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The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

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Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#361

Post by cwoolfe »

marksbrown wrote: post #83
jansan wrote: post #14

Router-manufacturer should be mandated to implement a functionality that allows applying a whitelist filter for certain times of a day. It would have helped me a lot as a parent to make sure that my children can only access Desmos, online Office sites etc. while they are supposed to do their homework.

Unfortunately the internet has been corrupted by JavaScript. A website is rarely loading a single site anymore. Try noscript and you'll quickly see that, even a trivial website loads dozens of dependencies. Dependencies that shift over time. Reality is whitelisting can't work as you'll simply break websites. This has been my experience at several schools now. Websites may or may not load. And even if they do, they ra…

There are plenty of companies successfully doing allow-list only filters. At home for focus: https://gertrude.app/ At work for security: https://adamnet.works/

Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#362

Post by luqtas »

handfuloflight wrote: post #263
luqtas wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

as a counter-point, not a teacher nor related to but i heard around 400 hours of pedagogy podcasts, be it the science of it, small-talk about teaching & sometimes edtech software that seriously, most of the time just sounded as apps coming from the next guy trying to be the next silicon money maker by offering what Google Docs offers but in a fancy app or in the most complex cases, what Matrix/Discord offers for free…

> there was good apps & often these were backed/based by novel & evidence based ways of teaching What are the good apps? In what direction do you think educational software should go?

you can start with these podcasts for inspiration, not exactly in this order; "Emerging Research in Educational Psychology" "The Evidence Based Education Podcast" "Psychology in the Classroom" "The Edtech Podcast" "The Cult of Pedagogy"

i never liked school and actually what made avoid it as much as possible (to the point i proposed to my parents to work as a minor apprentice in the construction field because my plans were to quit school) was a 8° grade math teacher saying after my question about why that formula came to be, something like "you need a university degree at least to understand this"; so a neat direction i would like to see education taking is slowing down the amount of stuff we throw at students throat... maybe emotional intelligence/awareness, cooperative behavior (like knowing how to give someone a good feedback) & tech literacy! would be so cool if more people had the basic knowledge of getting some Arduino/ESP32 libraries at Github and hooking up into a board for small things, like a paddle Atari controller or just a cute LED thing as adornment/gift for a loved one (which i think to do that, lots of concepts can be taught); as well critical thinking so we don't have people lured to modern bullshit, like "buying this new fancy iPhone meanwhile i don't even understand what a shutter or aperture control serves, nor i use apps fancier than iMessage and Instagram" etc.

Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#363

Post by cwoolfe »

parpfish wrote: post #23
crimsoneer wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The interesting follow-up here... there is no reason these effects should be restricted to children. Like, if children can't learn with devices in a classroom, it suggests executives can't learn in an office (and might give a hint as to why we haven't seen expected productivity benefits driven by it). But again, if the effect was this strong, I'd really expect to see broader evidence (even just at a national level ba…

i'd love to have a distraction-proof workstation that would force me into my IDE or whatever design doc i'm working on and block out everything else. but it's not possible because the job requires all these gateway-drugs-to-distraction to be on the forefront of your workspace: * keep slack open in case you're needed in that support thread * keep a browser open so you can google the api docs for something (that's how…

This is possible! https://www.techlockdown.com/

Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#364

Post by panzagl »

wintermutestwin wrote: post #276
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…

Focusing solely on the “babysitting” aspect of your post: Since babysitting is essentially required in our current social framework, why do we need physical schools with in person teachers. It seems to me that we could have babysitting facilities spread to lots of small commercial spaces with in person babysitters for kids who are doing school on computers with synchronous teachers online. I realize that the model I’…

You've just described half the charter schools around here.

Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#365

Post by ericd »

doctorpangloss wrote: post #146
LargeWu wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"it is a daycare centre for kids while parents go on about their careers?" This is the kind of thing that could only be said by somebody who is not a parent. There might be a minority of parents for whom this is true, but I know zero other parents who don't care whether their kids are learning.

> I know zero other parents who don't care whether their kids are learning. Nobody said that. While I don't think you deserve to be downvoted, the reason you are is that you are complaining about generalization ("the kind of thing that could only be said by somebody who is not a parent") while immediately generalizing, implicitly, that commenters on Hacker News are not parents. I am a parent, I care about my son lear…

To your comment about even the best <=5 schools being glorified daycares, you might consider Montessori, if your kids are still in that 3-6 age band. There are many faux-Montessoris which are daycare with wooden toys, and use the name to collect that premium, but the real ones are very different, and do a good job of teaching independence in learning. You can look for the accredited ones on AMS’ site (you still have to evaluate the teacher, but it should weed out the worst offenders).

Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#366

Post by SoftTalker »

panzagl wrote: post #53
throw_pm23 wrote: post #20

The 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…

My wife had one kid scream for 10 minutes yesterday and another throw a chair. Another just sat there and didn't do a thing for 7 hours. The Little House/Christmas Story model hasn't been able to work for a long time.

In the school from "A Christmas Story" that kid would have been taken out in the hallway and paddled.

Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#367

Post by firejake308 »

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…

> Examinations are an exercise in being good at examinations, not proficiency in the subject.

Isn't this just complaining about Goodhart's Law? I believe any exam will become a target no matter how well it is designed

Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#368

Post by WillPostForFood »

BeFlatXIII wrote: post #163
WillPostForFood wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, No Child Left Behind is no longer law, it was replaced in 2015.

Is ESSA foundationally any different from NCLB?

More incrementally different than foundationally different. ESSA was trying to address complaints about NCLB, to allow more autonomy and flexibility. Neither are directly responsible for "everyone passes." They both were trying to stop everyone passes by adding a standard of accountability.

Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#369

Post by dwater »

dennis_jeeves2 wrote: post #280
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, Very wrong. Education only camouflages stupidity, it does not remove it. And then part of education is indoctrination to trust authority (eg. trust the science). That said, basic education reading/writing/simple math/science is indeed valuable.

"Education only camouflages stupidity, it does not remove it."

You are arguing that low intelligence is innate, unchangeable. Which sounds very much like saying stupidity is genetic.

Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#370

Post by phil21 »

dartos wrote: post #162
Afton wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, it is less about "keeping top kids down" and more about "let's use our very scarce resources helping the bottom kids". Put that way it seems less malicious, and more like probably the right thing to do over all, while still being extremely frustrating if you are, or are the parent of, a 'top kid'. I know that in Seattle, I've been very frustrated with all the talk and promise of our school to provide enri…

I don’t think anyone is trying to keep bright kids down, but you need to ask. Is it worth it to spend monumental effort trying to get not very bright children to meet some minimum requirement OR is it more worth it to just encourage and lift up brighter students. I don’t think there’s a clear answer, but what we have isn’t it.

> I don’t think there’s a clear answer, but what we have isn’t it.

The answer is entirely clear but it's uncomfortable.

Society is moved forward by the top percentile, not by even the "average". You can only help those who wish to help themselves, and expending massive resources on kids who are not there to learn (or cannot) has had predictable results.

Some evil folks in history have used this exact strategy of crippling the "top kids" of a group for their genocidal plans. It's highly effective.

The best thing you can do is make sure those "top kids" are identified early and tracked into the proper classes regardless of socioeconomic background. Yes, this means segregating students based on ability earlier than later. Doing this ends up helping those "bottom kids" once they reach adulthood since society is better overall for everyone.

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