who haven't been served by the current educational system. Wouldn't you rather hire people who did poorly in school and yet were still very successful in their careers and find out what they know?

Re: Worst Ed-Tech Debacles of the Decade

#34

Post by mattmcknight »

pg_bot wrote: post #12

Instead of buying more/better equipment, teachers, or technology why hasn't anyone tried to buy a better student? I'm fairly certain that if you paid elementary students cash for better grades you would see a huge jump in achievement for the average student. A small amount of money to us feels like a huge amount to a kid, and there are plenty of studies showing that rewards increase performance for basic and mechanic…

It has been tried.

https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2010/4/13/students-result...

Re: Worst Ed-Tech Debacles of the Decade

#35

Post by hinkley »

crazygringo wrote: post #20

I spent years working in ed-tech, at more than one company on this list, and know people at many others. There were two overarching lessons I took from my experience. The first is that a successful educational product needs to deeply and intimately understand pedagogy and materials -- teaching and learning techniques and how they vary between students, and what kinds of materials are suitable -- deeply , I mean like…

> You have to hire educational+domain experts.

... who are willing to attack their own profession.

Re: Worst Ed-Tech Debacles of the Decade

#36

Post by hinkley »

pg_bot wrote: post #12

Instead of buying more/better equipment, teachers, or technology why hasn't anyone tried to buy a better student? I'm fairly certain that if you paid elementary students cash for better grades you would see a huge jump in achievement for the average student. A small amount of money to us feels like a huge amount to a kid, and there are plenty of studies showing that rewards increase performance for basic and mechanic…

There's advice not to tie your children's chores to their allowance, because at some point they may decide that they have enough money and rationalize that they don't need to do chores.

Chores are about responsibility and being a contributing part of the family. Not about drawing a salary. I suspect those people would give the same advice for education.

Re: Worst Ed-Tech Debacles of the Decade

#37

Post by cgearhart »

fouc wrote: post #25
crazygringo wrote: post #20

I spent years working in ed-tech, at more than one company on this list, and know people at many others. There were two overarching lessons I took from my experience. The first is that a successful educational product needs to deeply and intimately understand pedagogy and materials -- teaching and learning techniques and how they vary between students, and what kinds of materials are suitable -- deeply , I mean like…

In my opinion.. Ed-tech will never truly be successful if it is B2B and focused on teaching. The real problem to be solved is LEARNING. The goals of teaching and learning are not the same. Focusing on efficient learning means getting away from outdated methodology like tests, long-winded lectures, and more.

Learning isn’t really something that the provider can force on the student. Learning is like weight loss-there isn’t a trivial one-size-fits-all solution, and it requires a ton of work that no one else can do for you.

Tests and lectures aren’t outdated, nor even particularly ineffective compared to anything else. I don’t know when it became popular to hate the way school is run, but it usually traces back to the mistaken belief that school should predict professional performance (which is not now—nor ever was—the primary purpose of school).

In both cases, my work with Ed tech has convinced me that the key problems are _social_, not technical.

Re: Worst Ed-Tech Debacles of the Decade

#39

Post by throw7 »

Honestly, I just briefly skimmed the list. I thought OLPC was too low and there was some politics thrown in there at the top... anyway...

Personally, the greatest ed-tech was when my parents bought me a C-128 which came with thick manuals, one of which was a Commodore BASIC programming manual.

IMHO, education is throwing a wide and open experience to a kid and guiding and helping them learn to learn. Everyone is different in what they like and enjoy, and that's a very good thing.

Re: Worst Ed-Tech Debacles of the Decade

#40

Post by droithomme »

seattle_spring wrote: post #3

While I understand I only met a small fraction of the people trying to "disrupt" education, my experience with Ed-Tech was that the absolute wrong people were behind it. I interviewed at Coursera in 2012, and much of the interview focused on my academic background. Every round I'd sit down with an interviewer and they'd look at my transcript and say, "hmm what happened here!?" as they would point to my C+, the only g…

A C+ is a reasonable thing to ask about.
Post reply on HN