5 ms·

"In poor countries technology can make big improvements to education Teachers are often unqualified, ignorant or absent; tablets show up and work" I reached t

by soneca 8y ago

"In poor countries technology can make big improvements to education Teachers are often unqualified, ignorant or absent; tablets show up and work" I reached the article limit, so I could only read this, and I disagree. I live in Brazil and my wife works in a big NGO focused on education. She visits schools in poor regions all over the country. Her current understanding is that she sees no evidence that technology helps at all. And the NGO piloted lots of tech initiatives on lots of schools. "Teachers are often unqualified, ignorant or absent; tablets show up and work" The first part is definitely true, the second one not so much. What seems to make a difference is a prepared and motivated school principal. EDIT: I just read the whole article (thanks to ivm letting me know about Outline). The title is kind of clickbaity. Big programs, with a lot good things going on, and they focus on the small part that use tablets and I don't think it is even an absolute necessity. "The coach-and-tablet element is just one part. A curriculum based on synthetic phonics (widely used in developed-country schools) has been designed and 23m books distributed, along with detailed lesson plans to make life easier for teachers. But the technology is crucial to supporting them and providing their bosses with data about their performance." It is "crucial" for a small part of the program with good results. They at least acknowledge some high profile programs that did not work and go on to share a few other few and specific cases that are very interesting and explain how tech could indeed help. I still think it overrates the tech part, but looks like the classic case where the journalist writes a more down to earth article and the editor adds a exagerated title.

ivm 8y ago
> I reached the article limit Add Outline.com/ before the URL, like: https://outline.com/https://www.economist.com/international/2018/11/17/in-poor-countries-technology-can-make-big-improvements-to-education https://outline.com/https://www.economist.com/international/...
- asianthrowaway 8y ago
  Incognito mode works too
  - ivm 8y ago
    Not in Chrome for some reason but Safari's private windows always work for me on Economist.com.
    - asianthrowaway 8y ago
      Works for me in Chrome. I assume it's cookie based, so it should work? I noticed that Chrome incognito keeps cookies until all incognito tabs are closed, so maybe close them, open a new incognito session and then reopen the page.
      - ivm 8y ago
        I've sent some Economist's articles to friends before and it detected Chrome's incognito both on Mac and Windows despite no other opened incognito tabs. Not sure how they do it but I assumed that Chrome has a "leaky" private mode.
- soneca 8y ago
  Thanks!
collyw 8y ago
Technology was blackboards black in my day and it wasn't that long ago.
simion314 8y ago
I agree with you, I would also add that parents are also as important, children with parents that get involved in homeworks and other educative tasks (like watching documentaries, stimulating critical thinking) have better results. If someone thinks that education is the teacher job and parents should not do anything I disagree, at least not in regular schools where a teacher could have up to 25 students in a classroom.
- veddox 8y ago
  Only in all too many schools here, many parents cannot read and teachers have up to 60 kids in a class...
  - simion314 8y ago
    That is hard, but it is a start, my education was better then my parents and their education was better then their parents. I have no words when I think at a teacher with 60 students, this must be so exhausting.
Nasrudith 8y ago
I had a power outage last night that really had me appreciate one aspect of technology we have taken for granted - power. I can certainly see how electrification can boost children's grades - they can read and do homework at night when their days may be dedicated to farmwork after school. From what I read that sort of labor is essential given some horrifying unintended consequences like banning child labor too early for their economic development apparently resulting in increases in child prostitution (correlation isn't causation). I haven't spent time in the third world but I think it is safe to say the technology that does them the most good is infrastructure whether it is ancient like sewers or new like cellphone first deployment. I think tablets are largely something for the far end of the bell curve - good for autodidacts who would seek out new things when given the means. Most people don't spend their frer time say looking up obscure history and quantum physics but those who do can be enriched by it. There are smart people everywhere - I had a professor who grew up in the third world and disassembled and reassembled electronics from a young age. My deceased grandfather had a middle school education but sure could learn - despite working as a plasterer he managed to learn quite a bit of completely unrelated trades untaught, perspective in wood art, and write an eloquent sermon about his time in the Pacific theater when he accidentally made a more generous than expected donation in the dark - giving a $20 bill which is about $300 today and worth even more to the natives. It would have fit in as a chapter of a quality novel perectly.
- soneca 8y ago
  Yes, eletricity is essential. By "technology" I was refearing mostly to computers/tablets/phones in the classroom. Also, not all _"third world"_ are equal. Brazil, Senegal and India, to take three semi-random examples, are very different in its structure. And inside a country, there is also a lot of inequality. I am from Brazil and got basically the best education money can buy (excluding fancy, elitist schools for millionaires).
  - smokeyj 8y ago
    > I am from Brazil and got basically the best education money can buy So maybe you're not the best qualified to determine what works best for the poor? Have you ever been 1 of 40 students with a text book that is falling apart, with kids fighting in the class room, with a teacher who doesn't give a shit? What's easier, buying a $100 tablet, or turning a school around? The idea that education won't be revolutionized by technology is willfully ignorant. Kids will put on a virtual reality headset and talk to AI teachers, if someone had the pocket to build it. Kids don't need to go to school. Obedience training needs to end. Poor kids need a way to learn skills that are in demand. Technology is the only way forward, not lining the pockets of NGO employees.
namenotrequired 8y ago
> What seems to make a difference is a prepared and motivated school principal. I work in EdTech in Brazil and can confirm this.
pier25 8y ago
> What seems to make a difference is a prepared and motivated school principal. I work in EdTech in Mexico and I totally agree. What makes a difference are prepared and motivated principals but also teachers, even in expensive private schools which are usually our customers. Technology in the classroom is even negative for younger kids, and for teenagers it generally doesn't make much of a difference over pen and paper unless the teacher understands the benefits of the medium. As someone who has been working in EdTech for a couple of years and was motivated to make learning better, this revelation has been quite demotivating.
- dorchadas 8y ago
  As a teacher (in America), it's nice to see people recognizing this. Too often I just hear "Oh, tech can do it better" and soforth. It really can't (and often makes kids' abilities worse; see: Calculators) and is best used to support a teacher who knows how to use it and students who know what they're doing (calculators should be used in high school only, after the kid has done most things by hand plenty of times).
always_good 8y ago
Half the article is a "but..." of its subtitle. The title even has "can" in it which makes it non-absolute.
veddox 8y ago
I've hit the same article limit, but my reaction was just the same as yours. Perhaps the rest of the article would have improved my opinion of it, but at the moment it sounds like Yet Another Rich Westerner trying to solve the Third World's problems with technology, plenty of money, and not a clue of what's going on. I've lived in a Third World country in Africa for half of my life and am often astounded by the naivete of some (especially tech-based) development schemes. Recently friends of mine were in contact with a Western philanthropist who donated $10 000 to buy laptops for a village school. He came out twice for a few days, chose the school and had the laptops shipped. The problem? The school he chose didn't have any teacher who knew how to use a computer. The next teacher who did lived ~20km away... But of course the philanthropist ignored every piece of advice given him by the people on the ground, just to become upset when, six months later, he realized that his grand scheme wasn't working out. He is not alone. Projects like these sound fantastic, thought out in a comfortable suburban home in America, but all too often they utterly ignore reality. The reality is that in rural areas here an Internet connection is not something you can take for granted (though this is rapidly improving), electricity is unreliable or completely absent, and an extreme climate and all-permeating dust play havoc with electronics. And that is before you consider social problems like rampant thievery. Education is one of the most important and urgent areas for development, and we do need to do a lot more than we are right now. But to think that computers can magically solve the problems we have is just another typical case of Silicon Valley Syndrome - believing that social problems can be solved with technology. Yet, the most successful development projects I know all have a few things in common: they work with people, they work with what's there, and they work in the long term. There is no silver bullet.
- apatters 8y ago
  I don't get the cynicism. The article leads with a concrete example of technology working and producing better outcomes. I have no doubt that having a human coach is a big win and results in better outcomes, if you get a good one. One of the opportunities the tech can present is the ability to augment a good coach so that they can effectively help hundreds more students. I bet some teachers/coaches are bad enough that software without a coach would be superior. One thing the tech industry has proven to be great at is getting users addicted to things, I have to wonder, why aren't we seeing apps that get kids addicted to something they actually learn from? (My best guess is there just isn't enough money in the space to attract the best tech talent.) No disrespect intended to teachers, but a lot of times when they get involved in the discussion they keep going back to "that's why you need to have a good teacher who teaches correctly," and that's completely true, but the problem is, there aren't enough of them, and there may never be. To me it always feels like there's a lot of entrenched and regressive thinking in this discussion, well the reality is that Facebook owns the attention of millions of kids in the developing world now. The educators, the NGOs, etc. already lost the war. The kids are Facebooking instead of doing their homework. These people consistently applied the tech in dumb ways and Facebook won because they were smart. This lesson is a bitter pill but it needs to be swallowed.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

by soneca 8y ago

ivm 8y ago

> I reached the article limit Add Outline.com/ before the URL, like: https://outline.com/https://www.economist.com/international/2018/11/17/in-poor-countries-technology-can-make-big-improvements-to-education https://outline.com/https://www.economist.com/international/...

asianthrowaway 8y ago
Incognito mode works too
- ivm 8y ago
  Not in Chrome for some reason but Safari's private windows always work for me on Economist.com.
  - asianthrowaway 8y ago
    Works for me in Chrome. I assume it's cookie based, so it should work? I noticed that Chrome incognito keeps cookies until all incognito tabs are closed, so maybe close them, open a new incognito session and then reopen the page.
    - ivm 8y ago
      I've sent some Economist's articles to friends before and it detected Chrome's incognito both on Mac and Windows despite no other opened incognito tabs. Not sure how they do it but I assumed that Chrome has a "leaky" private mode.
soneca 8y ago
Thanks!

collyw 8y ago

Technology was blackboards black in my day and it wasn't that long ago.

simion314 8y ago

I agree with you, I would also add that parents are also as important, children with parents that get involved in homeworks and other educative tasks (like watching documentaries, stimulating critical thinking) have better results. If someone thinks that education is the teacher job and parents should not do anything I disagree, at least not in regular schools where a teacher could have up to 25 students in a classroom.

veddox 8y ago
Only in all too many schools here, many parents cannot read and teachers have up to 60 kids in a class...
- simion314 8y ago
  That is hard, but it is a start, my education was better then my parents and their education was better then their parents. I have no words when I think at a teacher with 60 students, this must be so exhausting.

Nasrudith 8y ago

I had a power outage last night that really had me appreciate one aspect of technology we have taken for granted - power. I can certainly see how electrification can boost children's grades - they can read and do homework at night when their days may be dedicated to farmwork after school. From what I read that sort of labor is essential given some horrifying unintended consequences like banning child labor too early for their economic development apparently resulting in increases in child prostitution (correlation isn't causation). I haven't spent time in the third world but I think it is safe to say the technology that does them the most good is infrastructure whether it is ancient like sewers or new like cellphone first deployment. I think tablets are largely something for the far end of the bell curve - good for autodidacts who would seek out new things when given the means. Most people don't spend their frer time say looking up obscure history and quantum physics but those who do can be enriched by it. There are smart people everywhere - I had a professor who grew up in the third world and disassembled and reassembled electronics from a young age. My deceased grandfather had a middle school education but sure could learn - despite working as a plasterer he managed to learn quite a bit of completely unrelated trades untaught, perspective in wood art, and write an eloquent sermon about his time in the Pacific theater when he accidentally made a more generous than expected donation in the dark - giving a $20 bill which is about $300 today and worth even more to the natives. It would have fit in as a chapter of a quality novel perectly.

soneca 8y ago
Yes, eletricity is essential. By "technology" I was refearing mostly to computers/tablets/phones in the classroom. Also, not all _"third world"_ are equal. Brazil, Senegal and India, to take three semi-random examples, are very different in its structure. And inside a country, there is also a lot of inequality. I am from Brazil and got basically the best education money can buy (excluding fancy, elitist schools for millionaires).
- smokeyj 8y ago
  > I am from Brazil and got basically the best education money can buy So maybe you're not the best qualified to determine what works best for the poor? Have you ever been 1 of 40 students with a text book that is falling apart, with kids fighting in the class room, with a teacher who doesn't give a shit? What's easier, buying a $100 tablet, or turning a school around? The idea that education won't be revolutionized by technology is willfully ignorant. Kids will put on a virtual reality headset and talk to AI teachers, if someone had the pocket to build it. Kids don't need to go to school. Obedience training needs to end. Poor kids need a way to learn skills that are in demand. Technology is the only way forward, not lining the pockets of NGO employees.

namenotrequired 8y ago

> What seems to make a difference is a prepared and motivated school principal. I work in EdTech in Brazil and can confirm this.

pier25 8y ago

> What seems to make a difference is a prepared and motivated school principal. I work in EdTech in Mexico and I totally agree. What makes a difference are prepared and motivated principals but also teachers, even in expensive private schools which are usually our customers. Technology in the classroom is even negative for younger kids, and for teenagers it generally doesn't make much of a difference over pen and paper unless the teacher understands the benefits of the medium. As someone who has been working in EdTech for a couple of years and was motivated to make learning better, this revelation has been quite demotivating.

dorchadas 8y ago
As a teacher (in America), it's nice to see people recognizing this. Too often I just hear "Oh, tech can do it better" and soforth. It really can't (and often makes kids' abilities worse; see: Calculators) and is best used to support a teacher who knows how to use it and students who know what they're doing (calculators should be used in high school only, after the kid has done most things by hand plenty of times).

always_good 8y ago

Half the article is a "but..." of its subtitle. The title even has "can" in it which makes it non-absolute.

veddox 8y ago

I've hit the same article limit, but my reaction was just the same as yours. Perhaps the rest of the article would have improved my opinion of it, but at the moment it sounds like Yet Another Rich Westerner trying to solve the Third World's problems with technology, plenty of money, and not a clue of what's going on. I've lived in a Third World country in Africa for half of my life and am often astounded by the naivete of some (especially tech-based) development schemes. Recently friends of mine were in contact with a Western philanthropist who donated $10 000 to buy laptops for a village school. He came out twice for a few days, chose the school and had the laptops shipped. The problem? The school he chose didn't have any teacher who knew how to use a computer. The next teacher who did lived ~20km away... But of course the philanthropist ignored every piece of advice given him by the people on the ground, just to become upset when, six months later, he realized that his grand scheme wasn't working out. He is not alone. Projects like these sound fantastic, thought out in a comfortable suburban home in America, but all too often they utterly ignore reality. The reality is that in rural areas here an Internet connection is not something you can take for granted (though this is rapidly improving), electricity is unreliable or completely absent, and an extreme climate and all-permeating dust play havoc with electronics. And that is before you consider social problems like rampant thievery. Education is one of the most important and urgent areas for development, and we do need to do a lot more than we are right now. But to think that computers can magically solve the problems we have is just another typical case of Silicon Valley Syndrome - believing that social problems can be solved with technology. Yet, the most successful development projects I know all have a few things in common: they work with people, they work with what's there, and they work in the long term. There is no silver bullet.

apatters 8y ago
I don't get the cynicism. The article leads with a concrete example of technology working and producing better outcomes. I have no doubt that having a human coach is a big win and results in better outcomes, if you get a good one. One of the opportunities the tech can present is the ability to augment a good coach so that they can effectively help hundreds more students. I bet some teachers/coaches are bad enough that software without a coach would be superior. One thing the tech industry has proven to be great at is getting users addicted to things, I have to wonder, why aren't we seeing apps that get kids addicted to something they actually learn from? (My best guess is there just isn't enough money in the space to attract the best tech talent.) No disrespect intended to teachers, but a lot of times when they get involved in the discussion they keep going back to "that's why you need to have a good teacher who teaches correctly," and that's completely true, but the problem is, there aren't enough of them, and there may never be. To me it always feels like there's a lot of entrenched and regressive thinking in this discussion, well the reality is that Facebook owns the attention of millions of kids in the developing world now. The educators, the NGOs, etc. already lost the war. The kids are Facebooking instead of doing their homework. These people consistently applied the tech in dumb ways and Facebook won because they were smart. This lesson is a bitter pill but it needs to be swallowed.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]