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Worst Ed-Tech Debacles of the Decade

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Re: Worst Ed-Tech Debacles of the Decade

#61

Post by dorchadas »

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…

As a teacher, this pretty much sums up my opinions with ed-tech as well. Really not much good pedagogy behind it, sadly. So many programs just seem to miss it. And I've found that to be especially true at a secondary level; there's really not nearly as much there, and a lot of it is treated as if it was still being geared towards elementary school kids at times.

Re: Worst Ed-Tech Debacles of the Decade

#62

Post by mlyle »

newguy1234 wrote: post #56
mlyle wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Khan is pretty awesome. I'm using it "flipped" with my kids-- they watch a video and do a problem set, and then we talk about it. Mastery challenges figure out whether things are actually retained. They're motivated to earn energy points and avatars. (They should have more rewards, though, because they're running out of things to look forward to). My middle kid just did two years of math in 4-5 weeks. Now we're free…

I agree that Khan Academy is pretty decent but these days the project appears to have lost its direction. Most videos are low quality and could be improved. This non-profit has received millions in donations but has little to show for it. Most of the money appears to have been spent on programmers/web devs to simply organize Khan's already created videos. Some decent work went into the little math problem software as…

I feel like the nonprofit is doing OK. Content is steadily being created. I feel like the quality is relatively high. They purchased Duck Duck Moose and the resultant Khan Academy Jr is pretty good. They introduced a mastery learning system which is very good IMO.

The classroom management stuff is OK.

A whole lot of resource is going into localizing the content for different languages.

They're also running a model school and ran a big pilot study about how to integrate the content at the district level. Research about how to best use the content and its efficacy is a logical next step in deciding where to go..

Re: Worst Ed-Tech Debacles of the Decade

#63

Post by tchaffee »

fouc wrote: post #28
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…

Yeah makes sense. Coursera isn't actually a disruption of education.

Where are the physical classrooms?

Re: Worst Ed-Tech Debacles of the Decade

#64

Post by HarryHirsch »

animations and lessons about “growth mindsets,” “grit,” and “mindfulness.”

Dear God. We have growth mindset and grit here at this regional institution. There are students who take General Chemistry 1 (read: 10-th grade chemistry) three times with three different instructors, everyone with a different teaching philosophy, and they still don't give up. Wow. That's some grit there. This time they failed, but they can always pay more tuition, and try again.

Now if their schoolteachers actually exposed them to difficult material and let them experience that with some effort they could overcome those difficulties, that would foster "growth mindset" and "grit". But instead the students want solution strategies and problem classification that takes away all the joy of discovery, and their teachers indulge them. Once I got bad student evaluation for handing out word problems with more than one step and having them figure out the solution themselves. The poor things.

We'll have to wait for different teachers and especially different students.

Re: Worst Ed-Tech Debacles of the Decade

#65

Post by ghaff »

newguy1234 wrote: post #57
ghaff wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect vocational training is considered old hat and boring. I get Lynda through my company and it can be pretty good. But it's not really that different from the sort of online training courses I've had access to in one form or another for ages.

Lynda became successful because companies gave it to their employees to boost up their skills...which I think might be an untapped potential market for ed tech. How about making very high quality courses that aren't sold to students. They're sold to companies which in turn make their employees take the courses and so on.

A lot of these companies are realizing that is the market. A lot of companies put a lot of money into their internal ed programs and, in the scheme of things, adding some more general purpose ed to flesh out their offerings is cheap.

Getting an employee or hobbyist to pay even $100 of their own money for a course. Or making them jump through reimbursement hoops? Not so much.

Actually reminds me I should map out some Lynda courses to take in the new year.

Re: Worst Ed-Tech Debacles of the Decade

#66

Post by droithomme »

pretendscholar wrote: post #51
droithomme wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A C+ is a reasonable thing to ask about.

Maybe im just mediocre but it doesnt seem like a big deal. Sometimes you get a shit teacher and check out. The kind of ass kissing and begging that I saw among my peers that got all A's is real alarming

The grade may or may not be a "big deal" as you mention, but it is certainly and with total absolution, a reasonable thing to ask about. Do you agree?

Re: Worst Ed-Tech Debacles of the Decade

#67

Post by droithomme »

axbytg wrote: post #42
droithomme wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A C+ is a reasonable thing to ask about.

I disagree, unless you are hiring straight out of college and the C+ is in an immediately relevant or "red flag" class. I can't imagine being asked this. I studied philosophy, I'm interviewing to write software, who cares about my grades?

You submitted your transcripts. I am going to ask about your C+. It's a reasonable thing for me to ask you about, don't you agree?

Re: Worst Ed-Tech Debacles of the Decade

#68

Post by Retric »

tchaffee wrote: post #63
fouc wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah makes sense. Coursera isn't actually a disruption of education.

Where are the physical classrooms?

Eduction without physical classrooms aka correspondence education is a really old idea. Using the internet to host videos, is a take on using TV to broadcast videos to remote area, which is a take on doing the same with radio.

And as the name suggests before this people would get degrees via mail with known examples going back to 1728. Though coupling this with formal degrees only dates back to the 1840s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distance_education

Re: Worst Ed-Tech Debacles of the Decade

#69

Post by dougmwne »

droithomme wrote: post #66
pretendscholar wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe im just mediocre but it doesnt seem like a big deal. Sometimes you get a shit teacher and check out. The kind of ass kissing and begging that I saw among my peers that got all A's is real alarming

The grade may or may not be a "big deal" as you mention, but it is certainly and with total absolution, a reasonable thing to ask about. Do you agree?

I don't agree. Interview time is limited and valuable. Sure, you could ask the candidate about anything thats not illegal to ask. But why waste time on irrelevancies? Asking about a single low grade when the candidate has an otherwise respectable GPA is just wasting a chance to ask a better question. If I saw a junior interviewer do it, I would be tempted to share some ideas of stronger questions to ask in the future. Experience: hundreds of interviews.

Re: Worst Ed-Tech Debacles of the Decade

#70

Post by bsder »

droithomme wrote: post #40
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.

If you have a general GPA of 3.7, why?

Was it a bad teacher? A bad class? Someone in the family died? Bad breakup with girlfriend?

What business is it of yours? And, even worse, if I lie to you about why, can you verify it? And, even worse, I'm probably expecting you to ask me about it, so I'm completely prepared to snow you on that subject. Not only is asking me about it useless, it's a negative amount of information since you could have asked me about something else.

I'll go further, we had one professor at my alma mater that was well known to be a jerk. If your interviewer was from that school, passing this class was considered godly and failing it was considered a rite of passage.

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