Why Classroom Technology Is Costing More Than Its Worth (2016) • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Classroom Technology Is Costing More Than Its Worth (2016)

#81

Post by CaptSpify » Sat, Apr 01, 2017, 5:25 PM UTC

Endama wrote: post #78

CaptSpify wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't that heavily depend on the teacher though? I don't disagree with you in principle, but couldn't the reason so many people try to dictate the best way to teach is because there are a lot of bad teachers?

I'm not going to argue that there aren't bad teachers or there aren't a LOT of bad teachers. But IMHO a lot of what I have seen at my company is the following: If a kid brings home a bad report card - Parents often blame the teacher. Obviously, their kid is great, the only reason they are struggling is because of negligent or poor instruction. If a kid brings home a behavior citation (i.e. teacher/administration call…

Interesting. Yeah, I definitely think that generally parent's are much more at fault than they want to admit. Blaming the teacher is an easy way out.

I'm not knowledgeable in the industry, which is why I'm asking. I know that for most industries, standards and structures are in place to protect damage from the worst people, but can definitely inhibit the best people.

Re: Why Classroom Technology Is Costing More Than Its Worth (2016)

#82

Post by mustacheemperor » Mon, Apr 03, 2017, 3:15 PM UTC

CaptSpify wrote: post #67

mustacheemperor wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My mother is coordinator of edtech at a small catholic middle and elementary school that fully invested in iPad education when it first released. It works as well as the commenters in this thread can tell you. The one thing you missed is that plenty of teachers won't spend the 15 minutes. The first time an edtech feature doesn't work in their classroom - usually because the teacher is using it completely incompetentl…

To be fair, most classroom software that I've seen is terrible . Couldn't her hesitation to learning tech be more because we've spent a long time giving them bad tech, so she stopped trying?

You're assuming their technical illiteracy is limited to software. My mother routinely must explain to teachers over and over that files saved to "their desktop" are accessible from any computer on the AD, or that Google Drive is different from email.

Re: Why Classroom Technology Is Costing More Than Its Worth (2016)

#83

Post by CaptSpify » Tue, Apr 04, 2017, 12:02 AM UTC

mustacheemperor wrote: post #82

CaptSpify wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, most classroom software that I've seen is terrible . Couldn't her hesitation to learning tech be more because we've spent a long time giving them bad tech, so she stopped trying?

You're assuming their technical illiteracy is limited to software. My mother routinely must explain to teachers over and over that files saved to "their desktop" are accessible from any computer on the AD, or that Google Drive is different from email.

I'm well aware that there are plenty of teachers who flat out suck at technology, software, hardware, or any layer in between. But it's not binary, more of a spectrum.

I'm just offering up a possible reason that someone wouldn't want to learn. I strongly believe that most of the current "hate on learning new computer systems" is due to programmers and designers more than cranky users