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The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

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Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#231

Post by dghlsakjg »

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…

What if it is possible to spend a lot less time learning that with newer classroom methods (ed tech doesn't have to mean whiteboards and apps, teaching methods are technology too).

We can make a good house without metal fasteners using hand tools and nothing but muscles. But that doesn't mean that a house built using brushless power tools in 1/4 the time isn't also a good house.

More directly: I conceptually understand a lot of algorithms that I read about. For me though, the ones that I learned by coding them and running them are the ones I understand much better. Hand written notes on a lecture do not guarantee complete or correct understanding, and there is no mechanism for checking.

Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#232

Post by oytis »

AdamN wrote: post #118
shortrounddev2 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yeah - this is on OP if that is the case. No teacher wants that and it's annoying for the ahead kids and the behind kids. Better to give them something tangential to keep them engaged but still gate on moving ahead with the mainline curriculum.

To be fair - maybe that's what the product mentioned should have been doing? You can focus on general problem-solving ability by giving talented kids hard problems with the amount of knowledge adequate for their level rather giving them more an more material and making the whole learning process less manageable.

Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#233

Post by debacle »

Abekkus wrote: post #62
debacle wrote: post #5

The article doesn't match the conclusion. The buried lede: procrastinating with the Internet is easier than procrastinating without the Internet. If you care about your kids, control their access to the brain rotting aspects of technology like a tyrant.

I sympathize with this goal, but I'm not seeing what to do instead of screens for kids. I've been looking, hard. Suburbia makes this really hard. try getting three kids to sports with two working parents, and thats only half the time you're trying to fill. Try to get any kind of regular playtime with other families who are busier than you. We kid ourselves we're keeping them off of algorithms, but craft materials onl…

When my daughter was 11 she tiled our bathroom. Now she's 16 and talking about what tools she wants to add to the workshop. Kids are tiny adults, you just need to enable them.

Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#234

Post by lolinder »

theossuary wrote: post #200
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…

This is a silly thing to say. There's no evidence that edtech was forced to band students to grade levels due to equity. It's just as likely it happened due to Bush's Leave No Child Behind, or out of a desire for administrators to follow rules.

Where do you think the rules that administrators have to follow come from? And what do you think the purpose of No Child Left Behind was? Its long title is "an act to close the achievement gap with accountability, flexibility, and choice, so that no child is left behind."

I think you may have interpreted my use of the word "equity" to mean something along the lines of "woke", but I meant it in the strictest sense: The red tape that OP is talking about was put in place in the name of ensuring equal opportunities for all children, but has actually accomplished the opposite.

Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#235

Post by throwaway2037 »

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…

I see this type of comment on HN frequently. I have a dim view of national certifications for software engineering or computer science. Are there any highly advanced economies that have "a formal assessment by the national engineering council" for software engineering or computer science? If so, are they useful? Do they actually indicate quality? For me, the field(s) are changing so fast, that it hardly makes sense. If you are working in an area that is not life threatening, I am not a believer in certifications. It all seems like a bunch of gatekeeping.

Today, I was listening to the Lex Fridman podcast with John Carmack. It reminded me that John Carmack does not have a university degree, yet, he is one our generation's globally recognized masters of software optimisation. There are few in the world who can do what he does, and he has no uni degree, nor (I assume!) any "national certifications". Michael Abrash is similar.

On a personal note: (US) Wall Street has similarly ineffective gatekeeping with the Series 7 & 63 exams: My father called it "toilet bowl knowledge" when I studied for it. He said: "Once you are finished the exam, you can flush away that knowledge. You will never use it again." He is right about more than 90% of the "knowledge" required to pass those exams.

Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#236

Post by phil21 »

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…

> wealthy parents (and only wealthy parents) figure out ways to supplement or move their kids into schools that are appropriate for their level.

Not true. AP courses and magnet schools are the sole way for working class/poor students to get ahead in life in the public school system. Myself and many friends took advantage of this, and zero had wealthy parents. Many had food scarcity levels of poverty at home but received excellent educations due to these programs existing.

Heck, private schools also participated in this - giving out test and grade based scholarship for exceptional students from poor socioeconomic backgrounds. Many friends participated in such programs, even to the point of working "jobs" for the school after classes to pay for their education. This is now seen as abusive to many.

The ironic and incredibly frustrating thing are now these programs are being systematically dismantled over the past 20 years in the name of "equity" with these trends only accelerating.

The one thing it DOES require is parents who care and give a shit about their kids. I suppose if you squint that's a form of wealth, but not what people mean when they talk about such topics.

Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#237

Post by dehrmann »

fny wrote: post #143
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, and won't hold their leaders as accountable. This is a reactionary take. Math, science, and basic language skills do not lead to political upheaval, and are incredibly valuable skills to the capital class. Leadership would be more apt to propagandize social studies and suppress dissent. China easily comes to mind as a counter argument.…

If the US electorate had better economics education, they would have thought both the [2024] candidates were economic idiots.

Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#238

Post by sensanaty »

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.

At least from what I remember in A-level physics, a lot of the multi-choice answers usually had 2 sets of answers, both of which were ambiguous and could be the correct answer. A few questions even had answers where they were all the same answer, just with the digits either transposed or the decimal point being different. Stuff like

A) 1.2e10 B) 1.2e9 C) 2.1e10 D) 2.1e11

Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#239

Post by JoshTriplett »

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

A major part of this problem is teachers who treat "student knows something I don't (or aren't prepared to teach right now)" as a status challenge to be rapidly obliterated, rather than as an opportunity to encourage a student.

Many, many adults are extremely emotionally unprepared to accept the possibility that they may be wrong and a child may be right; they start from the assumption that this is an impossibility, and reason backwards from there.

Or, in the case where they do in fact know that the child is right, they nonetheless decide to prioritize asserting authority over demonstrating how a mature adult should handle being wrong. And thus do students learn bad examples of what to do when they're wrong.

Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#240

Post by berelig »

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.

Just adding this on OP's behalf:

WGU = Western Governors University

https://www.wgu.edu/online-it-degrees/computer-science.html

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