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The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

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Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#151

Post by marksbrown »

LargeWu wrote: post #97
marksbrown wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A good example in the UK is teaching students the FOIL technique for algebraic expansion. Students typically can expand (ax+b)(cx+d) because they've learnt a recipe but cannot expand say (ax2+bx+c)(dx+e). Many schools here focus on such tricks (nix the tricks was a great book focusing on such things) as schools here are judged on pass/fail rates. In general, exams are an excellent way to assess students en masse at t…

That, to me, is not a problem with the exam though. It's a problem of teaching to a special case and not the general case. If you want to find fault, it's in the incentive system. But I don't see how the exam itself is the problem.

Well I won't reiterate all of 'bad education' by Bryan Caplan but to my mind exams are imperfect because:

1. Schools are not equal. It's not fair to compare students when they usually have no choice over their teachers. 2. Exams cover an arbitrary syllabus controlled by undemocratic exam boards. 3. Topics are chosen by exam boards that can be examined not by importance. 4. Students who perform poorly under stress of exam conditions are punished for it. 5. Exams serve no real purpose. Children are not chickens being graded for sale. They're at best a weak signal of aptitude.

I would much prefer exams to serve as a prerequisite of sitting a future course rather than an assessment at the end. That way teachers can actually teach rather than continuously repeat the same content.

Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#152

Post by wslh »

I think the EdTech revolution hasn’t truly happened yet, but it feels inevitable. In fact, the PISA Test might soon incorporate LLM prompting. I’m not kidding. Things are accelerating in every direction, and I’d rather brainstorm here on HN than focus solely on the article, which I think is a valuable resource regardless of whether you agree with it.

Just my two cents, not claiming this is groundbreaking, but hoping to provoke insights from smarter and more experienced folks here:

- Education should be a blend of virtual and physical, working with both individuals and groups.

- Kids should be able to set their own pace but also have structured routes to accelerate when possible.

- Curriculum could be streamlined into core components: today, you can learn subjects like chemistry, physics, CS, math, and biology through various Python packages. So, why not start by learning a programming language?

Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#153

Post by marssaxman »

tombert wrote: post #44
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…

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?

Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#154

Post by vundercind »

jerf wrote: post #35
Fin_Code wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Customized skill based education should be the future.

The problem is that it should be the present. Oh, I've been an engineer for a while and I know the system can't turn on a dime, it would take some time. However, we should be seeing visible progress towards this goal, and frankly, if anything, the system continues to be moving in the other direction, lowering bars to try to get everyone into the exact same level long after it should be clear that lowering the bar sti…

Computerization barely helps with "customized skill-based education" outside of parts of certain topics (some areas of math, notably, are very well-suited to it). Detailed feedback from humans is vital in many topics and for learning many skills, and, as they say, that doesn't scale. We can do it, but it means spending a lot more on teachers, so we aren't going to. We may eventually get a half-assed version involving LLMs or whatever nonsense, but that will be brought in mainly as a way to get by with fewer teachers (they're cost-diseasing into something we can't afford any more, it seems) not to increase educational quality.

My expected outcome for all of this is that the gap between rich and poor students will grow, as only rich students will continue to have decent student:teacher ratios (their ratios already tend to be a ton better than public school kids). Paid tutoring will become common somewhat farther down-market than it currently is, as more people choose to pay extra just to cover what their tax money used to, but no longer does.

Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#155

Post by brainwipe »

dyauspitr wrote: post #82
brainwipe wrote: post #32

IMO education is still built around Victorian structures and needs to be reworked from examinations downwards. Examinations are an exercise in being good at examinations, not proficiency in the subject. Once you strip that away the you wind back all the structures that feed it. You can see this working at schools designed for the neuro diverse. Those students simply can't sit and listen to a teacher all day, so each…

In my opinion without exams, kids will never solidify what they learn. It’s usually pretty easy to think you have a solid grasp of some thing until you’re actually asked to solve a brand new problem.

Then I would ask anyone to keep building on knowledge rather than training for an arbitrary benchmark. Filling your short-term memory with knowledge to be then dumped straight after will get you a good exam mark but doesn't mean you have anything close to a solid grasp. Most schools (in the UK in particular) optimise for grade outcome because that's how they are judged, that's not the same thing as being good at a task.

Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#156

Post by ImPostingOnHN »

mbesto wrote: post #131
Yhippa wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are too many profitable incentives to poor education that are conspiring to perpetuate it. An ill-educated populace is easier to manipulate, gravitate towards consumerism, and won't hold their leaders as accountable. Power generally resides with those who benefit from an ill-educated populace, so anything that would actually help educate children and people at large is discouraged. I want to believe this but…

> actively thinking about this and dedicating part of their work to misinforming the poor intentionally. I'm reminded of the quote > “No one involved in an extralegal activity thinks of themselves as nefarious. I'm a businessman, okay?" - Quark, DS9 S6E25 I don't believe anyone nefariously sits there and says "lets make sure people aren't educated" but I genuinely believe there are people who say "I did this thing an…

You are 100% correct, people mostly follow incentives. The problem is that, for many politicians, "this thing" in "I did this thing and people keep voting me in, so I'm going to continue doing this thing" refers to the starving and/or defunding of education.

Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#157

Post by ookblah »

svieira wrote: post #9

The key point: > Seeing as the great majority of students spend over 80% of their digital device time using these tools to multitask, the automatic response for a great majority of students using these tools has become multitasking.. Unfortunately, when we attempt to employ digital devices for learning purposes, this primary function quickly bleeds into student behavior. > This is why, when using a computer for homew…

Really jarring reading that. I think I was in middle school when the AOL and the "internet" to me became a thing (lol) and sure there was a lot of time wasting stuff (chatrooms, games, etc.) but there was a huge huge field of just exploration and learning. I cut my tech teeth on that; minimal parent supervision, no gamifying or artificial motivators, just my curiosity.

I feel for kids nowadays. It was the wild west back then, everything was basically unrestricted and nobody had any clue of the consequences, but we didn't have companies actively trying to addict us to stuff.

No idea what the answer is.

Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#158

Post by margalabargala »

Retric wrote: post #120
LargeWu wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What, specifically, is an example of an exam not measuring proficiency? If an exam is well designed, the student will need to figure out what is being asked and use their mastery to provide an answer.

“Well designed? is doing heavy lifting here. You can get very good at specific test formats in terms of time management, common tricks, etc. Actual tests include things like: Multiple choice questions were providing answers aids answering the question. Short responses / fill in the blank generally mean people can just regurgitate answers they don’t understand. Essay responses sound great, except you can’t answer many…

> More broadly tests are time limited so can’t test skills that take long periods of time to demonstrate a major issue for say programming.

Every programming class I've taken, in high school or college, was project based where the main source of grade were actual programs I wrote which actually did something.

The one exception perhaps being the AP test for AP CS.

Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#159

Post by drawkward »

As a former teacher and current parent, I hate ed tech for a variety of reasons:

-ed tech exists, by definition, on the greatest distraction machine heretofore known to humankind

-ed tech lets the tech do the grading, removing the ed from the loop. It abstracts away the teacher's mental model of my student's mind.

-ed tech is overwhelmingly short-response or multiple choice; this measures only the most basic forms of learning.

-there is rarely a physical artifact, making lessons and learning far more ephemeral. Often, I cant review previously-submitted work to see where my children have gone astray.

-ed tech has completely removed the physical aspects of education. Writing notes is better than typing notes is better than merely listening to a lecture, on a retention basis. Rather than actually submerge an object in a graduated cylinder of water to calculate its volume via displacement, its now a shitty online "experiment"

I could go on and on, and perhaps later I will in subsequent comments.

Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#160

Post by gosub100 »

lolinder wrote: post #78
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 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…

Plus it can't be denied that the system incentives holding smart kids back because they boost the metrics: GPA, standardized tests, graduation rates.
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