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The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

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Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#451

Post by naijaboiler »

mbesto wrote: post #121
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…

> It's what a lot people here have already said. Education is what is failing, EdTech didn't magically solve this. To expand this more globally - anything that requires human interaction fails at scale. Healthcare, trade skills, education, housing, etc. is all "failing" to some degree no matter how much technology we throw at it. The costs continually go up and the value isn't paired to it.

Is not the absolute cost that goes up per se. It’s the cost relative to cost of things that scale. Education, nursing care, even doctoring all have significant human to human interaction at a personal level for there to be success. When the cost of other things like commodities drop 100x, those human interactions services don’t and therefore become relatively more expensive even despite massive productivity gains those fields

Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#452

Post by leereeves »

gamblor956 wrote: post #314
leereeves wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you name any examples of gifted programs being shut down, citing any reason other than equity? The examples I've seen, in New York, Seattle, and LA, all cited equity as the reason. Edit: I'm responding here to the comment "It's easier to keep the top kids down than it is to lift the bottom kids up."

LAUSD has gifted programs. As do the dozen other districts in LA County. NY also still has gifted programs... Yes, some of these were shut down. It wasn't because of "equity". It was because of something called "budget cuts."

That's not the way it was sold by politicians or reported by the media. For example:

"NYC to eliminate gifted and talented school program that opponents say segregated students"

"this new, equitable model"

https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/08/us/new-york-gifted-and-talent...

Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#453

Post by naijaboiler »

grogenaut wrote: post #440
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 ov…

So tech bros have become experts in pedagogy.

What if a teacher starts telling what the best way to write software for a large codebase that 1000s of engineer contribute to is, based on their experience of writing ten lines of code to some toy problem that teacher once faced.

Think about it. That’s what you just did here. The better thing to do is state your experience as your experience and leave opining on optimal teaching pedagogy to those best equipped to study and understand it, which sure is as well isn’t you

Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#454

Post by marksbrown »

cwoolfe wrote: post #361
marksbrown wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/

Sure but here in the UK schools will use what is cheapest, free or part of a wider package of software already used. RM web filtering or smoothwall make me want to bash my skull against a wall at times. Finally School IT staff are not judged on their ability to manage a web filter well. Safeguarding is (rightly) the primary concern and so if an existing solution can be said to block the more egregious parts of the internet, it's irrelevant if it blocks the useful parts too.

Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#455

Post by [deleted] »

graemep wrote: post #33
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…

> 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 co…

[deleted]

Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#456

Post by [deleted] »

bsder wrote: post #435
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.

[deleted]

Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#457

Post by WillAdams »

walterbell wrote: post #343
WillAdams wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not that I've been able to find --- it would have been the school local to Columbus AFB in the late 1960s to mid 70s. The State Supreme Court stuff is my hazy recollection of letters my parents received from other folks who were still living there when the school system was changed.

Looks like other cases were ongoing even in 2002, https://www.cleveland19.com/story/1045614/ohio-supreme-court...

That's quite a different thing though --- this was not a matter of funding (save that there wasn't money set aside to send students who didn't get a college degree with their high school to college after graduation) but of how the school was structured and how students were taught.

Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#458

Post by mncharity »

AdamN wrote: post #110
michaelrpeskin wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's "equity" for you. We can't be unfair and give someone something that makes them better. It's easier to keep the top kids down than it is to lift the bottom kids up.

That's not necessarily the reason. OP probably was letting faster kids jump ahead but that doesn't really do anything helpful for a class that's going through a topic together step by step. Better would have been to let the faster person learn something else tangentially related to the course so that they stay engaged but they don't disengage because they're simply ahead of the rest of the class on the next topic - w…

> let the faster person learn something else tangentially related

If content someday emphasizes science as a richly interwoven tapestry, and heavily leverages implicit curriculum, this might become straightforward. The chemistry problem, that's also implicitly teaching cellular biology and supply chain dynamics, enables tangents on those too. The K-2 intro mittens, with tangents on thermal budgets, and spacesuit dexterity limitations, and winter camping clothing 101, and knitting how to, and so much more.

If OP regrets our handling of current curriculum, there's seemingly an enormous additional level of despair available, in education's profoundly impoverished opaque window into the beauty of the world.

Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#459

Post by jalapenos »

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…

Yes the problem isn't so much ed-tech, which by the way we all use everytime we Google or ChatGPT how to do something.

The problem is that ed-tech is being shoehorned into an existing dysfunctional system. It's trying to help the education system do more of what it was already doing, just with computers.

The underlying problem is that the structure of the education system is absolutely stupid and shit. We've just been so used to that for so long that we don't notice it anymore.

If schooling was good, ed-tech would be a big enabler of that, helping students learn at their own pace, guiding their coursework in the right direction, linking it to career paths, all kinds of things.

But currently ed-tech is just enabling and feeding more of the same slop, just digital instead of paper. That's the problem.

Re: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

#460

Post by el_benhameen »

tombert wrote: post #389
el_benhameen wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also tangential, but do you feel like you’ve gotten your money’s worth out of the WGU program? I have also been employed as degree-less an engineer for a long time (I have a BA in an unrelated subject), and I’ve occasionally thought about going back to get a BS or a masters in comp sci. Partially for the signaling aspect, and partially to fill in any knowledge gaps that I’m unaware of. WGU’s pacing and pricing sound…

It depends on how you define things. I didn't really go to school with the expectation of making more money; I already had a decent job at a FAANG, and finishing my degree hasn't really translated to "more" money. In the "killing the inferiority complex" and "proving to myself that I'm not an idiot" sense, it was definitely worth the money to me. I'm not at a FAANG anymore, but I really like my current job, and while…

I appreciate the thoughtful reply. I have enough experience to get in the door, so if I’m being honest I’d probably be doing it to prove to myself that I’m not an idiot, too.
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