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

251–260 of 528 posts

Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#251

Post by tivert »

tightbookkeeper wrote: post #96
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…

> need to be studied for at least ten years, then rolled out slowly with much more skeptical study. If you have ever been involved with education students doing studies you know that methodology here is the pretty lacking, and it’s hard to consider what could be done better (other than stop pretending these surveys mean anything). I think we need to stop pretending that there is some magic technique that’s going to 5…

>> need to be studied for at least ten years, then rolled out slowly with much more skeptical study.

> If you have ever been involved with education students doing studies you know that methodology here is the pretty lacking, and it’s hard to consider what could be done better (other than stop pretending these surveys mean anything).

I don't know exactly what you mean by "surveys," but I thinking the decision should be a default no, and whatever "innovation" is being pushed should get rolled out slowly enough that public debate can nip bad ideas in the bud. I'm specifically thinking of an article I read awhile back where a parent (who knew she was a bad reader) was flabbergasted that her kid was actually being explicitly taught the same bad reading strategies she used as part of a "balanced" reading curriculum.

I under if you had no more than 10% of schools using something like "balanced reading" for 20 years, before it could be rolled out. I'm hoping their underperformance and criticism from parents and dissenting educators could get the idea scrapped before it became the mainstream, saving the students in the other 90% of schools from being harmed by it.

> I think we need to stop pretending that there is some magic technique that’s going to 5x performance.

Yeah, and I think we also need to stop pretending new is better. The idea that kids being subjected to "innovation" may be getting harmed more than they're being helped, needs to be made prominent in these debates.

Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#252

Post by screcth »

LargeWu wrote: post #45
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…

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.

English exams for ESL students are a great example.

Getting good grades in those exams requires that you know the criteria for evaluating each part of the exam and how to tailor your answer to that criteria. For example, if the exam asks you to write a short movie review you are expected to follow the formula for reviews and show that you can use certain specific grammar constructs.

If you know English well but you don't practice the exam before you will get a mediocre grade, simply because you didn't follow the tacit guidelines that you are expected to know.

Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#253

Post by seabass-labrax »

Computers and access to the Web are incompatible not with education, but with the paradigm of conventional school education, where teachers instruct classes of pupils to a national (or otherwise standardized) curriculum. In the school context, an electronic device competes with the teacher for the pupils' attention. Educational resources such as Khan Academy explicitly attempt to follow conventional curricula, but one that only follows one country's educational expectations (here, that of the USA), and even that only loosely; many of the most informative online resources aren't intended to fit into any standard curriculum at all.

Essentially, statistics will tell you how to gradually improve a system that you already have (conventional class-based school education), but won't tell you about the value of an entirely new system. It's a sort of 'local minima' problem like that.

The article admits as much, but fails to acknowledge the other solution to this conflict: instead of a 'phone-free school', why not change the school to support an electronic educational paradigm? Just as the Montessori method or the culture-rich concept of Kindergarten education are usually very valuable to those children who are lucky enough to experience them, there is already a wealth of evidence for interactive and electronic learning methods - not just a 'potential' as the article claims. The key difference between learning paradigms such as Montessori and Kindergarten and electronic education is that the former requires expensive (and safe) access to materials, and the latter is now almost free! The article claims: "However, if there are two or more options for engaging with learning material, then it is best to select the tool that will yield the best results." I ask, what justification is there to not select a tool that isn't perhaps the best, but it the best that society can afford? One-on-one tutoring with experts and fully-equiped laboratories would be wonderful, even better than electronic education, but that was never the offer. Historically progressive educational authorities are literally rejecting an educational opportunity that requires nothing except open minds.

P.S. An irrelevant but interesting nit-pick: the article mentions that you have to hold each word in memory as you read a sentence of English text, but this is untrue. Readers create a mental, semantic and emotional image while they read; dyslexic readers might struggle with the concept of a 'word' itself yet are still able to understand the meaning of a sentence.

Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#254

Post by jackbravo »

quacksilver wrote: post #108
jspiral wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WGU was a customer when I was at Learning Objects, they always impressed me visionary and outcome oriented. glad to hear a positive anecdote more than 10 years later.

I'm sad WGU is only for US citizens. I hear lots of good things about it but can't join in.

Yes, I'm wondering if there are alternatives outside the US to get a full undergraduate or master's degree online at your own pace.

Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#255

Post by AnimalMuppet »

krapp wrote: post #244
dehrmann wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

If the US electorate had better economics education, the 2024 candidates might have been forced to present sane and reasonable economic platforms, because doing so would have actual political value. Dare I say at least one of those candidates wouldn't even have made it to the primaries. Which I leave as an exercise for the reader. They aren't economic idiots, they just know most American voters mistrust any economic…

I think it's worse. Regardless of the amount of education, they would have to care about policy enough to read and act on candidates' policies.

Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#256

Post by rahimnathwani »

insane_dreamer wrote: post #198

Ed tech, like most tech, is primarily focused on making money for the ed tech companies and their shareholders. Not at all surprised that it doesn't actually lift education standards. As the parent of two kids in elementary and middle school, the one thing we learned from Covid is that children need live teachers. Yes, there are exceptional children who can self-teach with good materials (I have one such child) but m…

> as I've found those work better than any "adaptive" EdTech I've encountered

Have you tried Math Academy? From seeing my son using it, I'm guessing it's more effective than live coaching from a median middle school math teacher.

Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#257

Post by dehrmann »

krapp wrote: post #244
dehrmann wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

If the US electorate had better economics education, the 2024 candidates might have been forced to present sane and reasonable economic platforms, because doing so would have actual political value. Dare I say at least one of those candidates wouldn't even have made it to the primaries. Which I leave as an exercise for the reader. They aren't economic idiots, they just know most American voters mistrust any economic…

That's fair, and someone told be there's a distinction between politics and policy, but when politicians pander to the crowd, it's really hard to get an idea of what their actual policy will be.

Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#258

Post by pessimizer »

Tech has infinite possibility in educating people, and may eventually remove the need for school altogether. What has to be faced is:

1) that our theories about education are bad, and that we've been cargo culting traditional education and haven't made any significant changes in the process for hundreds of years,

2) our theories about how to handle the future of education with the new tools that we now have were doomed to failure because of that, and

3) with no theoretical foundation, charlatans tried to push a theory that sheer proximity to technology would have an emergent magical effect on education (while another set of charlatans push a theory that technology has a magical dampening effect on education.)

It's the same situation we're in with governance, or law. The English accidentally and clumsily developed a Parliament that worked, and the people who wiped the King's ass developed into a cabinet. It was productive. We then formalized it by examining what had been done and simply writing it down and sometimes streamlining it. We also do that explicitly in the common law, where we assume that every judicial decision ever made was correct, and concentrate on when they contradict each other to make changes. It's productive, but it's not theory; they're descriptions of history.

Covid was a test for Edtech, and it failed horribly. We need to ground education in reality: we're trying to force unwilling children to remember things. We need to focus on their wills, and their memories, and to come up with theory. We can experiment on adults, although the difference between adult education and children's education is that adults are self-motivated, so this would concentrate on memory methods. When focused on children, how can we give a child the discipline to feel like they want to participate in and contribute to the world? Does that have to do more with social services, the safety net, and giving children real responsibility earlier than with educational theory?

Recent interesting read for me was a failure and partial success trying to use spaced repetition in the classroom. His partial answer was that it was better when everyone shared the same screen and answered together, you move slower than you wish you could, and you don't demand that they remember forever. Also, from my reading, the expected schedule of schooling completely disrupted what he was trying to do. Schools have to be redone, not tweaked. People knew this in the 19th and early 20th century, even if they didn't manage to come up with a formula that worked.

Warning, lots of filler, but also lots of content: "Seven Years of Spaced Repetition Software in the Classroom" https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/F6ZTtBXn2cFLmWPdM/seven-year...

Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#259

Post by kmerroll »

unsupp0rted wrote: post #135
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've never seen a teacher that was comfortably capable with even 50% of whatever EdTech they're handed. How are they supposed to maximize the use of it? I remember having to painfully sit through multi-hour presentations in which they'd explain how to use a hamburger menu to find the app settings, and half the participants furiously scribbled down notes so they wouldn't get lost later when they needed to find the set…

No doubt that there have been poor teaching experiences, but I would counter that my experience with EdTech teachers has been amazing and empowering. Really don't think we can tar all the teachers with the "EdTech sucks" brush.

Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#260

Post by screcth »

Retric wrote: post #133
csa wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What, specifically, is an example of an exam not measuring proficiency Not op, but a few examples: 1. Test structures that reward good time management. The paper SAT is a good example of this. The early items in a section are (were?) easy, the middle items were medium difficulty, and the toughest items were towards the end. A good test take would manage their time so that they spent the most amount of time on quest…

I think test prep allowing people to increase SAT scores is actually a useful feature not a bug. If you’re the kind of person who’s going to put extra effort to add a few points to your results, you are also the kind of person more likely to do well in collage classes.

It biases results towards people that "studied how to do the test" rather than studying the material that is evaluated.
Post reply on HN