8 ms·

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

75 points by sdomino 10y ago

Jtsummers 10y ago
While interesting, and anecdotally seems correct to me, does anyone here with a background in education and/or education technology have any pointers on actionable ways to use technology more effectively? This piece never seems to get to that point, other than strongly encouraging training for teachers (that they provide if you go with their solutions).
- ashark 10y ago
  The piece isn't supposed to get to any point, really, because it's long-copy marketing. The whole idea is to keep you expecting a point for as long as possible, without delivering, then stop, hoping you decide to give the writer('s company) money.
  - AnimalMuppet 10y ago
    Why is that supposed to increase the odds that I'll give the writer's company money? At least to me, it's more likely to give me a distaste of them as windbags who have nothing to offer. Do companies actually think marketing like this works? (Worse: Is it possible that they're right?)
    - ashark 10y ago
      I think the idea is that it keeps you engaged much longer than an ordinary ad would. Now, that just pisses me off when I figure out what's going on because you're deliberately wasting my time, but the claim is that it's measurably more effective than shorter, less-rambling copy. Used to be lots of posts about it on HN, few years back.
- jbob2000 10y ago
  My partner worked at a school that handed out iPads to the middle school students for use in class. Hearing what they use them for just makes me think that Apple needed someone to dump last year's leftover iPads on. It's really dumb stuff. They don't get access to the internet. They get a handful of stupid "learning" apps to use and a social network type thing that can be summed up as "instagram where mommy and teacher watch and control everything". The devices are so locked up that inquisitive kids ignore them, dumb kids never figure them out, and everyone in between just kinda lugs them around because they have to. I am beginning to think that tech capitalists have milked the general market and are now turning to the next juicy targets of education and healthcare.
  - GordonS 10y ago
    Totally agree here. I'm in the UK and my daughter's primary school has bought dozens of iPads (which are not exactly the most economical tablet), and they are used for things that could otherwise be done (and likely with better results too) in the real world, such as moving objects around for basic maths. Crazy waste of funds.
    - jbob2000 10y ago
      Yes! Thank you! Kids are sensory learners! They need to be able to hold, touch, taste, smell, and feel things to learn! But instead, we get a fucking screen that you poke at? Come the fuck on.
    - monk_e_boy 10y ago
      I disagree. A school without basic technology like computers and tablets? Blimey, you want us to go back to slates and chalk? Most schools have 3D printers, VR headsets, iPads. We need to teach kids about technology they will be using in 10 - 15 years time when they hit the job market. We can't send kids out into a career without having used an iPad. Some kids don't have access to tech or the internet at home, now you want to take it away at school? Shame on you.
      - PaulHoule 10y ago
- dmreedy 10y ago
  The classic, cliché-for-a-reason recommendation here is Mindstorms by Seymour Papert. It discusses a very tangible, very realizable, ground-up system of education built on the foundation of the computer as a universal, interactive tool that can meet the needs of any learner. It's a very good read, and a very good starting place if you're curious about this sort of stuff, alongside parallel work from people like Alan Kay and his Dynabook. However, there is a lot of inertia behind the education institution, so even something actionable like the path described in Mindstorms still has a massive uphill battle of winning hearts and minds; just because it's a good idea in principle doesn't mean it's going to be a good idea in practice, or that it's worth the cost of investment when the current system is, under some definition, 'working'. Still, like a lot of stuff coming out of Computer Science in the 60s, Papert et al. are a good place to go for raw inspiration channeled into consumable, actionable ideas.
  - Pulcinella 10y ago
    This. I feel like the biggest problems in EdTech are Bret Victoresque. The problem with fetch isn't that the software and technology isn't user friendly enough. The problem is that most EdTech is fundamentally X-but on a computer. Write an essay, but on the computer. Create a presentation, but on the computer. Technology needs to facilitate student learning in new, better ways, not just be paper version 1.1. Even this low bar often trips up EdTech companies. Why is my lesson planning webapp still broken on mobile after 5 years? Why does my digital grade book require some many clicks to do anything? Why does Google classroom still not have a student view for teachers?
    - zepto 10y ago
      School is to learning as hospital is to health.
- kerrsclyde 10y ago
  I work in a UK school (part time technician not teacher) and we have hardly any budget assigned to hardware, it's make do and mend constantly. The move now seems to be to teach coding via apps with friendly graphical interfaces, 10 years ago it was based around learning MS Office apps. I've worked in tech for nearly 20 years and the most important skill I learnt was to touch type. Then HTML, which lead me to simple scripting, and onwards. I'm not sure of the logic of teaching 11 year olds to code when some of them don't know how to copy and paste.
  - robertlagrant 10y ago
    Totally agree. I think there's is a huge need to teach children logic, but not code.
  - jvvw 10y ago
    I'm in my forties and hence learned to code as a kid (in BASIC) before I learned to copy and paste :-)
- Uhhrrr 10y ago
  The other reply is correct about the piece being marketing, but your question is still good. I've worked at 2 edtech startups and have a few teachers in my family, and my personal observation has been that technology is best when it removes friction in the areas of classroom control, assessment, communicating with parents, and organizing presentation materials. For the part where teachers figure out how to engage students and get them over conceptual humps, it seems like teachers are way ahead of any technology. The canonical technology fail in edtech is to dump computers or robot kits into the classroom with no training. I have been in a number of classrooms where stuff like that winds up piled in a very expensive corner. Also useful and sort of technological: https://donorschoose.com https://donorschoose.com
  - robertlagrant 10y ago
    This makes perfect sense: digitise (as we say now) admin and busywork, to let teachers shine at teaching.
- dubya 10y ago
  One of the more interesting ideas I've come across was for teaching reading. Basically you present the text in editable form and let the student rearrange and rewrite and add their own thoughts "between the lines". It really doesn't require any new software or particular teacher training, only that the text be made editable, which is very much not the default now. I don't have a non-university link, but the article I remember is Bill Bernhardt, "Reading and writing between the lines: an interactive approach using computers", Journal of Reading March 1994. (on jstor as a pdf composed of noneditable bitmaps)
FireBeyond 10y ago
The cookware analogy is a really good one. A similar one can be seen in the arts: "That's an amazing photo. You must have a really good camera!" which you see here and there. As opposed to: "That's an amazing painting. You must have really good brushes!" (Disclaimer: I'm a photographer and I do know that the quality of the lens and sensor is going to play some role in the output, leaving aside things like Photoshop. But my point still stands.)
- dudus 10y ago
  I agree, the analogy is the only interesting thing about this article. The $315B figure is there just to have a click bait title. He just assumed teachers only use 30% of the features from the solutions is used, thus 70% of the money is wasted. But in the real world that's not how it works. The same goes for enterprise market, where feature availability is important. It doesn't mean that every business will use every feature but vendors have developed this multitude of features over the years to address specific needs. It doesn't mean that if you don't use every feature you are throwing money away. You are not expected to use 100% anyway.
- rattray 10y ago
  Right, but bad cookware isn't usually so bad it prevents you from cooking. Bad educational technology can get in the way of teaching and learning. Errors/bugs and confusing UX can cause lengthy delays in the classroom. Teachers can easily spend 15 minutes running around playing IT support when students are using a new technology – out of a 50 minute class which was scheduled in 5-minute increments. That doesn't mean it needs to be "beautiful, seamless" software like we tend to idolize. Or the most featureful or innovative. It can be, but getting bog-standard basics working without confusion or errors is far more important. I certainly agree with the author on that. (Source: previously cofounded an edtech startup, spent time in many classrooms observing these things).
  - mustacheemperor 10y ago
    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 incompetently - they just stop using it altogether. It took the school almost a semester just to get an english teacher to stop making the students use paper notebooks because she resented the tech so badly. And you can see where the resentment comes from - lots of teachers do NOT tend towards technical literacy. A lot of them are older and underpaid, and they aren't going home and plugging away familiarizing themselves with contemporary tech to "skill up." The reason "kids can't use computers" is no doubt because plenty of their teachers can't either.
scandox 10y ago
The author needs a good editor. There's something consistently "off" in both the style and the personality of this article. It made it very hard for me to assess whether what they are actually saying is worthwhile. Also the calculation mentioned in the title (and which he strangely calls 'archaic') is totally spurious.
- ashark 10y ago
  This is a marketing piece badly masquerading as an informative article, after the pattern of awful "long copy" email/website marketing pieces. That's why it's "off".
- dsjoerg 10y ago
  Agreed. It feels like a dialect issue. However the quality of the underlying ideas is good enough that I pushed through. Good analogy.
- kyleblarson 10y ago
  Agree. The first sentence was so awkward that I stopped reading.
- throwaway729 10y ago
  Definitely. Even the subtitle is more difficult to follow than necessary because of pointless redundancy. The first few sentences contain many canonical examples of bad writing patterns that get in the way of communication (had had). Nothing grammatically incorrect. Just very simple ideas written in a way that's very difficult to follow. For anyone else who had trouble parsing the article, here's a TL;DR: 1. Why buy fancy top-of-the-line hardware when something cheap and utilitarian will do just fine? 2. The author's figure is made up. He takes an estimate of total spending and then assumes 70% of it was wasted. Based on unsubstantiated personal anecdote. But there's a page-long rant about cookware written in cringe-worthy style. My take: I'm sympathetic with (1). But I also know some people in K-12 IT. They're professionals with some accounting education who know how to perform a reasonable cost-benefit analysis. Sometimes money gets wasted on expensive toys. But sometimes it's less expensive to stick with Macs or Windows machines than retrain hundreds of teachers on Chrome OS or whatever. Sometimes there's bundling and the 30% or 70% that never gets used represented a 0% additional cost to the school. And sometimes people are just stupid.
partycoder 10y ago
Many schools do not make proper use of computer labs. While you could teach practical skills such as - how to process images, audio, video - how to code - math beyond silly games featuring anthropomorphic neotenized animals - workshops for chess and go - use one of the awesome open source software for chemistry, geometry, astronomy, etc... Only use for computers is for people to write documents, search online, print and... waste a lot of time on games, social networks.
- liveoneggs 10y ago
  most schools are going towards appliances like chromebooks and ipads where you can't do as much creative work
- milesrout 10y ago
  >While you could teach practical skills such as Those aren't practical skills that need to be taught to secondary school students. They need to learn mathematics, writing, reading, literature, science, etc. They don't need to learn how to code, they don't need to learn how to make memes in Paint or youtube videos of themselves playing minecraft, nor how to play irrelevant (if fun) games like Chess. >Only use for computers is for people to write documents, search online, print and... waste a lot of time on games, social networks. We certainly were not allowed to be on social networks or games during computer lab time whe{re,n} I went to high school. >Then, test taking could use more automation. Lots of teachers do their test taking by hand... Grading tests without an written answer is very easy to implement. That's simply not true. Test taking is done in written form for good reason. It's possible to draw diagrammes, to write emphasis, use italics, etc. without learning some arcane editor or (worse) syntax when you're meant to be doing a test. Marking tests without a written answer might be easy to implement, but that just encourages more fucking shit tests like they have in the US, where there are few written answers. EVERY test should be ENTIRELY written answers.
  - XorNot 10y ago
    The world has moved on from when you were in high school. And you're here, which meant you basically won the lucky-draw of "how did you spend your free time and how did you parents support it".
rrggrr 10y ago
Chromebooks, quizlets, etc. ARE working in my kids schools. There is a lot of time and money spent teaching the teachers, and there is a high % of teachers with specialized training to start with. The tech is hard on the parents who complain about not being able to assist, monitor and support easily, if at all.
dayvid 10y ago
I taught English in Japan for 2 years. I realized that the they spend less on education than America and have better results. The solution to education problems isn't throwing money at it. Or at least spend it on teacher salaries, right?
- Retric 10y ago
  You need to compare the %GDP on teacher salary's vs overhead to see where America falls down. Remember, the US system is focused on getting as much government funding into corporate hands. So, paying teachers provide little value, but textbooks, technology, and testing goes directly to company's that know how to keep the pork flowing. http://www.edweek.org/ew/section/multimedia/map-how-per-pupil-spending-compares-across-us.html http://www.edweek.org/ew/section/multimedia/map-how-per-pupi... At a ballpark a 30 student class might be ~12,000$ per student, but a starting teacher salary is on average ~45,000. Pay the teacher 120k (including benefits) and that's still only 1/3 of the total cost. (NYC pays over 20k per student and pays teachers $54,000 - $119,000 annually.) http://www.teachingdegree.org/new-york/salary/ http://www.teachingdegree.org/new-york/salary/
  - GordonS 10y ago
    This is a very interesting proposition - imagine what could happen if you paid teachers 120k! Are there any countries that do pay teachers very highly?
    - Retric 10y ago
      Tenured teachers can become very expensive in the US, and they have significant retirement benefits. But, high pay is also in high cost of living areas. Luxembourg teacher salaries begin at 73,700 euros (79,920 USD), http://www.wort.lu/en/luxembourg/starting-salaries-of-73-700-euros-secondary-teachers-in-luxembourg-earn-highest-in-oecd-56979c560da165c55dc5132d http://www.wort.lu/en/luxembourg/starting-salaries-of-73-700... Germany hits second place.
- cmdrfred 10y ago
  The median high school teacher salary is $57,200[0], the median salary for the same level of education is $48,500[1] and often works more hours on a yearly basis, has less job security, and has worse benefits. Where does this teachers are underpaid meme come from? [0]https://www.bls.gov/ooh/education-training-and-library/mobile/high-school-teachers.htm https://www.bls.gov/ooh/education-training-and-library/mobil... [1]http://study.com/articles/Average_Salary_With_A_Bachelors_Degree.html http://study.com/articles/Average_Salary_With_A_Bachelors_De...
ourmandave 10y ago
Back in my day, when I had to walk to school up hill both ways through 10' snow drifts (and that was summer school), a chalkboard was good enough. Get off my lawn!
deleted 10y ago
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jderoner 10y ago
What a great way to build empathy and connection in a sales conversation. These are the type of people I love to meet in EdTech! I couldn't agree more with the author's assessment. A bit of an extension beyond just training in new tools: we need to help adults in schools understand the value technology can provide in their daily lives before we can expect to see the true potential out of the complex technologies schools are spending billions of dollars on - looking at you blended learning and [fill in other buzzword technologies]. If an adult in a school doesn't appreciate the value that basic everyday tools provide (I'm talking things like calendars and organized email), it's a huge mountain to climb to get them to trust what technology can do to assist their work with kids. It's quite shocking how many great educators fall in this bucket. Then add the labels of 'laggard' and 'luddite' to these people instead of truly understanding them and forget creating any trust and change. It's a Maslow's thing, honestly, and so much is being spent on things way too far up the pyramid. There's so many low hanging problems to go after first to save great educators time and simultaneously build trust in the power and magic of technology. Right now we're burning all our political (and real) capital on the promises of 'edtech' without truly solving the needs of the people in the seats using them. I fear where it will end up, and the missed opportunity it represents. Source: I've been working with all types of schools throughout the US, with heavy exposure in NYC.
germinalphrase 10y ago
I'm a high school teacher. I've worked in rural/urban/suburban districts with wildly varied student demographics and school resources. The largest tech-related improvements to my teaching have not come from the availability of "edtech" - but from run of the mill productivity software (Email/Google Docs/etc) and students having reliable access to a computer/internet. I wasn't familiar with K2 Audiovisual before reading the article, so the "free unlimited training" angle doesn't resonate; however, the base argument being made is sound. Our tools need to support the work we do; if they are a distraction or impediment then they will be ignored. I freely admit that there are some interesting edtech tools being developed, but too many of these tools introduce significant redundant labor, user friction, and/or force me to change my goals/processes to fit their vision of what school is supposed to be. I have strong feelings on where I think things should go, but I'll just say that there is a lot of low hanging fruit in just helping teachers accomplish the things they already know how to do. There are a lot of teachers out right now saying, "I know [Kid A] would benefit from [extension/scaffold/resource Y] - but there isn't time to make that from scratch". Teachers know they should be personalizing their curriculum, assessment, and instructional performance for what each kid needs. They will typically even know how to accomplish it. They are logistically constrained from doing so and most edtech tools aren't offering solutions to the kinds of workflow problems that teachers face everyday. Edit: I have been drilling down on some ideas with another HN member (andrewwhartion). Principally, focused on teacher workflow tools. Email is in profile.
- panzagl 10y ago
  Heck, I'd be happy if edtech companies could figure out Sunday evening is not the best time to do maintenance of their gradebook/lesson plan applications. Then I might even be able to convince my wife to get rid of her paper gradebook...
  - germinalphrase 10y ago
    I remember getting locked out of our grade book one evening around 5:30-6. When I chatted with the IT guy the following day he said the edtech company didn't think teachers worked after 3 p.m. so some unannounced maintenance should be A-OK!
Endama 10y ago
I work at an EdTech company right now and we've found huge success simply because we've tried to get out of the way and let teachers do what they do. Teachers today have a hard enough time without tech companies, policy makers, administrators, etc. barging into their classrooms and dictating the best way to instruct their kids. Like germinalphrase mentioned, I think the best place for tech in education is to "[offer] solutions to the kinds of... problems that teachers face everyday" and to make the existing successes even more impactful (e.g. when a student does well, provide ways for teachers, parents, and students to celebrate together). Teachers know their kids and their struggles best, the tech just has to help them do what they do.
- CaptSpify 10y ago
  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?
  - Endama 10y ago
    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 called home and said their kid was poorly behaved) - Parents may or may not recognize themselves as a contributor to that poor behavior. But for the teacher, it doesn't really matter. If there is one poorly behaved kid in the class, it's going to make it harder for that teacher to instruct every single kid. It often seems that the problem isn't a glut of "bad teachers", it's that the structures placed around the teachers all too often seem to be set up for them to fail. It's no surprise then that 40%-50% of teachers quit the profession entirely within five years http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2012/05/16/kappan_ingersoll.h31.html http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2012/05/16/kappan_ingersol...
    - 10y ago
_acme 10y ago
"it's worth" not "its worth": it's means "it is". At least try to get the title of an article correct.
redsummer 10y ago
Computer tech in education is a con. It is completely unnecessary. There's a reason Steve Jobs limited his kids access to technology: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/steve-jobs-apple-ipad-children-technology-birthday-a6893216.html http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/new... In fact, it has opposite effect to what is intended. It gives the child an avalanche of distraction, when what they need is simplicity. I would say the same about mobile phones.
- andybak 10y ago
  Doesn't it rather depend on what you're trying to teach? To push an over simplistic alternative, maybe it hinders the syllabus but necessarily learning in the broadest sense. I'm not sure I've thought this through very deeply at this stage but I do have a deep distrust of formal education. I learned by playing with stuff until it broke and skim reading chunks of books I didn't have the patience to finish. Also - the classroom is full of distractions of other kinds. Move here, do this, listen to this, copy that. There's a huge amount of busy-work at school that is only tangentially related to learning. Technology might not be a magic bullet but it's no worse than some of the nonsense kids are put through.
  - M_Grey 10y ago
    A huge amount of early schooling is little more than basic socialization, literacy, numeracy, some vocabulary, and most of all daycare. Later it ostensibly becomes more focused on learning, but really it mostly just teaches people how to learn (in theory); that pretty much continues through high school, and sometimes much of university. It's a pretty ancient edifice that exists in the current form due to societal, intellectual, bureaucratic, political and corporate inertia. All of that is backed by the terror parents feel that if they "get this wrong" the child will be unable to get ahead in the world (at best) or intellectually/socially ruined (at worst). This is further exacerbated by parents who, far from appreciating just how long it takes for real learning to begin (and how much of it is always self-guided), think the key to raising bright children is Mandarin in infancy.
  - redsummer 10y ago
gnicholas 10y ago
The cooking analogy is tempting, but it overlooks the hardware/software distinction. In the classroom, you have (1) the teacher's skills, (2) the computer hardware purchased, (3) and the computer software purchased. In the kitchen, you have (1) the chef's skills and (2) the hardware purchased. If it's true that "software is eating the world", then a good analogy wouldn't skip over it. Software could be like the recipe, which of course makes a big difference in cooking outcomes.
paulryanrogers 10y ago
A family member of mine needed a quick way to grade student work. After a few dozen hours I had a wiki-like format loading for them to try. With a few more features tailored to language learning it ended up saving a few hundred hours per year. Probably cost me $5000 since I could have been consulting. Still, it was worth it for love. Now certain students hate using it, though they do appreciate getting their grades back sooner.

75 points by sdomino 10y ago

While interesting, and anecdotally seems correct to me, does anyone here with a background in education and/or education technology have any pointers on actionable ways to use technology more effectively? This piece never seems to get to that point, other than strongly encouraging training for teachers (that they provide if you go with their solutions).

ashark 10y ago
The piece isn't supposed to get to any point, really, because it's long-copy marketing. The whole idea is to keep you expecting a point for as long as possible, without delivering, then stop, hoping you decide to give the writer('s company) money.
- AnimalMuppet 10y ago
  Why is that supposed to increase the odds that I'll give the writer's company money? At least to me, it's more likely to give me a distaste of them as windbags who have nothing to offer. Do companies actually think marketing like this works? (Worse: Is it possible that they're right?)
  - ashark 10y ago
    I think the idea is that it keeps you engaged much longer than an ordinary ad would. Now, that just pisses me off when I figure out what's going on because you're deliberately wasting my time, but the claim is that it's measurably more effective than shorter, less-rambling copy. Used to be lots of posts about it on HN, few years back.
jbob2000 10y ago
My partner worked at a school that handed out iPads to the middle school students for use in class. Hearing what they use them for just makes me think that Apple needed someone to dump last year's leftover iPads on. It's really dumb stuff. They don't get access to the internet. They get a handful of stupid "learning" apps to use and a social network type thing that can be summed up as "instagram where mommy and teacher watch and control everything". The devices are so locked up that inquisitive kids ignore them, dumb kids never figure them out, and everyone in between just kinda lugs them around because they have to. I am beginning to think that tech capitalists have milked the general market and are now turning to the next juicy targets of education and healthcare.
- GordonS 10y ago
  Totally agree here. I'm in the UK and my daughter's primary school has bought dozens of iPads (which are not exactly the most economical tablet), and they are used for things that could otherwise be done (and likely with better results too) in the real world, such as moving objects around for basic maths. Crazy waste of funds.
  - jbob2000 10y ago
    Yes! Thank you! Kids are sensory learners! They need to be able to hold, touch, taste, smell, and feel things to learn! But instead, we get a fucking screen that you poke at? Come the fuck on.
  - monk_e_boy 10y ago
    I disagree. A school without basic technology like computers and tablets? Blimey, you want us to go back to slates and chalk? Most schools have 3D printers, VR headsets, iPads. We need to teach kids about technology they will be using in 10 - 15 years time when they hit the job market. We can't send kids out into a career without having used an iPad. Some kids don't have access to tech or the internet at home, now you want to take it away at school? Shame on you.
    - PaulHoule 10y ago
dmreedy 10y ago
The classic, cliché-for-a-reason recommendation here is Mindstorms by Seymour Papert. It discusses a very tangible, very realizable, ground-up system of education built on the foundation of the computer as a universal, interactive tool that can meet the needs of any learner. It's a very good read, and a very good starting place if you're curious about this sort of stuff, alongside parallel work from people like Alan Kay and his Dynabook. However, there is a lot of inertia behind the education institution, so even something actionable like the path described in Mindstorms still has a massive uphill battle of winning hearts and minds; just because it's a good idea in principle doesn't mean it's going to be a good idea in practice, or that it's worth the cost of investment when the current system is, under some definition, 'working'. Still, like a lot of stuff coming out of Computer Science in the 60s, Papert et al. are a good place to go for raw inspiration channeled into consumable, actionable ideas.
- Pulcinella 10y ago
  This. I feel like the biggest problems in EdTech are Bret Victoresque. The problem with fetch isn't that the software and technology isn't user friendly enough. The problem is that most EdTech is fundamentally X-but on a computer. Write an essay, but on the computer. Create a presentation, but on the computer. Technology needs to facilitate student learning in new, better ways, not just be paper version 1.1. Even this low bar often trips up EdTech companies. Why is my lesson planning webapp still broken on mobile after 5 years? Why does my digital grade book require some many clicks to do anything? Why does Google classroom still not have a student view for teachers?
  - zepto 10y ago
    School is to learning as hospital is to health.
kerrsclyde 10y ago
I work in a UK school (part time technician not teacher) and we have hardly any budget assigned to hardware, it's make do and mend constantly. The move now seems to be to teach coding via apps with friendly graphical interfaces, 10 years ago it was based around learning MS Office apps. I've worked in tech for nearly 20 years and the most important skill I learnt was to touch type. Then HTML, which lead me to simple scripting, and onwards. I'm not sure of the logic of teaching 11 year olds to code when some of them don't know how to copy and paste.
- robertlagrant 10y ago
  Totally agree. I think there's is a huge need to teach children logic, but not code.
- jvvw 10y ago
  I'm in my forties and hence learned to code as a kid (in BASIC) before I learned to copy and paste :-)
Uhhrrr 10y ago
The other reply is correct about the piece being marketing, but your question is still good. I've worked at 2 edtech startups and have a few teachers in my family, and my personal observation has been that technology is best when it removes friction in the areas of classroom control, assessment, communicating with parents, and organizing presentation materials. For the part where teachers figure out how to engage students and get them over conceptual humps, it seems like teachers are way ahead of any technology. The canonical technology fail in edtech is to dump computers or robot kits into the classroom with no training. I have been in a number of classrooms where stuff like that winds up piled in a very expensive corner. Also useful and sort of technological: https://donorschoose.com https://donorschoose.com
- robertlagrant 10y ago
  This makes perfect sense: digitise (as we say now) admin and busywork, to let teachers shine at teaching.
dubya 10y ago
One of the more interesting ideas I've come across was for teaching reading. Basically you present the text in editable form and let the student rearrange and rewrite and add their own thoughts "between the lines". It really doesn't require any new software or particular teacher training, only that the text be made editable, which is very much not the default now. I don't have a non-university link, but the article I remember is Bill Bernhardt, "Reading and writing between the lines: an interactive approach using computers", Journal of Reading March 1994. (on jstor as a pdf composed of noneditable bitmaps)

FireBeyond 10y ago

The cookware analogy is a really good one. A similar one can be seen in the arts: "That's an amazing photo. You must have a really good camera!" which you see here and there. As opposed to: "That's an amazing painting. You must have really good brushes!" (Disclaimer: I'm a photographer and I do know that the quality of the lens and sensor is going to play some role in the output, leaving aside things like Photoshop. But my point still stands.)

dudus 10y ago
I agree, the analogy is the only interesting thing about this article. The $315B figure is there just to have a click bait title. He just assumed teachers only use 30% of the features from the solutions is used, thus 70% of the money is wasted. But in the real world that's not how it works. The same goes for enterprise market, where feature availability is important. It doesn't mean that every business will use every feature but vendors have developed this multitude of features over the years to address specific needs. It doesn't mean that if you don't use every feature you are throwing money away. You are not expected to use 100% anyway.
rattray 10y ago
Right, but bad cookware isn't usually so bad it prevents you from cooking. Bad educational technology can get in the way of teaching and learning. Errors/bugs and confusing UX can cause lengthy delays in the classroom. Teachers can easily spend 15 minutes running around playing IT support when students are using a new technology – out of a 50 minute class which was scheduled in 5-minute increments. That doesn't mean it needs to be "beautiful, seamless" software like we tend to idolize. Or the most featureful or innovative. It can be, but getting bog-standard basics working without confusion or errors is far more important. I certainly agree with the author on that. (Source: previously cofounded an edtech startup, spent time in many classrooms observing these things).
- mustacheemperor 10y ago
  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 incompetently - they just stop using it altogether. It took the school almost a semester just to get an english teacher to stop making the students use paper notebooks because she resented the tech so badly. And you can see where the resentment comes from - lots of teachers do NOT tend towards technical literacy. A lot of them are older and underpaid, and they aren't going home and plugging away familiarizing themselves with contemporary tech to "skill up." The reason "kids can't use computers" is no doubt because plenty of their teachers can't either.

scandox 10y ago

The author needs a good editor. There's something consistently "off" in both the style and the personality of this article. It made it very hard for me to assess whether what they are actually saying is worthwhile. Also the calculation mentioned in the title (and which he strangely calls 'archaic') is totally spurious.

ashark 10y ago
This is a marketing piece badly masquerading as an informative article, after the pattern of awful "long copy" email/website marketing pieces. That's why it's "off".
dsjoerg 10y ago
Agreed. It feels like a dialect issue. However the quality of the underlying ideas is good enough that I pushed through. Good analogy.
kyleblarson 10y ago
Agree. The first sentence was so awkward that I stopped reading.
throwaway729 10y ago
Definitely. Even the subtitle is more difficult to follow than necessary because of pointless redundancy. The first few sentences contain many canonical examples of bad writing patterns that get in the way of communication (had had). Nothing grammatically incorrect. Just very simple ideas written in a way that's very difficult to follow. For anyone else who had trouble parsing the article, here's a TL;DR: 1. Why buy fancy top-of-the-line hardware when something cheap and utilitarian will do just fine? 2. The author's figure is made up. He takes an estimate of total spending and then assumes 70% of it was wasted. Based on unsubstantiated personal anecdote. But there's a page-long rant about cookware written in cringe-worthy style. My take: I'm sympathetic with (1). But I also know some people in K-12 IT. They're professionals with some accounting education who know how to perform a reasonable cost-benefit analysis. Sometimes money gets wasted on expensive toys. But sometimes it's less expensive to stick with Macs or Windows machines than retrain hundreds of teachers on Chrome OS or whatever. Sometimes there's bundling and the 30% or 70% that never gets used represented a 0% additional cost to the school. And sometimes people are just stupid.

partycoder 10y ago

Many schools do not make proper use of computer labs. While you could teach practical skills such as - how to process images, audio, video - how to code - math beyond silly games featuring anthropomorphic neotenized animals - workshops for chess and go - use one of the awesome open source software for chemistry, geometry, astronomy, etc... Only use for computers is for people to write documents, search online, print and... waste a lot of time on games, social networks.

liveoneggs 10y ago
most schools are going towards appliances like chromebooks and ipads where you can't do as much creative work
milesrout 10y ago
>While you could teach practical skills such as Those aren't practical skills that need to be taught to secondary school students. They need to learn mathematics, writing, reading, literature, science, etc. They don't need to learn how to code, they don't need to learn how to make memes in Paint or youtube videos of themselves playing minecraft, nor how to play irrelevant (if fun) games like Chess. >Only use for computers is for people to write documents, search online, print and... waste a lot of time on games, social networks. We certainly were not allowed to be on social networks or games during computer lab time whe{re,n} I went to high school. >Then, test taking could use more automation. Lots of teachers do their test taking by hand... Grading tests without an written answer is very easy to implement. That's simply not true. Test taking is done in written form for good reason. It's possible to draw diagrammes, to write emphasis, use italics, etc. without learning some arcane editor or (worse) syntax when you're meant to be doing a test. Marking tests without a written answer might be easy to implement, but that just encourages more fucking shit tests like they have in the US, where there are few written answers. EVERY test should be ENTIRELY written answers.
- XorNot 10y ago
  The world has moved on from when you were in high school. And you're here, which meant you basically won the lucky-draw of "how did you spend your free time and how did you parents support it".

rrggrr 10y ago

Chromebooks, quizlets, etc. ARE working in my kids schools. There is a lot of time and money spent teaching the teachers, and there is a high % of teachers with specialized training to start with. The tech is hard on the parents who complain about not being able to assist, monitor and support easily, if at all.

dayvid 10y ago

I taught English in Japan for 2 years. I realized that the they spend less on education than America and have better results. The solution to education problems isn't throwing money at it. Or at least spend it on teacher salaries, right?

Retric 10y ago
You need to compare the %GDP on teacher salary's vs overhead to see where America falls down. Remember, the US system is focused on getting as much government funding into corporate hands. So, paying teachers provide little value, but textbooks, technology, and testing goes directly to company's that know how to keep the pork flowing. http://www.edweek.org/ew/section/multimedia/map-how-per-pupil-spending-compares-across-us.html http://www.edweek.org/ew/section/multimedia/map-how-per-pupi... At a ballpark a 30 student class might be ~12,000$ per student, but a starting teacher salary is on average ~45,000. Pay the teacher 120k (including benefits) and that's still only 1/3 of the total cost. (NYC pays over 20k per student and pays teachers $54,000 - $119,000 annually.) http://www.teachingdegree.org/new-york/salary/ http://www.teachingdegree.org/new-york/salary/
- GordonS 10y ago
  This is a very interesting proposition - imagine what could happen if you paid teachers 120k! Are there any countries that do pay teachers very highly?
  - Retric 10y ago
    Tenured teachers can become very expensive in the US, and they have significant retirement benefits. But, high pay is also in high cost of living areas. Luxembourg teacher salaries begin at 73,700 euros (79,920 USD), http://www.wort.lu/en/luxembourg/starting-salaries-of-73-700-euros-secondary-teachers-in-luxembourg-earn-highest-in-oecd-56979c560da165c55dc5132d http://www.wort.lu/en/luxembourg/starting-salaries-of-73-700... Germany hits second place.
cmdrfred 10y ago
The median high school teacher salary is $57,200[0], the median salary for the same level of education is $48,500[1] and often works more hours on a yearly basis, has less job security, and has worse benefits. Where does this teachers are underpaid meme come from? [0]https://www.bls.gov/ooh/education-training-and-library/mobile/high-school-teachers.htm https://www.bls.gov/ooh/education-training-and-library/mobil... [1]http://study.com/articles/Average_Salary_With_A_Bachelors_Degree.html http://study.com/articles/Average_Salary_With_A_Bachelors_De...

ourmandave 10y ago

Back in my day, when I had to walk to school up hill both ways through 10' snow drifts (and that was summer school), a chalkboard was good enough. Get off my lawn!

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jderoner 10y ago

What a great way to build empathy and connection in a sales conversation. These are the type of people I love to meet in EdTech! I couldn't agree more with the author's assessment. A bit of an extension beyond just training in new tools: we need to help adults in schools understand the value technology can provide in their daily lives before we can expect to see the true potential out of the complex technologies schools are spending billions of dollars on - looking at you blended learning and [fill in other buzzword technologies]. If an adult in a school doesn't appreciate the value that basic everyday tools provide (I'm talking things like calendars and organized email), it's a huge mountain to climb to get them to trust what technology can do to assist their work with kids. It's quite shocking how many great educators fall in this bucket. Then add the labels of 'laggard' and 'luddite' to these people instead of truly understanding them and forget creating any trust and change. It's a Maslow's thing, honestly, and so much is being spent on things way too far up the pyramid. There's so many low hanging problems to go after first to save great educators time and simultaneously build trust in the power and magic of technology. Right now we're burning all our political (and real) capital on the promises of 'edtech' without truly solving the needs of the people in the seats using them. I fear where it will end up, and the missed opportunity it represents. Source: I've been working with all types of schools throughout the US, with heavy exposure in NYC.

germinalphrase 10y ago

I'm a high school teacher. I've worked in rural/urban/suburban districts with wildly varied student demographics and school resources. The largest tech-related improvements to my teaching have not come from the availability of "edtech" - but from run of the mill productivity software (Email/Google Docs/etc) and students having reliable access to a computer/internet. I wasn't familiar with K2 Audiovisual before reading the article, so the "free unlimited training" angle doesn't resonate; however, the base argument being made is sound. Our tools need to support the work we do; if they are a distraction or impediment then they will be ignored. I freely admit that there are some interesting edtech tools being developed, but too many of these tools introduce significant redundant labor, user friction, and/or force me to change my goals/processes to fit their vision of what school is supposed to be. I have strong feelings on where I think things should go, but I'll just say that there is a lot of low hanging fruit in just helping teachers accomplish the things they already know how to do. There are a lot of teachers out right now saying, "I know [Kid A] would benefit from [extension/scaffold/resource Y] - but there isn't time to make that from scratch". Teachers know they should be personalizing their curriculum, assessment, and instructional performance for what each kid needs. They will typically even know how to accomplish it. They are logistically constrained from doing so and most edtech tools aren't offering solutions to the kinds of workflow problems that teachers face everyday. Edit: I have been drilling down on some ideas with another HN member (andrewwhartion). Principally, focused on teacher workflow tools. Email is in profile.

panzagl 10y ago
Heck, I'd be happy if edtech companies could figure out Sunday evening is not the best time to do maintenance of their gradebook/lesson plan applications. Then I might even be able to convince my wife to get rid of her paper gradebook...
- germinalphrase 10y ago
  I remember getting locked out of our grade book one evening around 5:30-6. When I chatted with the IT guy the following day he said the edtech company didn't think teachers worked after 3 p.m. so some unannounced maintenance should be A-OK!

Endama 10y ago

I work at an EdTech company right now and we've found huge success simply because we've tried to get out of the way and let teachers do what they do. Teachers today have a hard enough time without tech companies, policy makers, administrators, etc. barging into their classrooms and dictating the best way to instruct their kids. Like germinalphrase mentioned, I think the best place for tech in education is to "[offer] solutions to the kinds of... problems that teachers face everyday" and to make the existing successes even more impactful (e.g. when a student does well, provide ways for teachers, parents, and students to celebrate together). Teachers know their kids and their struggles best, the tech just has to help them do what they do.

CaptSpify 10y ago
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?
- Endama 10y ago
  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 called home and said their kid was poorly behaved) - Parents may or may not recognize themselves as a contributor to that poor behavior. But for the teacher, it doesn't really matter. If there is one poorly behaved kid in the class, it's going to make it harder for that teacher to instruct every single kid. It often seems that the problem isn't a glut of "bad teachers", it's that the structures placed around the teachers all too often seem to be set up for them to fail. It's no surprise then that 40%-50% of teachers quit the profession entirely within five years http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2012/05/16/kappan_ingersoll.h31.html http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2012/05/16/kappan_ingersol...
  - 10y ago

_acme 10y ago

"it's worth" not "its worth": it's means "it is". At least try to get the title of an article correct.

redsummer 10y ago

Computer tech in education is a con. It is completely unnecessary. There's a reason Steve Jobs limited his kids access to technology: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/steve-jobs-apple-ipad-children-technology-birthday-a6893216.html http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/new... In fact, it has opposite effect to what is intended. It gives the child an avalanche of distraction, when what they need is simplicity. I would say the same about mobile phones.

andybak 10y ago
Doesn't it rather depend on what you're trying to teach? To push an over simplistic alternative, maybe it hinders the syllabus but necessarily learning in the broadest sense. I'm not sure I've thought this through very deeply at this stage but I do have a deep distrust of formal education. I learned by playing with stuff until it broke and skim reading chunks of books I didn't have the patience to finish. Also - the classroom is full of distractions of other kinds. Move here, do this, listen to this, copy that. There's a huge amount of busy-work at school that is only tangentially related to learning. Technology might not be a magic bullet but it's no worse than some of the nonsense kids are put through.
- M_Grey 10y ago
  A huge amount of early schooling is little more than basic socialization, literacy, numeracy, some vocabulary, and most of all daycare. Later it ostensibly becomes more focused on learning, but really it mostly just teaches people how to learn (in theory); that pretty much continues through high school, and sometimes much of university. It's a pretty ancient edifice that exists in the current form due to societal, intellectual, bureaucratic, political and corporate inertia. All of that is backed by the terror parents feel that if they "get this wrong" the child will be unable to get ahead in the world (at best) or intellectually/socially ruined (at worst). This is further exacerbated by parents who, far from appreciating just how long it takes for real learning to begin (and how much of it is always self-guided), think the key to raising bright children is Mandarin in infancy.
- redsummer 10y ago

gnicholas 10y ago

The cooking analogy is tempting, but it overlooks the hardware/software distinction. In the classroom, you have (1) the teacher's skills, (2) the computer hardware purchased, (3) and the computer software purchased. In the kitchen, you have (1) the chef's skills and (2) the hardware purchased. If it's true that "software is eating the world", then a good analogy wouldn't skip over it. Software could be like the recipe, which of course makes a big difference in cooking outcomes.

paulryanrogers 10y ago

A family member of mine needed a quick way to grade student work. After a few dozen hours I had a wiki-like format loading for them to try. With a few more features tailored to language learning it ended up saving a few hundred hours per year. Probably cost me $5000 since I could have been consulting. Still, it was worth it for love. Now certain students hate using it, though they do appreciate getting their grades back sooner.