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Education Programming

Is There an Ed-Tech Critic In the House? 61

Posted by samzenpus from the won't-somebody-please-think-of-the-children? dept.
theodp writes: Educational technology has been stuck for awhile, laments Hack Education's Audrey Watters in And So, Without Ed-Tech Criticism... (an accompanying 1984 photo of Watters making a LOGO turtle draw a square looks little different than President Obama 'learning to code' 30+ years later by making a Disney Princess draw a square). "We might consider why we're still at the point of having to make a case for ed-tech criticism," writes Watters. "It's particularly necessary as we see funding flood into ed-tech, as we see policies about testing dictate the rationale for adopting devices, as we see the technology industry shape a conversation about 'code' — a conversation that focuses on money and prestige but not on thinking, learning. Computer criticism can — and must — be about analysis and action."
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Is There an Ed-Tech Critic In the House? More

Is There an Ed-Tech Critic In the House?

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  • Not just for coding (Score:4, Insightful)

    by spectrokid ( 660550 ) on Sunday August 16, 2015 @08:40AM (#50326103) Homepage
    There are many places where it is hard to find good math / STEM teachers. Here in Denmark, my kids make some of their math homework on a website, but it could be SOOO much better. A website which adapts it speed to the pupil, and turns out a nice daily report for the teacher showing where he needs to put focus in class... School is definitely THE area where automation is still in its infancy...

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by laird ( 2705 )

      There are companies that make systems that do this. But it takes a long time to make improvements in education in the field. One huge impediment in the US is that every state has its won curriculum and laws regulating what must be taught and how, and decisions are made in a very fragmented and political way (state, city, individual school) so the market is very fragmented with incredible friction, making it an extremely slow business to get improvements not just technically implemented but aligned to state

      • Plenty of US states are easily big enough to organize this. Bigger than most european countries. A factor is you've got christians holding everyone back because they are afraid the kids might learn something that will make them question their faith (science).
        • Ah no.. the problem is the ignorant masses propagating the fallacious idea that science and religious faith are incompatible, and there are perhaps more such people among atheists than religious.
          • Actually the masses are buying the religious claims that they are compatible, including scientific institutions.
            I agree they are compatible so long as you're willing to pretend your religion is bullshit when your science is concerned. But if you understand how the world really works, you might see the religious explanations for the iron age bullshit they are.

            Remember it's easy to be wrong. Scientists have to jump through all kinds of hoops, like double blind studies, because they know they can't be trust
            • Well I personally don't believe in any god or gods, but I know a lot of people who do, and during my life I've seen a shift in attitudes within the religious community. When I was young, most religious people were ignorant of science, and shrugged their shoulders about it. They didn't declare it wrong, or the deceitful work of the devil, or anything like that. They didn't refuse medicine because it was unnatural or "interfering with God's plan". But now most of the religious people I know who are ignorant o
              • What self-important atheists do that? Do you consider me one? Because I don't just accept flat religious assertions and actually try to take power away from religion so it'll do less damage? That's something some religious have been extremely frustrated about, calling it the 'new atheist'.

                It seems to me religious are becoming more anti-science because they realize it makes their religion look more and more useless.

                • What self-important atheists do that? Do you consider me one?

                  Yes, I do. Why? Because you interrupted a thread discussing a very soecific topic on education -- educational technology and adaptive learning - in order to preach (yes, preach) about how bad religion is. That's self-importance: "what I have to say is so important, it doesn't matter that it's off-topic. Listen to me!" If there is a debate to be had about the effect of religion on the content of school lessons (and there is), then have that debate elsewhere -- here we are discussing teaching methodologies. I

                  • "Because you interrupted a thread discussing"
                    nope I responded to this:
                    "Ah no.. the problem is the ignorant masses propagating the fallacious idea that science and religious faith are incompatible"

                    "Your approach is counterproductive"
                    I think we can only make progress proportional to how non-religious those parents are. Maybe I piss them off, but trying to trick them into accepting science is not going to work. Even if I make lots of progress there, the next scientific discovery that threatens their relig

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by nbauman ( 624611 )

          A factor is you've got christians holding everyone back because they are afraid the kids might learn something that will make them question their faith (science).

          Let's make it clear that this only applies to Christian extremists. Some Christians are nice, rational people. You wouldn't know they were Christians if they didn't tell you.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by dbIII ( 701233 )
            I'll add to that.
            Three of the four people that debunked the "great flood" theory and laid the foundations for the science of geology were ordained. Funny how the first to truly show that the Earth was a lot older than 6000 years old were professional Christians. Then there is Mendel and Darwin. A very different league to speaking in tongues and lifting up serpents.
            I have to admit being a bit biased against the extremists because a Pentacostal cult set up near me was mostly so the founder would have acces

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by nbauman ( 624611 )

        While "no child left behind" might sound noble, the way it was written and funded, it's been incredibly destructive to education in the US. It's been tweaked to avoid complete destruction, but schools would be way better off if they were allowed to educate kids to their potential instead of just focusing on getting everyone to pass the test. Because schools now aren't rewarded for kids who excel, they're just punished for any kids who fail, so schools allocated resources to keeping a few kids from failing instead of maximizing educational outcome across all students.

        I always thought that the purpose of No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top was to destroy the public education system and the teachers' unions.

        A lot of this dates back to the "segregation academies" of the South. The former Confederate states traditionally had low funding for black schools (they got hand-me-down textbooks from the white schools, teachers who were paid less, etc.). One of the solutions (maybe not the best one) for equal education was to integrate the schools. Some states responded by clos

    • You mean like the Virginia Tech Math Emporium? [washingtonpost.com]

      Math Emporium website [vt.edu] if you want to contact them. I am sure the process could be adapted for K-12 without much difficulty.

    • Your sig:

      10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then

      is relevant to the discussion and thanks to QB64 [qb64.net] it still is, except since you didn't use a quote mark and THEN is a keyword it will give a THEN without IF error, some form of which most BASIC implementations will give.

  • I'm not sure about that (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I haven't found this to be true. What I find is complete chaos. The University I work at and others I have been at are a mess, where everyone gets to do anything they want, and then we have to support it. So, it's great for learning just about any technology, but a terrible group to manage.

  • We could start with some evidence that tech per se is necessary to or improves education [*]. Education methods developed around 600 BC (if not borrowed from earlier times) have been pretty successful across many times, places, and cultures in the 2600 years since; post-1970 "electronic learning" beginning with PLATO has not proven very successful, or even at all. Oddly however the "metrics" so beloved of "reformers" today doesn't seem to apply to technology-based education attempts.

    sPh

    * other than educat

    • I think technology has a (major) role to play in education, but that doesn't mean that education has to be technology-based. We know that there are various ways to teach a kid, and any method in particular will work best only for certain kids. Same with the environment: some work best alone while others thrive in groups. Some need more help than others, some learn faster, some need discipline and planning while others learn fine on their own. And even in a school system where one can choose from a varie

    • We could start with some evidence that tech per se is necessary to or improves education [*]. Education methods developed around 600 BC (if not borrowed from earlier times) have been pretty successful across many times, places, and cultures in the 2600 years since; post-1970 "electronic learning" beginning with PLATO has not proven very successful, or even at all. Oddly however the "metrics" so beloved of "reformers" today doesn't seem to apply to technology-based education attempts.

      sPh

      * other than education in that particular sub-area of technology, although even there deeper education in more fundamental principles often proves superior to narrowly focused training.

      The same critique could be applied to business. There's a lot of "magical" thinking when it comes to technology - as opposed to reviewing outcomes empirically. I think the point of the original article was to re-examine our techno-fetishism. Sadly, I can't see it ever happening and as a consequence education will suffer, business will suffer and society will just roll along...

      Real reform *should* come out an evidence-based approach. But when the key metrics being developed in education now (ala MOOCs) is

  • Giving someone control over a "turtle" and commanding it to draw shapes is a great way to introduce to the idea of programming, because it's simple, visual, and fairly intuitive. That's true whether it was kids in the 90s or the President in the 10s.

    There's lots of innovation in education. The problem is that it's only possible (in the US) outside of typical school settings, so it's research or on the internet. The schools are all heavily regulated to the point where they can't innovate, or even allow indiv

    • Until the educators master computer technology all hope is lost. Most teachers in the district I work would be hard pressed to describe the difference between a USB cable and an Ethernet cable. What would a nation of expert coders look like? How many of these citizens would be impatient, diabetic, over weight and myopic; cheap to hire?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      The " can't innovate" part is a product of testing over decades.
      Think of a bell curve of results and the real needs of worlds best advanced nation building R&D. Only so many really, really smart, expensive people are needed per year.
      Testing can find them in public, low cost and expensive private schools. The test results then allow a nation to ensure only the best 10 % of skilled students get well funded top merit based university access. Further sorting of the top 10% gets even better results with

  • While I can't speak to K-12, in my 15 years as a physics professor at a research university, the following ed-tech innovations been geninely and significantly helpful to me as a teacher:

    Moodle/Blackboard (for distributing things like problem set solutions)
    Powerpoint and digital projectors (for giving lectures)
    Spreadsheets (for calculating grades)
    Email (for communicating with students)

    And that's pretty much it. Everything else is overhyped garbage -- the prepackaged physics apps and demos people are constan

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by coop247 ( 974899 )
      Our science department has been using InterLACE to increase collaborative learning. I think they just moved to Visual Classrooms (http://visualclassrooms [visualclassrooms.com]). They did some training on campus last year and it was still a research project at Tufts, now I believe its a real company. Basically it allows students to share ideas and the teacher to get a much better sense of the amount of contributions and interactions taking place when compared to the horrendous BlackBoard forums.

      For sciences they have a lot
    • When I was a teacher I absolutely LOVED my clickers - quick quizzes after important lessons; instant feedback, it was SO worth the effort.
    • After 30 years of teaching university physics, I have noticed the slow slide in ability to work with numbers among those fresh out of high school. (Heck, even college seniors.) They are crippled by calculators. My kids were required to have graphing calculators in high school --- what a joke! All they learned was how to punch a sequence of keys. And yet the math teachers loved it because it FELT like they were somehow cutting edge and really doing some good. HS graduates would be much more "numerate"

  • Given the greater-than-zero proportion of high school leavers particularly in the US who can't even READ, should we not instead of shoving IoT down their throats and packing them off to summer camp with DFE-subsidised wirelessed-to-buggery tablets, why not fall back on that method that's worked for the past few millennia: pencil and parchment, all eyes front and let's bring back cursive practice.

    I went to school through the 1980s (I left high school in 1991) and would be shocked to hear of any of my grade p

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by fermion ( 181285 )
      How much reading and writing is necessary for an average person to succeed. Donal Trump speaks at an elementary school level. I my self have a terrible time with handwriting, and if weren't for computers I would not even have a job.

      I also went through school during the 80's, the difference is that I did not learn specific programs because there were no dominant programs. So as a young student I learned to copy basic using a teletype and make it work, then I learned fortant on mainframe and to do shape t

      • How much reading and writing is necessary for an average person to succeed. Donal Trump speaks at an elementary school level.

        This is actually a valuable political and business skill. It's called "being able to speak to your audience", and it's fundamental to being able to communicate your point to people at that skill level themselves. Reagan had this same skill, as did Kennedy. You will find that all the people we consider "great orators" had this skill. Jimmy Carter, to a lesser degree (or he would have had a second term); surely people remember his "I want to be your president, because I like you". Mr. Rogers level dialog

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by dbIII ( 701233 )

          I don't know anyone in the Democratic field at this point who has a similar skill set to Trump

          I don't know anyone out of jail who has a similar skill set to Trump. The difference between him and them is powerful friends who kept the dogs off while he stole.

          • ... I don't know anyone out of jail who has a similar skill set to Trump. ...

            To quote a very old phrase:
            "A compenent crook will do less damage than an incompetent idealist!"

    • Given the greater-than-zero proportion of high school leavers particularly in the US who can't even READ, should we not instead of shoving IoT down their throats ...

      Reading -is- a vocational skill.
      IoT is not, and might never be, except in specialized jobs.

  • I know a lot of folks aren't going to like hearing this, but Basic Research (e.g. the expensive groundwork stuff) is almost exclusively done by central governments.Then businesses move in, do a few quick studies to figure out which of the 3 dozen or so studies can be made profitable in less than 10 years and go from there. I've heard that in the Bell Labs day this wasn't true, but it's certainly true today.

    Well, we've been cutting education funding world wide (with the exception of a Germany & a few

  • A friend of mine named Seattle for Truth has been doing research into the ED tech craze, in addition I have been involved with education because my wife is an educator, It appears that ED tech has a deleterious effect of both reducing attention spans, in addition to indoctrinating children to think with feelings.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6i_xjqHPcok

    There is a saying that whomever controls your eyes controls your mind, and in the case of Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association, they call games as

    • My daughter teaches in the state of Washington; There, they mandate testing via computers, I suppose for "efficiency" and because Bill Gates generously and altruistically gave them lots of computers. So what happens? They only have enough computer stations to test 1/3 of the students at a time. So for a period of 3 weeks each semester, 1/3 of my daughter's students are missing -- a difference 1/3 each week. Students are losing a huge amount of learning time taking these mostly meaningless tests. In De

  • Hell, I'd be delighted if someone would simply tell admins that buying 10,000 fucking ipads and handing them to kids isn't a ED TECH program, it's an entertainment program, or a white wash, or a corrupt-kickback program, but in no sense is handing out such - without a deeply thought-through and integrated curriculum to back it up - an "educational" program.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by whh3 ( 450031 )

      In the same way that dropping 100s (or 1000s) of OLPCs into Africa was not an ED TECH program.

  • there is plenty wrong with educational institutions who don't have a road map. Here are two reasons for that: First, much of IT is a black box, so it's not as simple as looking at an old school procedural(ish) language program (BASIC, LOGO, HyperTalk, etc.). Current high-level languages are (cue the barrage of comments here) obtuse upon initial inspection by learners, so people who need to learn are put off and people who already know how to do this are dismissive of just about every effort to simplify

  • There are a great group of "critics" working on this exact topic at New America:

    http://www.edcentral.org/learningtech/ [edcentral.org]

    They are specifically focused on the use of technology in early education, but I think that their reports will showcase a need for deeper thinking about the use of technology at all levels of education.

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