81–90 of 126 posts
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…
The author (Audrey Watters) is a truly great journalist, and her work provides a candid — and harsh, if needed — look at the education world. She's a must-read for anyone working in edtech. EDIT: I found her work on the incestuous world of edtech funding and media (e.g., EdSurge) to be especially illuminating. Because she is not an edtech founder, she was able to point out these relationships/issues without worrying…
I worked in edtech for many years and read her work regularly for most of those years. At a certain point though she started to feel more like a restaurant critic who took too much pleasure in roasting whoever the latest target was. Did she write a Best Ed-Tech Success Stories of the Decade? Cus that I'd be interested in.
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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.…
Yup. My grandfather got his college degree via correspondence classes around 1910.
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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
My technique was to learn the material :-)
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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 Focusing on efficient learning means getting away from outdated methodology like tests, long-winded lectures, and more.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 mist…
In Rhode Island, for instance, about 34% of students meet or exceed the expectations of English language arts and 27% for math. These students have been set up for a very difficult future.
Rhode Island is about as nice, safe, and quiet as a large human settlement has ever been (obviously not without social problems).
We're not going to solve the human condition, and I just wonder how best to move forward given that (in RI specifically one might start by fixing the buildings, but that's another story: https://www.providencejournal.com/news/20191215/providence-s...)
RI education data, for the curious: https://lms.backpack.education/public/ride
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.
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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?
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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 kind of ass kissing and begging that I saw among my peers that got all A's My technique was to learn the material :-)
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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 sc…
I guess. My opinion is that they have a lot of potential for the platform but aren't pushing in that direction. They appear to be positioning themselves as simply a "supplemental" resource for learning.
I don't think my kids would have progressed as quickly with just me teaching them, and as a bonus it's taken less of my time. But they still need teaching.
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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 kind of ass kissing and begging that I saw among my peers that got all A's My technique was to learn the material :-)