I worked for a couple of years in edTech and the reality is that all you need is a good teacher, pen and paper, and a chalkboard.
The EdTech Revolution Has Failed
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Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed
#32IMO 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 student learns in their own way and are better of for it.
Arguing about the effectiveness of edtech is like complaining there wasn't a viola on the Titanic's band.
Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed
#33I 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…
> 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.
That is bad. I have to say no teacher I had a problem when I learned things ahead of time. Some less good teachers were not actually encouraging, but they certainly did not think it was a problem.
That said, IMO the school system does not cope well with kids who are not going at the average speed. This is one reason i home educated my kids. We need to change how schools work to take advantage of ed tech (and a lot of other opportunities - you can learn at your own pace from books, like I did)
Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed
#34The teaching method I find best is a teacher explaining and writing with chalk on the blackboard, and the students taking handwritten notes on paper, asking whenever something is not clear. In other words, the most boring classical setup possible. Of course all the nuances and little details make all the difference: board picture, structure, teacher personality, pacing, choice of topic, interaction, motivation, excit…
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.
Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed
#35I 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…
Customized skill based education should be the future.
The problem is that it should be the present. Oh, I've been an engineer for a while and I know the system can't turn on a dime, it would take some time.
However, we should be seeing visible progress towards this goal, and frankly, if anything, the system continues to be moving in the other direction, lowering bars to try to get everyone into the exact same level long after it should be clear that lowering the bar still isn't even achieving that goal, even as it destroys everything around it in the process.
The system isn't even trying to customize skill-based education, beyond a bit of clearly-ineffectual lip service.
Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed
#36The teaching method I find best is a teacher explaining and writing with chalk on the blackboard, and the students taking handwritten notes on paper, asking whenever something is not clear. In other words, the most boring classical setup possible. Of course all the nuances and little details make all the difference: board picture, structure, teacher personality, pacing, choice of topic, interaction, motivation, excit…
Worth noting that this is fine for academic subjects (although highly dependent for success on student interest), but doesn't work at all for skill based subjects.
Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed
#37What 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.
Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed
#38Could it be that part of the failure is that EdTech companies are focused on replacing the pedagogical aspect of schools, but the main utility of schools for parents is not pedagogy - it is a daycare centre for kids while parents go on about their careers?
Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed
#39no it hasnt, edtech's purpose is, and always has been, selling to administrators. I have never met a single educator of any sort who ever believed that this technology would be valuable to students in any way.
Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed
#40I 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…
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