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

431–440 of 528 posts

Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#431

Post by sirspacey »

jderick wrote: post #427

Step one should be having an edtech ecosystem that doesn't allow students to use the web. There are just too many distractions online. I think noone has really invested the kind of capital required to do a good job with this. Most of the software my kids have to use for school is pretty bad.

This sounds sensible.

Until you consider that almost all children in N.A. that are learning rely on Kahn academy & YouTubers to make up for the fact that their school’s can’t figure out how to replicate a great learning experience that is available for free.

Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#432

Post by SergeAx »

SoftTalker wrote: post #349
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…

A big difference though between how you're able to leverage online learning as an adult with at least some real-world life experience vs. what a 3rd-grader can do. I am a strong advocate for zero technology in schools until high school. One thing that is rarely mentioned is that schools that issue technology to students and use it in the classroom now need to have a hardware, software, and network support person at e…

Instructional staff doesn't scale. One teacher can teach only one class at a time. The whole idea of EdTech is to scale learning beyond that.

Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#433

Post by sirspacey »

ak_111 wrote: post #38

Could 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?

No. A legion of edtech companies have been born and died who solve the underlying pedagogical issues but die.

Some of the reasons they die are:

- students don’t control the budget for their spending, so their voice/progress has almost no impact on budgets

- parents in the US spend a tiny fraction of their deposable income on education (and also have almost no say in budgets)

- teachers have almost no say in budgets. In public schools, it’s none. In others, it’s performative if at all most of the time.

- administrators get promoted by doing a very specific set of small things, none of which include improving outcomes through addressing pedagogical innovation

This all adds up to: you can create an edtech startup that radically improves student outcomes and still run out of cash

Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#434

Post by lolinder »

phil21 wrote: post #412
econonut wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s very much true that wealthy parents supplement their kids to keep them challenged and leveling up, so to say. What you’re describing re: AP classes is for high school students. While the parent comment may have been referring to high school, I imagine they meant elementary and middle school level. Students with support (read: challenged to learn at their level and not slowed down to the pace of the average stude…

I understand that wealthy parents are going to show up in these stats far more often than non-wealthy. I take umbrage at the statement it's only the wealthy. It has turned into effectively only for the wealthy due to the focus on equity over the past 20+ years as we've torn down any sort of public programs for these students. My advanced class placement started far earlier than high school. 5th grade is when I recall…

I really don't think that you and I disagree—I'm talking about the way that things are for my kid who's about to go into elementary school, not the way that things were when we were growing up.

We're well off enough to provide what he needs, but we're also painfully aware that the public school system is not going to and that most people don't have the means to do what we can do for him. I agree that that's a new trend and not something that has always been true of public education in the US.

Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#435

Post by bsder »

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…

Everybody is voting to improve "average" because that's what affects your house price.

The best way to move an "average" is to improve the big mass slightly below average.

The worst off and best off are too small to affect the average--so nobody cares about them. QED.

Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#436

Post by gwbas1c »

> This is why, when getting paid as part of a research study to focus on a 20-minute computerized lesson, nearly 40% of students were unable to stop themselves from multitasking.

I read this as I was waiting for unit tests to compile and run. Such a paradox.

Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#437

Post by pokerface_86 »

marksbrown wrote: post #70
LargeWu wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A good example in the UK is teaching students the FOIL technique for algebraic expansion. Students typically can expand (ax+b)(cx+d) because they've learnt a recipe but cannot expand say (ax2+bx+c)(dx+e). Many schools here focus on such tricks (nix the tricks was a great book focusing on such things) as schools here are judged on pass/fail rates. In general, exams are an excellent way to assess students en masse at t…

the inability the generalize the foil procedure to an expression with more than 2 variables speaks more to the non mathematically oriented population just sucking at generalizing things. i have found this to be a very “you have it or you don’t” type of thing, not really something that can be taught

Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#438

Post by j45 »

Mathnerd314 wrote: post #22
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…

These authors have big Google Docs of evidence, https://jonathanhaidt.com/reviews/ . But if you read it, you will see the effect is (AFAICT) limited to certain populations. There is a significant fraction of students that do have trouble with executive function and staying on task and will fail to do their homework because of social media access. Then there are the other students that have no trouble staying off soci…

Part of this is because the pre-frontal cortex (associated with logic, will power, discipline, focus, etc) doesn't finish developing until about age 25.

Until then, folks can be reliant on the adults in their environments older than that age, if they haven't built up some abilities.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3621648/

Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#439

Post by rpcope1 »

cwoolfe wrote: post #339
zie wrote: post #288

Most student devices are older Android or iPad tablets. Sometimes they get older generation Chromebooks. They are not getting M4 laptops. Then EdTech delivers MS teams level bloatware and expects it to run? This stuff is generally absolute garbage that even at the most optimistic barely works as advertised. Lots of this stuff gets built with very little thought on how it's supposed to integrate into a classroom setti…

Not only are we paying teachers worse than we used to, we are actually spending more on education! The scandal is the addition of more useless Administrator positions. https://x.com/TCCRI/status/1760792700771533084

I feel like I see this more everywhere. What do these admin personnel even do?

Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#440

Post by grogenaut »

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…

I find chalk on a blackboard one of the worst ways to learn. This isn't 1890 anymore. Much better are more modern prepared lectures with much more complex and interesting slides than what a teacher can draw with chalk in the time of a class, and with a lot more detail and scale with the magic of a modern projector. this also lets the notes and videos be reviewable before and after the fact. Very helpful. Hell even overhead projectors were a lot better than most chalk on board classes I went to pre electricity.

Beyond that, I find I learn infinitely better by doing than by being lectured to. By being challenged by a set of problems that grow over time.

Beyond that tutoring blows lectures out of the water. I was failing calc e in normal semester, I dropped. My moms bit the bullet and bought me 3 weeks of tutoring over the summer (much shorter semester). I then aced summer calc 3 which is generally much harder. It was amazing how well me being able to guide the lesson to where I was having trouble versus the lecturer keeping on track worked for me. I've learned this lesson as a mentor as well, teaching is for the student, not the teacher.

tl;dr what works for you sucks for me, don't tell me how I learn.

Post reply on HN