Original Source: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/life-return-to-normal-covid-19/
I find these sorts of surveys and infographics and the related data fascinating. The full post has some additional data that is interesting. Makes you wonder…..?
Archives For Technology & Culture
The start of a new year or new decade often brings prognostications and assessments of earlier predictions that may or may not have come to pass. I have been working in and around educational technology (Ed-Tech) for over three decades now, so Audrey Watters post The 100 Worst Ed-Tech Debacles of the Decade gave me the opportunity to think back on the past ten years and consider whether or not I fell prey any of the empty promises that are unfortunately a big part of the Ed-Tech world. Even though I often refer to myself as a delusional optimist when it comes to Ed-Tech I have learned to temper my optimism and be a realist. Watters confirmed many of my skepticisms in her post.
As I read through the piece I thought of many more Ed-Tech debacles that I would have included. The following list is a subset of Watters’s full list and it represents many of the skeptical thoughts I had when these issues originally came to light. Unfortunately, some of these debacles are ongoing and I predict that they may be included in Watter’s list in another decade—why does it take us so long to learn.
Regardless, the following list is what stood out to me and the following quote from the post is intended to provide a summary perspective. I encourage you to review the whole list and make your own summary.
96. Ning “…So many lessons here about controlling your own data and not relying on free ed-tech products.”
92. “The Flipped Classroom” “…the whole “flipped classroom” model is based on the practice of homework — a practice that is dubious at best and onerous at worst? As education author Alfie Kohn has long argued, homework represents a “second shift” for students, and there’s mixed evidence they get much out of it.”
90. “Ban Laptops” Op-Eds “…A “ban laptops” op-ed may be the greatest piece of ed-tech clickbait ever devised.”
89. Clickers “…The greatest trick the ed-tech devil ever played was convincing people that clicking was “active learning.”
86. Badges – “…Despite predictions that badges would be the “new credential” and that we were looking at a “Future Full of Badges,” it’s not clear that digital badges have provided us with a really meaningful way to assess skills or expertise.”
82. “The End of Library” Stories “…Libraries haven’t gone away — they’re still frequently visited, despite dramatic drops in public funding. More and more public libraries have started eliminating fines too because libraries, unlike Techcrunch writers, do care to alleviate inequality.”
69. Unbundling …They want the bundle. They don’t want “content loops.” They aren’t shopping for “content pathways.” They want to choose a school. They want a degree.”
57. Turnitin “…Rather than trusting students, rather than re-evaluating what assignments and assessments look like, schools have invested heavily in any number of technology “solutions” to cheating — keystroke locking, facial recognition, video monitoring, and the like, all designed to identify students with “low integrity.”
56. Brain Training “…another study published that same year in Neuropsychology Review found that most brain training programs had no peer-reviewed evidence demonstrating their efficacy.”
55. Montessori 2.0 “…I’d wager if you ask most Americans to describe “progressive education,” they’d cite one of two names in doing so: John Dewey and Maria Montessori. They’ve likely not read any Dewey — just see the phrases attributed to him on PowerPoint presentations and on edu-celebrity Twitter. And they know little about Montessori either, other than it’s a kind of preschool where kids play with wooden blocks. So not surprisingly, as tech executives sought to open their own, private schools, they have turned to a largely imagined legacy of progressive education, often referring to their experiments as “Montessori 2.0”
53. TED Talks “…very exploitation and inequality that the TED Talks promise, with their 18-minute-long sleight-of-hand, to disrupt.”
50. One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) “… a controlled study in Peru published in 2012 found no evidence that the OLPC tablets increased children’s math or language learning.”
48. The Hour of Code “…whether an hour of code or a “genius hour” — is hardly a sufficient commitment to changing education or, for that matter, to changing industry.”
44. YouTube, the New “Educational TV” “…Parents have long been criticized for letting television “raise their children,” But YouTube now means a much stranger and potentially more dangerous, data-driven viewing experience.”
38. Coding Bootcamps “…Google’s director of education echoed this sentiment: “Our experience has found that most graduates from these programs are not quite prepared for software engineering roles at Google without additional training or previous programming roles in the industry.”
36. “Personalized Learning” Software (and Facebook and Summit Public Schools) “…According to data obtained by Chalkbeat, “Since the platform was made available, 18% of schools using it in a given year had quit using it a year later.“
22. Automated Essay Grading “…Automated essay grading software can be fooled with gibberish, as MIT’s Les Perelman has shown again and again. ”
10. Google for Education “…Chromebooks now make up 60% of all laptops and tablets sold to K-12 schools, up from 5% in 2012….“It’s a private company very creatively using public resources — in this instance, teachers’ time and expertise — to build new markets at low cost,”
8. LAUSD’s iPad Initiative “…In 2013, the Los Angeles Unified School District awarded a $30 million contract for Apple, paving the way (supposedly) for an ambitious $1.3 billion plan to give every student in the district an iPad…In 2015, the school board voted on a $6.5 million settlement with Apple over the project. ”
7. ClassDojo and the New Behaviorism “…ClassDojo and other types of behavior management products claim that they help develop “correct behavior” and “right mindsets.” But what exactly does “correct behavior” entail? And what does it mean if schools entrust this definition to for-profit companies and their version of psychological expertise?”
6. “Everyone Should Learn to Code” “…Over and over and over this past decade, we were told that “everyone should learn to code.” We were told there is a massive “skills gap”: too few people have studied science, technology, engineering, or math; and employers cannot find enough skilled workers to fill jobs in those fields…But it’s a powerful myth, and one that isn’t terribly new, dating back at least to the launch of the Sputnik satellite in 1957 and subsequent hand-wringing over the Soviets’ technological capabilities and technical education as compared to the US system. ”
4. “The Year of the MOOC” “…The MOOC revolution simply wasn’t.”
Source: https://seths.blog/2018/12/where-are-the-linchpin-jobs/
Seth Godin (2018) is pointing to the bad deal that industry has offered the worker:
Here’s a job. We’ll pay you as little as we can get away with while still being able to fill the job. We’ll make sure it’s easy to find people for this job, because we don’t want you to have much in the way of power or influence. We’ll use software to read the resumes, and we’ll do it in huge batches.
In return, you’ll work as little as you can get away with. That’s the only sane way to respond to the role of being a cog. If the system is going to squeeze you, no need to volunteer.
Godin warns us that the most cog-like jobs are will eventually be done by machines and that cog-like work doesn’t create nearly as much value as truly human work. He is looking to his community and to employers to take the risk and move from compliance and cog based jobs to jobs that require the employee to use their unique talents and abilities to contribute in ways that only they can.
If this is going to work I think educators also have make a shift in the way that we prepare our learners to become contributing members of society rather then just compliant cogs. We need to move away from the information transfer model of education that uses the industrial age and standards testing approach which simply asks students to regurgitate information and fall into compliance. In contrast we need to embrace the learner and create significant learning environments that give the learner choice, ownership and voice through authentic leaning opportunities if we really want to empower our learners to do the work that only a few humans can really do and to contribute to a better humanity and society.
Are we preparing our students to be compliant cogs or creative contributors?
References:
Godin, S. (2018, December 6). Where are the Linchpin jobs? [Blog] Retrieved from: https://seths.blog/2018/12/where-are-the-linchpin-jobs/
I have been working on finding ways to use technology to enhance learning since the early 1990’s so when I read the Students, Computers and Learning Making the Connection research report from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OCED) I was disappointed and also encouraged.
Disappointed – It Isn’t Working
After so many decades of working toward getting computers and related technology into our classrooms and school systems it is disappointing to see the research that shows:
Overall, the evidence from PISA, as well as from more rigorously designed evaluations, suggest that solely increasing access to computers for students, at home or at school, is unlikely to result in significant improvements in education outcomes. Furthermore, both PISA and the research evidence concur on the finding that the positive effects of computer use are specific-limited to certain outcomes, and to certain uses of computers. (OECD, 2015 p. 163)
While the report confirms that we have solved the acquisition problem of getting technology into our student’s classrooms it also reveals that:
…students who use computers very frequently at school do a lot worse in most learning outcomes, even after accounting for social background and student demographics (OECD 2015, p. 5).
The report’s authors admit that there are many questions that the report has left unanswered but perhaps the following statement may point to the core of the problem that we are seeing when we use technology in the wrong way:
If students use smartphones to copy and paste prefabricated answers into questions, it is unlikely to help them become smarter. If we want students to become smarter then a smartphone, we need to think harder about the pedagogies we are using to teach them. Technology can amplify great teaching but great technology cannot replace poor teaching (p. 6).
I was initially planning to cut the quote after “…pedagogies we are using” because I get annoyed with authors who are quick to blame teachers for the challenges we are facing in using technology to enhance learning. Most teachers are working tirelessly to improve their student’s lives but because they are mired in a system based on 19th & 20th-century practices when they add 21st-century technology to the mix it is no better than bolting a jet engine to a horse cart (Papert, 1993). Perhaps more troubling is that we are still using the 19th-century Thorndikian information transfer model and the recipe and regurgitation of information through a steady diet of standardized curriculum and testing. It doesn’t matter how much technology you add to this mix if you are using a digital worksheet, form, or test you are still simply asking your learner to regurgitate information.
We have known for a very long time that just adding technology to the classroom does not have any significant impact on learning. In the early 1990’s Thomas Russell and several other researchers pointed to the results of a meta-analysis of the research into technology use in distance education and found that there is no difference between technology-based instruction or classroom instruction (1999).
This no significant difference phenomenon is found in study after study. For example, in 1998 the ETS reported a negligible positive relationship between computer use and National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) scores in math for 4th graders and a slightly more positive result for 8th graders (Wenglinsky, 1998). A more expansive multi-year study that involved hundreds of schools and thousands of students by the U.S. Department of Education (Dynarski, et al., 2007) found that “test scores were not significantly higher in classrooms using selected reading and mathematics software products” (p. xiii).
The research over the years confirms that substituting, augmenting or replacing (i.e. SAMR model) passive information transfer paper-based models with digital models of instruction does not improve the learning. Researchers like Hattie (2008) and Fullan (2015) have shown that focusing on the technology as a way to bring about change in the learning environment will not work – the focus needs to be on building the learning first and then using technology to enhance the learning.
What will work?
So if bolting technology onto our antiquated classroom and augmenting the 19th-century information transfer model of standardized curriculum and testing doesn’t work than what does? According to the OECD (2015) report:
Technology can support new pedagogies that focus on learners as active participants with tools for inquiry-based pedagogies and collaborative workspaces. For example, technology can enhance experiential learning, foster project-based and inquiry-based learning pedagogies, facilitate hands-on activities and cooperative learning (p. 6)
The OECD (2015) report also pointed to John Hattie’s research into what contributes to student achievement and confirms that:
Computers were more effective when they are used to extend study time and practice, used to give students control over the learning situation (pacing of material) and when used to support collaborative learning (p. 163).
Encouraging
So this finally leads me to explain why I am encouraged by the OECD report. When we look at the recommendations in the report like active learning, hands-on experience, student control and project-based learning it just confirms that giving learners choice, ownership, and voice through at authentic learning opportunities or what we have labeled the COVA approach can actually make a difference.
If we focus first on creating a significant learning environment in which we give our learners choice, ownership, and voice through at authentic learning opportunities then when we add technology to help with creation, communication, and collaboration we will be able to make a greater difference in our learner’s lives.
References
Dynarski, M., Agodini, R., Heaviside, S., Novak, T., Carey, N., Campuzano, L., … Sussex, W. (2007). Effectiveness of reading and mathematics software products findings from the first student cohort: report (p. 140). Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences,. Retrieved from https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/pdf/20074005.pdf
Fullan, M., & Quinn, J. (2015). Coherence: The right drivers in action for schools, districts, and systems. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.
Hattie, J. (2008). Visible learning: A synthesis of over 800 meta-analyses relating to achievement. Routledge.
OECD (2015), Students, Computers and Learning: Making the Connection, OECD Publishing, Paris.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789264239555-en
Papert, S. (1993). The children’s machine: Rethinking school in the age of the computer. Basic books.
Ruiz-Primo MA, Briggs D, Iverson H, Talbot R, Shepard LA. Impact of undergraduate science course innovations on learning. Science. 2011;331:1269–1270.
Russell, T. L. (1999). The no significant difference phenomenon: A comparative research annotated bibliography on technology for distance education: As reported in 355 research reports, summaries and papers. North Carolina State University.
Wenglinsky, H. (1998). Does it compute? The relationship between educational technology and student achievement in mathematics. Princeton, New Jersey: ETS Policy Information Center. Retrieved from https://www.ets.org/Media/Research/pdf/PICTECHNOLOG.pdf
Responsible parents are rightly concerned with how much screen time is OK for their kids. According to folks at CommonSense Media (2016) the answer to this question depends on the age of your children and the category or type of screen time which include:
- Passive consumption: watching TV, reading, and listening to music
- Interactive consumption: playing games and browsing the Internet
- Communication: video-chatting and using social media
- Content creation: using devices to make digital art or music
Before we start exploring just home much our kids are spending in front of some sort of screen it would be helpful to look the example we as parents are setting. As you can see from the infographic below parents are spending over 9 hours with screen media with just under 8 hours devoted to personal use. How does that compare to their children? Excluding time in school and homework the 2015 CommonSense Census found that our teens are spending just under 9 hours with media with just under 7 hours of screen time. There is no denying that we spent a great deal of our time in front of some sort of screen.
(Common Sense Media, 2016)
(Common Sense Media, 2015)
Read the full Report: The Common Sense Census: Media Use by Tweens and Teens
Use the guidelines on the How much screen time is OK for my kid(s)? to help you make decisions based on the age and needs of your children.
References
Common Sense Media (December 2016) How much screen time is OK for my kid(s)? [Weblog] Retrieved from https://www.commonsensemedia.org/screen-time/how-much-screen-time-is-ok-for-my-kids
Common Sense Media (December 2015) The Common Sense Census. [Infographic] Retrieved from https://www.commonsensemedia.org/the-common-sense-census-media-use-by-tweens-and-teens-infographic
Common Sense Media (December 2016) Plugged-In parents. [Infographic] Retrieved from https://www.commonsensemedia.org/plugged-in-parents-of-tweens-and-teens-2016-infographic
