Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

afterbabel.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 528 posts

Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#201

Post by red_admiral »

devin wrote: post #125
Parfait__ wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's weird that you're not telling us what "things they shouldn't be" are. There are plenty of things I think kids shouldn't be learning.

I doubt they were talking about any kind of "adult" content. The situation they're referring to is more like "your second grader should be focused on multiplication, not long division."

Never underestimate how upset people can get when a kid does longhand addition the old way (write numbers under each other, carry the ones) rather than some more "holistic" way.

Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#202

Post by tokinonagare »

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 worked in EdTech research, it's a shitshow. Indeed the focus is on institutional learning while the power of tech is to empower people outside formal education. The amount of wishful thinking is unbelievable, protocols are often very weak, hard problem aren't addressed and focus is on what is easy to measure. There is so much potential, but it's vastly underexploited.

Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#203

Post by ronsor »

hnpolicestate wrote: post #100
empressplay wrote: post #27

It seems the real issue here is that school devices should be locked down better? It's honestly shocking they aren't already. Why on Earth would kids be allowed to access TikTok over their school network? Mind-boggling, seriously.

Fascinating. I teach and believe the devices should be more open. I've personally witnessed student agitation, anger, anxiety etc when barred from changing their wallpaper, from adding a bookmark to Chrome, from changing basic accessibility settings. I have a hard time seeing how we can lock these devices down any further. Though I do believe schools need an edu version of YouTube. YouTube kids is too childish for ol…

Isn't an edu version of YouTube basically Nebula or those other platforms I see big YouTubers talk about?

I honestly think people should stop trying to make sanitized versions of YouTube though. It doesn't really work (YouTube Kids is still a disaster and often inappropriate IMO), but all the extra rules and regulations severely inconvenience the creators and viewers who are happy with it as an entertainment platform.

Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#204

Post by bell-cot »

scott_w wrote: post #37
Fin_Code wrote: post #13

What is missing in edtech is a concept of progress and partial correctness and guess work. The primary input in edtech is multiple choice. This is selected so a person does not need to evaluate the answer making it cheaper. But leads to kids guessing. Starting a blank line to write a response is what really kicks the brain in. There is no easy way out. We could replicate the same blank page and grayscale human respon…

> But leads to kids guessing. Or, almost as bad, kids learning to approximate the answer. I aced too many multiple-choice physics exams in my GCSEs because the multiple choice was A) 1,000,000 B) 1,000 C) 100 D) 10. Without knowing the formula I was able to eyeball which numbers looked obviously wrong and just select the closest.

> Or, almost as bad...

IIR, that problem-solving method is called "Fermi estimation" - after the Nobel-prize-winning physicist who was particularly skilled at doing it. Perhaps you're smarter than you give yourself credit for?

Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#205

Post by sourcepluck »

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…

> "It wasn't until I found out about WGU"

Could I politely suggest writing out the full acronym the first time, and then using WGU subsequently? It'd be a good deal more considerate of non-U.S. readers.

Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#206

Post by mrandish »

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…

Sorry, what is WGU?

Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#207

Post by kridsdale1 »

sourcepluck wrote: post #205
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…

> "It wasn't until I found out about WGU" Could I politely suggest writing out the full acronym the first time, and then using WGU subsequently? It'd be a good deal more considerate of non-U.S. readers.

Yes it leaves me guessing.

West Georgia University?

Washington, George Understanding-Builder?

Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#208

Post by tqi »

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... Power generally resides with those who benefit... The system is setup to fail because that's what's profitable in the long run for those seeking such profits. And because they can lobby, and use their wealth to influence politics, it won't change. Something else needs to happen first."

Who exactly are you talking about?

Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#209

Post by michaelrpeskin »

jim180 wrote: post #130
michaelrpeskin wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

^^ This! My 4th grader has some sound sensitivity issues, so he uses that as an excuse to go out in the hall and read a book or listen to an auto book on his school-supplied chromebook when the classroom gets too loud for him Well, guess what he's been doing? Watching unfiltered youtube! He's clever and sneaky, so it's been an arms race at home to block youtube enough for him but still allow it to work on my Roku for…

we use Screen Time on iPad and iPhone with some limited time for YouTube, while google.com has different time limits for school...the end game went like this: a) you can search anything at google, go to Videos and watch youtube with no limits, the url is still google.com b) he did come up with an idea to screen record everything and then re-watch everything using Photos app. After that was blocked, apparently you can…

Yep, we found the google-youtube url issue too.

Right now, I have youtube filtered by MAC on my Roku. I would like to add granularity so that they can watch some youtube, but they make that too hard. So we all just share the living room TV right now so that I can just keep an eye on things.

I'm still getting outsmarted though. I have locked-down parental controls on Minecraft so that my two kids can play together but not invite or be invited to stranger's worlds. But somehow, I see other people in there. Microsoft parental controls leave a lot to be desired. I don't know how non-tech-oriented parents do it.

Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#210

Post by Projectiboga »

shortrounddev2 wrote: post #69
bitcurious wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We had this. It worked well, in my opinion at least, and the number of complaints and straight up threats because kids would learn things "they shouldn't be" was just… insanely frustrating. Can you give examples? Are we talking evolution or addition?

My guess is that the kids were learning ahead of the rest of the class and it made the teacher's life harder to keep track of where each kid is, or had to field questions outside of her expertise since often elementary school teachers only know enough to teach elementary school

On top of that the teacher has to juggle two tracks, the normal one and a special needs one. There has been a push for awhile to put mentally disabled kids in with their age peers and the teacher has to handle it, maybe with a low pay assistant.
Post reply on HN