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The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

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Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#271

Post by mattbrewsbytes »

ggm wrote: post #168
tombert wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A bit tangential but related. I dropped out of college in 2012 and was one of the very lucky few who managed to find software engineering work almost immediately [1]. I had a bit of a complex about not having a degree, and a few times I tried going back only to drop out again because I would get bored; by the time I had gone back, I already knew enough stuff to be qualified as an engineer, and as such I didn't feel l…

In some economies, to be an engineer means a chartered engineer, which demands completion of a formal assessment by the national engineering council. I'm not throwing shade on you, my degree from 1982 was 1 year too early to make certification in my field and I have worked for 42 years in software and systems without charter status. I am however cautious of using the word. I call myself a computer scientist even when…

In the software industry and related domains in other industries (i.e. software at a bank, software for retail systems, etc.) the words engineer, developer and programmer can be used interchangeably. I think "engineer" is more trendy these days than "programmer". Other industries also use the words "architect" or even "sanitation engineer" and they mean different things.

I don't think its a big deal that the same words are used in job titles in different industries. The second anyone reads the job description or follows up with a question will understand the domain someone works in.

I usually go with "I work in software" and non-software people equate all of that to "IT", much like I classify Doctors as "medicine" and there are different disciplines.

Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#272

Post by Spivak »

s3r3nity wrote: post #165
lolinder wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The incredibly frustrating thing about this is that this is always done in the name of "equity", but the result is that the system perpetuates the inequities that already exist. Because the public schools force kids into grade bands and don't allow children who are ahead to learn at their level, wealthy parents (and only wealthy parents) figure out ways to supplement or move their kids into schools that are appropria…

+1. Folks pushing for equity haven't read (or too young to have read) "Harrison Bergeron" by Kurt Vonnegut, and it shows. Instead of handicapping those who are ahead, we should intervene with those who are falling behind. Instead of enforcing equal outcomes, instead prioritize offering equal opportunity for every student to get the highest quality of education.

You're literally describing equity. The more interesting question what option will you choose when you're told that individual interventions as you describe are so expensive as to be infeasible.

I don't think it's an issue of a person's politics, Republicans tried the exact same thing with No Child Left Behind. Is the more important thing the individual rising to their highest potential, or is the more important thing the system where economic factors have created a cycle where only children of middle-class or better families are given the environment to rise and those kids run with the flywheel and become the middle-class parents.

I was literally never not going to be successful, I think I'm reasonably intelligent but that by far wasn't the biggest factor. My parents made damn sure I was on the gifted track, always got A's, and was set up to get into an in-demand major at a prestigious university. Was I actually that special or was I just the chosen one, in that I was chosen?

You can only be like "that's not true of everyone " but the exceptions fall away in the aggregate where your success is frighteningly well predicted by your zip code.

Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#273

Post by pessimizer »

Lonestar1440 wrote: post #211

I took about 60 credits - ~8 hours per week each school semester - of Computer Science courses back in the mid 00's at a top state school. Besides the 101 Course, heavy on Java syntax; and Software Architecture where one learns the dark art of Swing, we used pencil, paper, and white boards (even a few chalk boards!) for the rest. I use concepts like Dijkstra's algorithm and the Turing machine regularly in my job. The…

I didn't even own a computer for my first year of computer science (couldn't afford it), and had a 1½-2 hour commute to school. I did everything with paper and pencil, because when I had to actually turn in something, it involved staying in a giant, crowded computer lab and getting home well after dark after having left well before dawn. I still have notebooks filled with C.

That being said, my mother learned how to program when they were still using punchcard decks. My ordeal wasn't special. Don't know if I learned any better than others, but I think the need to not have bugs on the first iteration was more important for me than for other people. I did not just tweak things until it worked.

Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#274

Post by luzojeda »

phyllistine wrote: post #71

This is largely just anti tech puritanism. I cant comment on the psych and neurological arguments, but the following line of reasoning > A pre-Covid survey exploring how US students aged 8-18 utilize digital technologies both inside and outside of school provides the answer (values below are per week) ...If we extrapolate and consider a typical U.S. academic school year of 36 weeks, these numbers suggest that student…

IMO the correct analogy would be a physical object where you could switch back and forth between Harry Potter and books used for learning. If that were the case I'd agree with you. But here we are talking about two separate distinct physical objects, the Harry Potter book and, for example, a biology book.

When a person is reading the latter they can't easily switch to HP, but I can do that while learning anything in my computer. It's as easy as doing ctrl + T + red + enter and I get to the infinite entertainment that is Reddit thanks to the browser autocomplete, for example.

Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#275

Post by ghaff »

nadermx wrote: post #185
ggm wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In some economies, to be an engineer means a chartered engineer, which demands completion of a formal assessment by the national engineering council. I'm not throwing shade on you, my degree from 1982 was 1 year too early to make certification in my field and I have worked for 42 years in software and systems without charter status. I am however cautious of using the word. I call myself a computer scientist even when…

So much this. I studied and got a degree in civil engineering and only call myself studied as an engineer because I never apprenticed or took the professional engineer exam. Despite doing a ton of software now I still feel it would be an insult to my friends who are P.E.'s to call myself an engineer.

In civil engineering especially, you sort of assume senior people have PEs because they have to sign off on certain official documents. But, in general, outside of a few contexts like that, very few people pay any attention to whether someone is a PE or not.

Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#276

Post by wintermutestwin »

basilgohar wrote: post #68

As someone who's worked in EdTech for around two decades, I know why people think this. It's what a lot people here have already said. Education is what is failing, EdTech didn't magically solve this. Just like money, you can't just throw tech at education and expect it to solve anything. There are too many profitable incentives to poor education that are conspiring to perpetuate it. An ill-educated populace is easie…

Focusing solely on the “babysitting” aspect of your post:

Since babysitting is essentially required in our current social framework, why do we need physical schools with in person teachers. It seems to me that we could have babysitting facilities spread to lots of small commercial spaces with in person babysitters for kids who are doing school on computers with synchronous teachers online.

I realize that the model I’ve laid out here is simplistic, but it would solve so many problems that it seems worthwhile to flesh it out and mitigate the issues.

Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#277

Post by tombert »

marssaxman wrote: post #153
tombert wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A bit tangential but related. I dropped out of college in 2012 and was one of the very lucky few who managed to find software engineering work almost immediately [1]. I had a bit of a complex about not having a degree, and a few times I tried going back only to drop out again because I would get bored; by the time I had gone back, I already knew enough stuff to be qualified as an engineer, and as such I didn't feel l…

What was your motivation for getting the degree? It does not seem, from your story, that its absence blocked the growth of your career; were there subjects you wanted to learn for which self-education proved difficult, or does the credential itself have some value?

A few reasons.

For the most part, my career was fine. I had a job at Apple as a senior software engineer at the time (though I didn't really enjoy the job itself).

Part of it was just a bit of an inferiority complex over insecurity of not having a degree. People were generally very polite about it, but internally it felt like every bad thing happened to me in my career was because of the lack of a degree; every comment felt like it was loaded with passive aggression, even if that wasn't true.

Kind of the straw the broke the camel's back was actually a bit funny; I had applied for a job as an engineer at Microsoft Research, and I was declined for it. It was far from the first time I had been declined for a job, obviously, but in this case it was the first time that the declination specifically said "declined because you don't have a degree". In the nearly a decade of working as a software person prior to that, I had never explicitly been told that my lack of degree was the reason for a rejection.

That rejection coincided with another milestone: my 30th birthday. I had told myself I'll finish my degree "next year" for nearly a decade, and now I wasn't in my 20's anymore. Obviously there's no real difference between 29.99 and 30 years old, but it just kind of hit me like a ton of bricks. I registered for WGU that day.

There are probably numerous other reasons, I did want to transition to a more theoretical role as well, but those are the main ones.

Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#278

Post by boomchinolo78 »

WillAdams wrote: post #214
donatj wrote: post #10

I work in EdTech, I have for a very long time now, and the problem I have seen is no one in education is willing to ACTUALLY let kids learn at their own level. The promise of EdTech was that kids could learn where they are. A kid who's behind can actually continue to learn rather than being left behind. A kid who's ahead can be nurtured. We had this. It worked well, in my opinion at least, and the number of complaint…

The best school which I ever attended rigorously divided academic and social classes --- academic classes (reading/English/math/science) were attended at one's ability level, while social classes (homeroom, phys. ed., social studies) were attended at one's grade level. There was a 4 year cap up through the 8th grade (so I was a 4th grader attending 8th grade English, math and science classes), and after that, the cap…

This is terribly sad! Almost satire

Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#279

Post by gedy »

jackbravo wrote: post #254
quacksilver wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sad WGU is only for US citizens. I hear lots of good things about it but can't join in.

Yes, I'm wondering if there are alternatives outside the US to get a full undergraduate or master's degree online at your own pace.

Oregon State has a online BSCS program

Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#280

Post by dennis_jeeves2 »

basilgohar wrote: post #68

As someone who's worked in EdTech for around two decades, I know why people think this. It's what a lot people here have already said. Education is what is failing, EdTech didn't magically solve this. Just like money, you can't just throw tech at education and expect it to solve anything. There are too many profitable incentives to poor education that are conspiring to perpetuate it. An ill-educated populace is easie…

>An ill-educated populace is easier to manipulate, gravitate towards consumerism,

Very wrong. Education only camouflages stupidity, it does not remove it. And then part of education is indoctrination to trust authority (eg. trust the science).

That said, basic education reading/writing/simple math/science is indeed valuable.

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