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The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

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Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#161

Post by BeFlatXIII »

parpfish wrote: post #61
tivert wrote: post #15

I think people, and society in general, need to be a lot more careful about buying into hype, and prematurely adopting hyped tech. Would you buy (or fly in) a "revolutionary" new jet, that (by the way) hasn't been tested, but it's makers are really hopeful it will be safe and perform better than other jets? IMHO, changes in education need to be studied for at least ten years, then rolled out slowly with much more ske…

i think part of the reason computers swept into classrooms so quickly is that we had a generation of old folks seeing their jobs get computerized and they (correctly) felt that computer-literacy would be essential for a huge swath of the workforce. however, this group also had a very hard time learning how to use computers later in their career and felt "wow, this is really hard. we need to be very proactive about te…

…except today's kids are not at all computer literate. They simply know how to click around and sometimes type.

Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#162

Post by dartos »

Afton wrote: post #106
michaelrpeskin wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's "equity" for you. We can't be unfair and give someone something that makes them better. It's easier to keep the top kids down than it is to lift the bottom kids up.

To be fair, it is less about "keeping top kids down" and more about "let's use our very scarce resources helping the bottom kids". Put that way it seems less malicious, and more like probably the right thing to do over all, while still being extremely frustrating if you are, or are the parent of, a 'top kid'. I know that in Seattle, I've been very frustrated with all the talk and promise of our school to provide enri…

I don’t think anyone is trying to keep bright kids down, but you need to ask.

Is it worth it to spend monumental effort trying to get not very bright children to meet some minimum requirement

OR

is it more worth it to just encourage and lift up brighter students.

I don’t think there’s a clear answer, but what we have isn’t it.

Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#163

Post by BeFlatXIII »

WillPostForFood wrote: post #104
boohoo123 wrote: post #66

The teachers, the tools, the curriculum are not the problem. The No Child Left Behind Act is the problem. When everyone passes regardless if they learned anything or not, literacy skills are going to go down. You used to stay in a grade until you passed that grades curriculum, now everyone gets a pass. There are no consequences, resulting in no incentive to learn. Repeating 8th grade while all your friends move to hi…

FWIW, No Child Left Behind is no longer law, it was replaced in 2015.

Is ESSA foundationally any different from NCLB?

Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#164

Post by Xxfireman »

KISS. Teacher, Whiteboard, and a textbook. (Preferable one the student can keep at home and one in the classroom) EdTech resources are amazing for self-study, but should be divorced from the school system. There will be non-profit (Khan Academy) and for-profit options available for students and parents.

Though I am in favor of any suggestion that makes a teacher’s life easier.

However, I do have the controversial opinion that there should be no calculators allowed at all in K-12. So, I have some anti-tech bias.

Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#165

Post by s3r3nity »

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…

+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.

Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#166

Post by davidee »

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…

I hear you.

We built a product specifically for student-centric work where educators could assess student progress (think Hattie's Visible Learning and similar lines of thinking) and compare student growth against their own previous work. We encouraged educators to quickly tailor the tasks to individual student needs.

Educators (and pedagogues) loved it. But we couldn't gain traction with the buyer persona: Administrators asking "what's in it for me?" Data on improved outcomes wouldn't be immediate, so it was a no buy.

This was exacerbated by Google and Microsoft giving away their office productivity suites repackaged as classroom tools to ensure future market capture. Because you totally want your 8-year-old becoming a Word or Docs or Excel expert right?

So yeah, we have a reality where students don't have really great EdTech—they have tech that's masquerading as EdTech, picking up all the low-hanging fruit and leaving the hard problems of education unsolved (or unexplored).

The company is in the process of folding, and I'm hoping to re-release the software as true open source sometime in the future once all the legal / corporate shutdown stuff is finished.

Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#167

Post by doctorpangloss »

kranke155 wrote: post #149
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…

Montessori worked on this problem, and did a fairly good job, but somehow it's still under the radar that we could revolutionise our educational system according an already proven model.

Montessori is more of a brand. People definitely perceive it to be the way you are describing, but really, if there were something old and certain, it would be widely used. On the flip side, there are lots of pedagogical practices that are proven, and this article is trying to show you how they are probably being disrupted by cell phones.

Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#168

Post by ggm »

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…

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 what I do is systems and network engineering.

Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#169

Post by BadHumans »

Yhippa wrote: post #95
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…

> 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…

I can almost admire how you manage to think that but that is just ignoring reality. Politicians have created entire media giants that are designed to either lie to you and trigger an emotional response within you. Maybe not out of pure maliciousness but they benefit from doing it.

Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#170

Post by deanCommie »

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…

This sounds like the promise vs. reality of Agile software development too :(
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