It's About Learning

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.”