The EdTech Backlash Is Here, and It's Just Getting Started
jacobin.com
Tech vendors promised personalized, frictionless learning. What American schools got instead was mind-numbing, data-hungry junk software that devalues teachers and shortchanges students. A growing movement, led by alarmed parents, is saying enough.

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/38188482

Tech vendors promised personalized, frictionless learning. What American schools got instead was mind-numbing, data-hungry junk software that devalues teachers and shortchanges students. A growing movement, led by alarmed parents, is saying enough.

Technology’s allure is always future oriented: Personal computing was going to supercharge productivity; social media and smartphones would strengthen interpersonal connections; and now AI will streamline the world of work. And for three-quarters of a century, education technology vendors have promised to optimize student learning and eliminate the busywork of teaching. But as Charles Logan, T. Philip Nichols, and Antero Garcia recently argued in Kappan, “the future they’re selling has not arrived — and perhaps it never will. But de-skilling, surveillance, and extraction — all of that is happening now, in our classrooms, today.”

    • pianoplant@lemmy.worldEnglish
      9·
      4 hours ago

      Came here to say this: Anki is infinitely better than some scammy ai enabled nonsense.

      The challenge is Anki relies on the student being motivated to pursue the education. The solution to that is the student seeing the value and fun in what they’re learning. That can partially be provided by gamification, but really a passionate teacher with genuine enthusiasm is the best.

    • maegul (he/they)@lemmy.mlEnglish
      8·
      6 hours ago

      My hot take is that mainstream software technology hasn’t worked out how to be useful enough to be good in education and is now currupyrd by get rich quick start up mentalities, when really it needs the kind of open ended research that created the PC in the 60s & 70s.

      Generally speaking, in a Bret Victor kind of way, enhancing human thinking behaviours and practices just feels like a purpose that has been left behind, probably since web and big data took over.