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The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

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Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#211

Post by Lonestar1440 »

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. They are very real to me - more real than any programming language - because I sat for hours taking paper notes off a whiteboard while some OG Computer guru discussed the topic.

If I didn't need tech to learn Computer Science, kids definitely don't need it to learn Algebra.

Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#212

Post by sofixa »

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 want to believe this but I can't honestly imagine someone actively thinking about this and dedicating part of their work to misinforming the poor intentionally.

Populism is exactly this - misinforming poorly educated people with bad scary words, "others", "easy" fixes.

> Inflation is bad! Crime is bad! We'll just deport 20 million "others" and everything will be allright!

Or:

> Let's send all the money we're spending on the EU on the NHS, 350 million pounds per week more for the National Health Service!

In some countries, like the US, there are active efforts to sabotage education, or at least cripple it - by reducing funding to a point where educators have to spend their own money for supplies, get burned out, have poverty-level wages, etc. Those can't be accidental.

Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#213

Post by sixo »

fearmerchant wrote: post #180
sixo wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Equity really isn't the ideology doing this, except in a few cases, it's something else. I'd speculate the dominant effect is that people tend to dislike and resist what they have a hard time imagining: there's a strong bias towards easily-administrated uniformity, and ppl tend to enforce what they know and what they were brought up in themselves

I work in education and you're probably right that it's not THE thing, but it does enter the conversation. Teachers are supposed to provide what's called differential instruction but the quality and fidelity really depends on the teacher.

yeah, it's there, but I tend to think that "equity" is what people end up reaching for as a rationalization of the emotional need for uniformity / conformity / familiarity

It sort of "fits" but it just doesn't explain very much on its own

Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#214

Post by WillAdams »

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 was lifted and students could begin taking college courses in 8th grade --- some of the teachers were accredited as faculty at a nearby college, and if need be, arrangements were made for students to travel to the college, or professors from there to travel to the school.

It was not uncommon for students to graduate from high school and simultaneously be awarded a 4 year college degree.

Apparently, the Mississippi State Supreme Court declared the system illegal because it conferred an unseemly advantage on the students who were able to take advantage of it, with no equivalent compensation for students who were not.

Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#215

Post by pen2l »

mrandish wrote: post #206
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…

Sorry, what is WGU?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Governors_University

Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#216

Post by dfabulich »

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…

"Holding kids back" is not the reason EdTech fails at scale.

The problem is that people who succeed in tech are able to effectively educate themselves, alone, without a dedicated human teacher supervising them or a group of student peers. (You need this skill to succeed in tech, learning new APIs/languages from written materials and online videos.)

The techies who build/fund EdTech wrongly assume that everyone could do this if only they had access to the learning materials, or if the tech vaguely simulated a teacher (an interactive textbook).

But for most students, fitting in with peers and earning the respect of their teacher is the only reason they're bothering to learn at all.

(For kids especially, adult career prospects feel so remote that it scarcely seems worth the trouble, whereas earning respect right now is a very, very concrete problem!)

Banding kids into grades is the only thing making most kids succeed. I guess that is a "crying shame," but it's a tragedy, not a policy failure.

Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#217

Post by bravetraveler »

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…

+1, very powerful stuff.

My anecdote: I was expelled from a vocational school my senior year, thanks to EdTech I returned and finished the year within a month

Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#218

Post by mrandish »

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.

"Bergeron" is one of those rare things that's just presciently ahead of it's time it's almost spooky (kind of like "1984").

Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#219

Post by dghlsakjg »

obscurette wrote: post #102
psychoslave wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no doubt it is the best option. For certain people. But why impose a single way to learn, when there is no such a thing as a "single size fit them all" learning experience? All the more when there are alternative options.

There is. There is a ton of alternative schools, homeschooling is legal in most of places in the world etc. The problem is that people expect teachers adopt to every single pupil. It's not possible.

Maybe the solution is to segment students to the teaching style?

We can't expect teachers to provide a good environment for students who are good at self paced learning, and students who need structure in the same classroom. But we might be able to have classrooms that lean one way or another...

Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#220

Post by consteval »

jppope wrote: post #145
mbesto wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's what a lot people here have already said. Education is what is failing, EdTech didn't magically solve this. To expand this more globally - anything that requires human interaction fails at scale. Healthcare, trade skills, education, housing, etc. is all "failing" to some degree no matter how much technology we throw at it. The costs continually go up and the value isn't paired to it.

Seems like you're listing highly regulated industries not human interaction.

These industries, more or less, need to be highly regulated because we've faced the alternative and it's worse. The quality of education went up SIGNFICANTLY when the state took more control over it.
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