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Worst Ed-Tech Debacles of the Decade

145 points by danso 7y ago

eqvinox 7y ago
#0: the fact that a significant percentage of people, including myself, doesn't have the attention span to read a 100-item list of debacles anymore. (yes that's not Ed-Tech, but it's a huge Ed debacle and possibly Tech related...)
gnicholas 7y ago
The author (Audrey Watters) is a truly great journalist, and her work provides a candid — and harsh, if needed — look at the education world. She's a must-read for anyone working in edtech. EDIT: I found her work on the incestuous world of edtech funding and media (e.g., EdSurge) to be especially illuminating. Because she is not an edtech founder, she was able to point out these relationships/issues without worrying that she was going to anger VCs on whom she might someday seek funding.
- qntmfred 7y ago
  I worked in edtech for many years and read her work regularly for most of those years. At a certain point though she started to feel more like a restaurant critic who took too much pleasure in roasting whoever the latest target was. Did she write a Best Ed-Tech Success Stories of the Decade? Cus that I'd be interested in.
  - oob205 7y ago
    Also worked in edtech for many years and while I understand Audrey got the reputation for saying the negative, someone had to do it. The general media is so uncritically positive (for example of Knewton which was always snake oil). She had to be the voice of reason.
  - gnicholas 7y ago
    She addresses that point, perhaps with more snark than necessary: Oh yes, I’m sure you can come up with some rousing successes and some triumphant moments that made you thrilled about the 2010s and that give you hope for “the future of education.” Good for you. But that’s not my job. (And honestly, it’s probably not your job either.)
  - newguy1234 7y ago
    She is going for point out the snake oil gimmicks that ed tech is known for these days. Most of it seems to be either composed of cash grabs for VC money or some sort of government grant money.
  - pmiller2 7y ago
    Are there any success stories in terms of learning outcomes? If schools are spending millions on this stuff to no benefit for the students, i don’t think that can be called a success.
seattle_spring 7y ago
While I understand I only met a small fraction of the people trying to "disrupt" education, my experience with Ed-Tech was that the absolute wrong people were behind it. I interviewed at Coursera in 2012, and much of the interview focused on my academic background. Every round I'd sit down with an interviewer and they'd look at my transcript and say, "hmm what happened here!?" as they would point to my C+, the only grade that was below a B on an overall 3.7GPA history. Every one of them had a Stanford-or-similar background. The juxtaposition of cliche-academics telling me they were disrupting academia was really something to behold.
- duxup 7y ago
  > "hmm what happened here!?" as they would point to my C+ Man that would be an instant turn off for me. Having said that I'm unlikely to end up in a room with folks who would say something like that anyway, mostly because I wouldn't make it past the resume filter... for good reason, and a good outcome for everyone involved probabbly.
  - hinkley 7y ago
    Which is weird. Because as GP inpugned, how are a bunch of hyper-conventional learners going to 'disrupt' education? We have a lot of people who haven't been served by the current educational system. Wouldn't you rather hire people who did poorly in school and yet were still very successful in their careers and find out what they know?
    - duxup 7y ago
      Yeah I would seriously wonder how focusing on a staff of excelent ... but traditional learning types could change much. I was a terrible college student and worked my way through PC support drone, some proprietary mainframe networking stuff, traditional networking, data center networking...to web development. That and sometimes the folks who really just grok something...are terrible at teaching and advice. I'm really wary when highly successful traditional learners tell me how or even what to learn, not because I think they're wrong, but their path is likely not best for me.
swiley 7y ago
Ed tech is mostly a set of tools for administers and banks to get between teachers and students. Often they charge the students (or their parents) for it too! Anything more than sftp, a spreadsheet calculator a pdf reader and something to do basic word processing with is probably ”Ed tech” you don’t want.
adpirz 7y ago
Overall, I agree that the promise of tech in education never manifested, or at least hasn't yet, and the last decade was full of half-baked or poorly conceived ideas. But I'm worried there's some baby in that bathwater... I started my career in K-12 education, first in the classroom, then as an administrator, and thanks to a coding bootcamp, am happily pursuing another career as a software developer. I have plenty of friends who've done the same. Will it be a long-lasting model? I don't know, some are clearly already out of business (the one I did, Hack Reactor, is still going though). But it may be the first wave of upending having to spend six figures on accreditation / skill acquisition. And while a lot of the flipped / personalized tools never panned out specifically, a lot of the concepts were helpful in bringing in new structures to instruction. The ideas helped us move away from simply "I do, we do, you do" lessons to units where students could get some material up front and then do more exploratory or self guided lessons, and teachers could work with individual students who needed attention. Education needs innovation. Instructionally, the major changes won't come from software but from restructuring how school operates at different grade levels. Given the different needs of 7th graders from 3rd graders, it's interesting that their days are still structured so similarly, not to mention that we're still not really developing skills that are useful for the kinds of jobs that exist today. That said, there is a place where there's a desperate need for high quality software in education: operations. Follow a school office manager for a day and you'll see exactly what I mean. The number of systems that are still either paper-based or involve manual processes that can quickly be automated are incredible. As with any public enterprise, there are lots of reasons that these systems haven't been updated, but streamlining operations for schools will actually make much bigger impacts for student outcomes than almost all the edtech software out there.
- jkhaui 7y ago
  As someone who is heavily interested in the EdTech space (I've had the unfortunate luck of being a student for far too long and experienced how woefully inadequate the education system is), I was thinking pretty much the same sentiments. Initially, I agreed with most of the failures Audrey listed. Though I started wondering if such a lengthy list could be sustained, and lo and behold, about halfway through the article I sensed a large drop in quality, with the author seeming more focused on rhetoric and being "right about others being wrong" instead of providing an objective and insightful perspective. Some examples: #52. Virtual Reality - I think her gripe is with VR being hyped too early, but from her writing, it sounds like she thinks the entire field is already dead and buried for education. Which would be ridiculous. The friction with VR right now is the technology; it is too physically limiting for the benefits > the cost of change. For anyone with an open mind who has tried VR, however, I think it's obvious that it will be the future in some shape or form. Whether it's this decade, or the next, or in 2040 who knows but dismissing an entire field like this really reduced the author's credibility in my eyes. #49. Yik Yak - Never used it myself, but from what I've heard it was anything BUT an ed-tech app..?! It's listed as a defunct social media and chat app... Guess the author was clutching at straws here. #48, #38, #6, etc. - Author seems to have a completely unjustified pessimism toward any sort of coding that isn't related to the traditional CS pathway. I can only speak for myself, but as someone who made poor decisions out of high school and is now a (pretty decent) self-taught developer, I find the author's conclusions totally wrong. Learning to code was the single good adult decision I've made - I've found a lasting passion, and I can make positive contributions to society. Without it, I'd still be sitting around depressed all day. #25. Thiel Foundation - FWIW, I'm not a fan of Thiel at all but I do agree that we are in a college bubble. Audrey's snarky comment "Here’s one look at what some of the past Thiel Fellowship recipients are up to. Yawn" seems totally unjustified here. I haven't been through the list, but IIRC Vitalik Buterin (creator of Ethereum) was a recipient of the Thiel Foundation. Regardless what you think of crypto, Ethereum has had an enormous impact on the blockchain landscape. Whether or not Eth itself is successful, it's unjustified to write it off as "meh" if only for the downstream effect it has on other areas of innovation. I think money is a terrible indicator of "success", but if we're going down that route, Eth currently has a market cap of $14.5 mil+, which would make Thiel's investment a good one (though I don't believe he had a stake). #13. Blockchain Anything - It's sad to see the author's piece decline from what were some really valuable insights earlier in the article down to this Buzzfeed-esque drivel again dismissing an entire field. I'm not saying blockchain will or won't be successful. However, for any new & poorly understood technology, it's easy to just google "reasons why technology X sucks", link to the first 5 articles, and win over readers who don't know better. Again - it's a shame the author appeared desparate for filler material as the list grew longer. It's particularly a disservice to herself because she made some great points at times. Adopting a more balanced tone would have been desirable. This way it'd be clearer to see that EdTech really does have huge potential for an industry that desparately needs a total remake; it's just been executed very poorly for the most part. P.S. Lol at the author downplaying the impact of YouTube on EdTech. I'm not a huge fan but half the material for my course these days are links to YouTube videos. There is a slow but clear shift to tertiary education that is 100% online.
duxup 7y ago
It's interesting to read some of the companies and initiatives (ignoring the story lines) and see how many seem to be linked to a sort of random pitch or anecdote that ... solves nothing ... or if it does is hardly the basis for a business or changing any given approach. Meanwhile traditional educational research continues, but doesn't get the same attention / doesn't turn into an online product.
- lazyasciiart 7y ago
  If you're just skimming the titles, you should know that occasionally the title is not actually the bad thing, it's something about/from/done with that thing: e.g 32 "Common Core State Standards" isn't saying the standards are bad, but the rollout of them.
pg_bot 7y ago
Instead of buying more/better equipment, teachers, or technology why hasn't anyone tried to buy a better student? I'm fairly certain that if you paid elementary students cash for better grades you would see a huge jump in achievement for the average student. A small amount of money to us feels like a huge amount to a kid, and there are plenty of studies showing that rewards increase performance for basic and mechanical skills.
- kilroy_jones 7y ago
  The question then becomes is that the type of student you want to create? Any elementary school teacher who frequently rewards students with candy can tell you horror stories of what this sort of system leads to. Every task becomes a bargain of 'what will I get for doing this?' as opposed to building an innate desire to learn. Education is broken, but going this route won't fix much. Fixing standardized tests, or scrapping them, along with eliminating things like the SAT would go a long ways is creating better learners, instead of better test takers.
  - naniwaduni 7y ago
    You just need to bootstrap the learning far enough for them to see the big picture where the learning provides concrete value to the student! ... you'd also need that last bit to be true.
- sethammons 7y ago
  On mobile and wouldn't be sure where to find it anyway, but this has been done! It turned out that the proximity of the reward was critical. A cash prize for a end of unit grade had nearly no effect, while an immediate cash prize tied to, say, a daily quiz showed some decent effect on the particular quiz/assignment. The take away from the study was that shorter feedback loops are important. Questions were also raised on intrinsic vs extrinsic motivators.
- rsanek 7y ago
  Punished by Rewards [0] examines some of the downsides with this approach. [0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/541132.Punished_by_Rewards https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/541132.Punished_by_Rewar...
lazyasciiart 7y ago
66. "Someone made an educational video game called “Slave Trade”." Wow.
loteck 7y ago
Glad to see LA Unified's iPad disaster as #8 on the list. Tablets in general have been a... fiasco? disaster? Catastrophe? Especially for younger learners.
- newguy1234 7y ago
  Tablet is useful but the problem is there is not enough ed tech software out there that really takes advantage of its potential. Best use I've seen is interactive kid's reading books. Teaches the kid to learn how to read and makes it fun.
brians 7y ago
What’s worked in Ed-tech—ever? Bank street writer. It kept nascent computer classes from killing typing and made grading so much easier, saving the writing careers of many with poor handwriting. Logo: tens of millions of people have a lever to learn functional abstraction from “repeat 360 [fd 1 rt 1]” Project Athena. Frankly, I still want that ability to log in anywhere and have my setup ready to go. Project Andrew, too! 1:1 programs. For all the reasons we want a workstation per engineer, a workstation per student makes a qualitative difference in how it can be used. Wikipedia. It’s safe for my children to use unsupervised and amazingly comprehensive. What else?
- unreal37 7y ago
  I'd say Lynda.com was hugely successful. Or is that not considered Ed-Tech?
  - ghaff 7y ago
    I suspect vocational training is considered old hat and boring. I get Lynda through my company and it can be pretty good. But it's not really that different from the sort of online training courses I've had access to in one form or another for ages.
    - newguy1234 7y ago
      Lynda became successful because companies gave it to their employees to boost up their skills...which I think might be an untapped potential market for ed tech. How about making very high quality courses that aren't sold to students. They're sold to companies which in turn make their employees take the courses and so on.
      - ghaff 7y ago
        A lot of these companies are realizing that is the market. A lot of companies put a lot of money into their internal ed programs and, in the scheme of things, adding some more general purpose ed to flesh out their offerings is cheap. Getting an employee or hobbyist to pay even $100 of their own money for a course. Or making them jump through reimbursement hoops? Not so much. Actually reminds me I should map out some Lynda courses to take in the new year.
crazygringo 7y ago
I spent years working in ed-tech, at more than one company on this list, and know people at many others. There were two overarching lessons I took from my experience. The first is that a successful educational product needs to deeply and intimately understand pedagogy and materials -- teaching and learning techniques and how they vary between students, and what kinds of materials are suitable -- deeply, I mean like at a postdoc level. I've seen so many products fail because the engineers and designers didn't have the slightest idea how students actually learn, think that algorithms could make up for crappy materials, or have zero understanding of what teachers actually do. And creating good teaching materials with good pedagogy is very expensive. You have to hire educational+domain experts. They don't come cheap. There just aren't that many people who can clearly explain complex concepts gradually, relatably, and accurately in a simple manner. For some reason, because we all went to school, so many of us think we understand teaching and learning. It's pretty humbling to discover you don't at all. The second lesson is that education software isn't sold to the kind of market you're probably familiar with. It's not bought by consumers, or even the kinds of enterprises you might be familiar with. It's bought by school districts (or universities), each of whom have incredibly extensive needs for customization -- for interoperability, for the curriculum, for whatever -- and each of whom expect to be given lots of individual attention for a long time before they sign. Your company will be primarily salespeople, not engineers. But because there is a ton of money in EDU, you actually only need a handful of school districts or universities to sustain your company. Which then turns into a problem, because it means everyone is using different products, and so much is custom-built. So standards and interoperability don't emerge -- or when they do, they're just, well, really bad. It's a complicated space. The only other space that feels similarly insanely complicated to me is healthcare.
- fouc 7y ago
  In my opinion.. Ed-tech will never truly be successful if it is B2B and focused on teaching. The real problem to be solved is LEARNING. The goals of teaching and learning are not the same. Focusing on efficient learning means getting away from outdated methodology like tests, long-winded lectures, and more.
  - 7y ago
jcranmer 7y ago
The interactive whiteboard story I have: My school system decided to introduce those interactive whiteboards into every classroom. Including the computer room. Where all the computers ran Linux or Solaris [1], which operating systems the software couldn't support. Without the computer to run it on, those things are worse than regular whiteboards since you can't even draw on them with real markers. [1] Sun had yet to be bought by Oracle at that time.
jshaqaw 7y ago
I agree that smart boards are a joke. They suck down scarce dollars and add de minimis educational value. Then they break and become really really expensive whiteboards.
throw7 7y ago
Honestly, I just briefly skimmed the list. I thought OLPC was too low and there was some politics thrown in there at the top... anyway... Personally, the greatest ed-tech was when my parents bought me a C-128 which came with thick manuals, one of which was a Commodore BASIC programming manual. IMHO, education is throwing a wide and open experience to a kid and guiding and helping them learn to learn. Everyone is different in what they like and enjoy, and that's a very good thing.
gnicholas 7y ago
> 85. The Teacher Influencer Hustle This. I've been pitched by teacher-influencers and librarian-influencers who want to do sponsored posts about my edtech startup. Such posts are generally not marked as sponsored, and I have always declined their offers. I understand teachers need to make ends meet (my wife, mother, and grandmother work/worked in education), but that doesn't justify this sort of business practice. It's unethical and also pretty clearly illegal per FTC regulations.
impendia 7y ago
As a university professor, I'm struck at how few of these I've heard of -- and, of those which I've heard of, how little I care. I just don't feel like I have problems which I'm itching to have solved by technology. As an example of this, I've graded thousands of calculus exams in my career. It's time consuming, it's painful, and it's unpleasant. But it's also inevitable. Looking at my students' work, engaging with their mistakes, seeing what they do and don't understand -- helps to build the connection between myself and my students, helps me understand what is going on in my classroom. You can't automate that away.
- newguy1234 7y ago
  Khan Academy already automated that. I know their math curriculum is pretty decent. https://www.khanacademy.org/math/ap-calculus-ab https://www.khanacademy.org/math/ap-calculus-ab
  - a_geeky_bro 7y ago
    Did you even read OP's comment? They specifically mentioned the need to engage with students' work to survey their (mis)understandings. The link you posted to Khan does not automate that delicate balance between teacher and student. It's a bunch of videos of Khan describing the Chain Rule. The "practice" sections are mundane - multiple choice questions or fill in the blanks. You simply cannot (as an educator) see the (mis)understandings of students like this. You need to pour over their work. Take note of where patterns occur and address them next class. Iterative. Do you honestly think Khan has "automated" that? This thread is full of asinine comments like yours that demonstrate just how much people in tech _don't_ understand what it's like to teach. Hence the original link to 100 fuck ups by engineers, product people, and VCs.
axbytg 7y ago
The author seems to miss the boat super hard on > 6. "Everyone Should Learn to Code" Her argument seems to be that teaching more kids to code, will result in more people ending up in a toxic tech industry. This may be true. But the tech industry will never, ever change until we expose more kids to engineering as a choice. If we can cause a greater number and diversity of children and young adults to consider engineering as a career, the industry will be more diverse. this seems like a bit of a no-brainer. Also the reaction to the Hour of Code makes me question whether or not the author has every lead or observed one in a meaningful way. Having led literally hundreds, almost every single one that I was involved with resulted in at least one student saying "I didn't think that this was for me / for people like me, but I really liked it". That makes it worth it. Hearing that one single time, makes every single HoC ever worth it in my opinion. I know a lot of teachers that would agree. Nobody on earth thinks kids are making significant progress towards mastery of programming from an hour of code -- it's about exposing every child and letting them know that they are capable of a career that is often, for a variety of reasons, seen as "not for them".
- jkhaui 7y ago
  Completely agree. The author glosses over the fact that half of coding is just pattern recognition derived from seeing something written a certain way many, many, many times over. It's not far-fetched to consider that exposing kids to an hour of code daily could make transitioning to a programming career much more feasible in their later life (whereas without this exposure, programming might seem like untouchable black magic). Heck, I think the reason my own transition to being a dev was relatively smooth is because I was obsessed making HTML websites as a kid. Despite not touching it for ~15 years, even that exposure proved invaluable in picking up the skills relatively fast
  - geomark 7y ago
    I think it is broader than that. Maybe it is becoming a cliche already, but I think being able to code is a new literacy that everyone should learn even if they are not going to become software engineers or computer scientists. It's just such a useful skill now and more so in the future. I think the author doesn't get that.
HarryHirsch 7y ago
animations and lessons about “growth mindsets,” “grit,” and “mindfulness.” Dear God. We have growth mindset and grit here at this regional institution. There are students who take General Chemistry 1 (read: 10-th grade chemistry) three times with three different instructors, everyone with a different teaching philosophy, and they still don't give up. Wow. That's some grit there. This time they failed, but they can always pay more tuition, and try again. Now if their schoolteachers actually exposed them to difficult material and let them experience that with some effort they could overcome those difficulties, that would foster "growth mindset" and "grit". But instead the students want solution strategies and problem classification that takes away all the joy of discovery, and their teachers indulge them. Once I got bad student evaluation for handing out word problems with more than one step and having them figure out the solution themselves. The poor things. We'll have to wait for different teachers and especially different students.
- userbinator 7y ago
  I've been a CS course instructor and you brought up a great point. There is always a balance between not to discourage students who could achieve, and the reality that there are those would be much better off doing something they can actually succeed in and feel much better about themselves as a result, instead of repeatedly trying and failing. I stopped teaching a while ago but I heard that this has become more prevalent ever since the "everyone can code" propaganda.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- graigp 7y ago
  “Grit” as its own solution strategy / problem classification in the context you describe seems masochism-adjacent. Current paradigm for students: joy of discovery < joy of submission.
mncharity 7y ago
Off topic, but... Does anyone know of a community exploring transformative improvements in science education content? Perhaps discussing topics like: Using pre-K content to inoculate against misconceptions, instead of engendering them.[1] Using industry-derived orthogonal sets of adjectives for describing perceptual properties of materials, instead of the usual adhocery. Rough quantitative description. Teaching scale down to atoms in early primary. Teaching atoms emphasizing quasi-classical nuclei balls, instead of wacky electrons. Atoms-up introduction to materials, and nanoscale emergence of bulk properties. Rough-quantitative introductory biology... in primary. The Sun is too hot, deep space is too cold, and the Earth is doing a BBQ roll between them (the space and roll bits are generally neglected). Discussions bottlenecked as much on science expertise as educational expertise. In some sense it's unhelpful discussion. Many ideas are currently undeployable, or their value is uninterestingly limited without the synergy of implausible dependencies. But personalized AR education seemingly has the potential to alter the constraint space. With a lot of work to be done, if it isn't to be merely "the usual wretchedness, now in AR". [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ud1Q_q4f-hQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ud1Q_q4f-hQ
mettamage 7y ago
One time offer here (@dang and co, if it isn’t relevant enough my apologies): I am for hire in the ed-tech space. My background as a teacher+psychology / programmer+cs hybrid is highly relevant. My focus is on people who want to learn at university and coding bootcamp level. My profile has a bit more (perhaps outdated) info. I will be reading this topic intently for side project idea inspiration.
iruby 7y ago
It’s truly fascinating how people quickly join echo chambers and often neglect thinking critically about the opinions they propagate. In computer programming, as an example, 1970s and 80s research points to many problems and dangers of wishful thinking guiding the inclusion of programming on early stages of the school curriculum. To this day, many efforts bypass these alerts and focus on engagement rather than learning or facilitating learning - while claiming benefits in learning
- geomark 7y ago
  I'd like to hear more about dangers of including programming in early stages. Can you comment or link to something about it?
  - mandukya 7y ago
    I think he’s talking about forever-newbie / perpetual rookie syndrome.
dhruvp 7y ago
This article does point out a lot of things that have failed this decade - all fair points. But in focusing on failures it fails to capture that casual education (not formal, school education) has fundamentally shifted this decade. Today, I can learn almost anything I want for free on the internet. - I can get a world class mathematical education from 3Blue1Brown (seriously this guy's videos are just out of this world good). - I can get incredible guitar lessons on any song I want from youtube (I've taught myself guitar this year through it!). - I can find scores of language education podcasts to help me learn Spanish (I use coffee break spanish). - I can get world class SAT prep from Khan Academy (for free!). - I can get awesome yoga classes online for free (did this also this year). Seriously the wealth and quality of information available to us today is insane - it's the Library of Alexandria a search bar away. As someone who enjoys learning, there's no way I would ever go back 10 years in time.
- sireat 7y ago
  How do you decide which of the free resources are authorative? Maybe you learn some bad habits from that popular youtube video? * Case in point there is a popular ML guy on youtube who is also considered a bit of a hack. * When Khan was starting out some of his original videos were also critiqued when they were out of his area of expertise. * My friend learned Spanish from a teacher from Basque area. He has an intriguing accent now... * There are zillion Python videos on Youtube and many are not quite good. The problem was pointed out in 1970 Future Shock by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alvin_Toffler https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alvin_Toffler . It is much easier to spend time choosing an authoritative educational institution(online or offline) than individually choosing each teacher. You let the school do the curating for you. There will be bad teachers even at good schools but your meta cognitive load is lessened. PS I am a bit biased since I teach at various non-profit and profit institutions (I also stream on youtube but privately)
king_magic 7y ago
I spent several years working on one of the top-10 issues in that list. I won’t go into detail, but suffice it to say: the responsible party deserved every bit of criticism that came it’s way.
shafyy 7y ago
I don't understand, what's the point of writing such an article? It doesn't seem to add any value, it might even contribute negative value with spreading cynism and pessimism. A lot of things have been tried in education, and although some of them were probably just people trying to make a quick buck, I believe that most of them did it to genuinely improve something for others.
- billsmithaustin 7y ago
  That was my reaction too. Is there a different market where the ratio of bad ideas to good ideas is better than in education?
MCablestudent 7y ago
The focus should be to find a proven curriculum that fits the Ed-Tech format and experienced educators to adapted it.

145 points by danso 7y ago

#0: the fact that a significant percentage of people, including myself, doesn't have the attention span to read a 100-item list of debacles anymore. (yes that's not Ed-Tech, but it's a huge Ed debacle and possibly Tech related...)

gnicholas 7y ago

The author (Audrey Watters) is a truly great journalist, and her work provides a candid — and harsh, if needed — look at the education world. She's a must-read for anyone working in edtech. EDIT: I found her work on the incestuous world of edtech funding and media (e.g., EdSurge) to be especially illuminating. Because she is not an edtech founder, she was able to point out these relationships/issues without worrying that she was going to anger VCs on whom she might someday seek funding.

qntmfred 7y ago
I worked in edtech for many years and read her work regularly for most of those years. At a certain point though she started to feel more like a restaurant critic who took too much pleasure in roasting whoever the latest target was. Did she write a Best Ed-Tech Success Stories of the Decade? Cus that I'd be interested in.
- oob205 7y ago
  Also worked in edtech for many years and while I understand Audrey got the reputation for saying the negative, someone had to do it. The general media is so uncritically positive (for example of Knewton which was always snake oil). She had to be the voice of reason.
- gnicholas 7y ago
  She addresses that point, perhaps with more snark than necessary: Oh yes, I’m sure you can come up with some rousing successes and some triumphant moments that made you thrilled about the 2010s and that give you hope for “the future of education.” Good for you. But that’s not my job. (And honestly, it’s probably not your job either.)
- newguy1234 7y ago
  She is going for point out the snake oil gimmicks that ed tech is known for these days. Most of it seems to be either composed of cash grabs for VC money or some sort of government grant money.
- pmiller2 7y ago
  Are there any success stories in terms of learning outcomes? If schools are spending millions on this stuff to no benefit for the students, i don’t think that can be called a success.

seattle_spring 7y ago

While I understand I only met a small fraction of the people trying to "disrupt" education, my experience with Ed-Tech was that the absolute wrong people were behind it. I interviewed at Coursera in 2012, and much of the interview focused on my academic background. Every round I'd sit down with an interviewer and they'd look at my transcript and say, "hmm what happened here!?" as they would point to my C+, the only grade that was below a B on an overall 3.7GPA history. Every one of them had a Stanford-or-similar background. The juxtaposition of cliche-academics telling me they were disrupting academia was really something to behold.

duxup 7y ago
> "hmm what happened here!?" as they would point to my C+ Man that would be an instant turn off for me. Having said that I'm unlikely to end up in a room with folks who would say something like that anyway, mostly because I wouldn't make it past the resume filter... for good reason, and a good outcome for everyone involved probabbly.
- hinkley 7y ago
  Which is weird. Because as GP inpugned, how are a bunch of hyper-conventional learners going to 'disrupt' education? We have a lot of people who haven't been served by the current educational system. Wouldn't you rather hire people who did poorly in school and yet were still very successful in their careers and find out what they know?
  - duxup 7y ago
    Yeah I would seriously wonder how focusing on a staff of excelent ... but traditional learning types could change much. I was a terrible college student and worked my way through PC support drone, some proprietary mainframe networking stuff, traditional networking, data center networking...to web development. That and sometimes the folks who really just grok something...are terrible at teaching and advice. I'm really wary when highly successful traditional learners tell me how or even what to learn, not because I think they're wrong, but their path is likely not best for me.

swiley 7y ago

Ed tech is mostly a set of tools for administers and banks to get between teachers and students. Often they charge the students (or their parents) for it too! Anything more than sftp, a spreadsheet calculator a pdf reader and something to do basic word processing with is probably ”Ed tech” you don’t want.

adpirz 7y ago

Overall, I agree that the promise of tech in education never manifested, or at least hasn't yet, and the last decade was full of half-baked or poorly conceived ideas. But I'm worried there's some baby in that bathwater... I started my career in K-12 education, first in the classroom, then as an administrator, and thanks to a coding bootcamp, am happily pursuing another career as a software developer. I have plenty of friends who've done the same. Will it be a long-lasting model? I don't know, some are clearly already out of business (the one I did, Hack Reactor, is still going though). But it may be the first wave of upending having to spend six figures on accreditation / skill acquisition. And while a lot of the flipped / personalized tools never panned out specifically, a lot of the concepts were helpful in bringing in new structures to instruction. The ideas helped us move away from simply "I do, we do, you do" lessons to units where students could get some material up front and then do more exploratory or self guided lessons, and teachers could work with individual students who needed attention. Education needs innovation. Instructionally, the major changes won't come from software but from restructuring how school operates at different grade levels. Given the different needs of 7th graders from 3rd graders, it's interesting that their days are still structured so similarly, not to mention that we're still not really developing skills that are useful for the kinds of jobs that exist today. That said, there is a place where there's a desperate need for high quality software in education: operations. Follow a school office manager for a day and you'll see exactly what I mean. The number of systems that are still either paper-based or involve manual processes that can quickly be automated are incredible. As with any public enterprise, there are lots of reasons that these systems haven't been updated, but streamlining operations for schools will actually make much bigger impacts for student outcomes than almost all the edtech software out there.

jkhaui 7y ago
As someone who is heavily interested in the EdTech space (I've had the unfortunate luck of being a student for far too long and experienced how woefully inadequate the education system is), I was thinking pretty much the same sentiments. Initially, I agreed with most of the failures Audrey listed. Though I started wondering if such a lengthy list could be sustained, and lo and behold, about halfway through the article I sensed a large drop in quality, with the author seeming more focused on rhetoric and being "right about others being wrong" instead of providing an objective and insightful perspective. Some examples: #52. Virtual Reality - I think her gripe is with VR being hyped too early, but from her writing, it sounds like she thinks the entire field is already dead and buried for education. Which would be ridiculous. The friction with VR right now is the technology; it is too physically limiting for the benefits > the cost of change. For anyone with an open mind who has tried VR, however, I think it's obvious that it will be the future in some shape or form. Whether it's this decade, or the next, or in 2040 who knows but dismissing an entire field like this really reduced the author's credibility in my eyes. #49. Yik Yak - Never used it myself, but from what I've heard it was anything BUT an ed-tech app..?! It's listed as a defunct social media and chat app... Guess the author was clutching at straws here. #48, #38, #6, etc. - Author seems to have a completely unjustified pessimism toward any sort of coding that isn't related to the traditional CS pathway. I can only speak for myself, but as someone who made poor decisions out of high school and is now a (pretty decent) self-taught developer, I find the author's conclusions totally wrong. Learning to code was the single good adult decision I've made - I've found a lasting passion, and I can make positive contributions to society. Without it, I'd still be sitting around depressed all day. #25. Thiel Foundation - FWIW, I'm not a fan of Thiel at all but I do agree that we are in a college bubble. Audrey's snarky comment "Here’s one look at what some of the past Thiel Fellowship recipients are up to. Yawn" seems totally unjustified here. I haven't been through the list, but IIRC Vitalik Buterin (creator of Ethereum) was a recipient of the Thiel Foundation. Regardless what you think of crypto, Ethereum has had an enormous impact on the blockchain landscape. Whether or not Eth itself is successful, it's unjustified to write it off as "meh" if only for the downstream effect it has on other areas of innovation. I think money is a terrible indicator of "success", but if we're going down that route, Eth currently has a market cap of $14.5 mil+, which would make Thiel's investment a good one (though I don't believe he had a stake). #13. Blockchain Anything - It's sad to see the author's piece decline from what were some really valuable insights earlier in the article down to this Buzzfeed-esque drivel again dismissing an entire field. I'm not saying blockchain will or won't be successful. However, for any new & poorly understood technology, it's easy to just google "reasons why technology X sucks", link to the first 5 articles, and win over readers who don't know better. Again - it's a shame the author appeared desparate for filler material as the list grew longer. It's particularly a disservice to herself because she made some great points at times. Adopting a more balanced tone would have been desirable. This way it'd be clearer to see that EdTech really does have huge potential for an industry that desparately needs a total remake; it's just been executed very poorly for the most part. P.S. Lol at the author downplaying the impact of YouTube on EdTech. I'm not a huge fan but half the material for my course these days are links to YouTube videos. There is a slow but clear shift to tertiary education that is 100% online.

duxup 7y ago

It's interesting to read some of the companies and initiatives (ignoring the story lines) and see how many seem to be linked to a sort of random pitch or anecdote that ... solves nothing ... or if it does is hardly the basis for a business or changing any given approach. Meanwhile traditional educational research continues, but doesn't get the same attention / doesn't turn into an online product.

lazyasciiart 7y ago
If you're just skimming the titles, you should know that occasionally the title is not actually the bad thing, it's something about/from/done with that thing: e.g 32 "Common Core State Standards" isn't saying the standards are bad, but the rollout of them.

pg_bot 7y ago

Instead of buying more/better equipment, teachers, or technology why hasn't anyone tried to buy a better student? I'm fairly certain that if you paid elementary students cash for better grades you would see a huge jump in achievement for the average student. A small amount of money to us feels like a huge amount to a kid, and there are plenty of studies showing that rewards increase performance for basic and mechanical skills.

kilroy_jones 7y ago
The question then becomes is that the type of student you want to create? Any elementary school teacher who frequently rewards students with candy can tell you horror stories of what this sort of system leads to. Every task becomes a bargain of 'what will I get for doing this?' as opposed to building an innate desire to learn. Education is broken, but going this route won't fix much. Fixing standardized tests, or scrapping them, along with eliminating things like the SAT would go a long ways is creating better learners, instead of better test takers.
- naniwaduni 7y ago
  You just need to bootstrap the learning far enough for them to see the big picture where the learning provides concrete value to the student! ... you'd also need that last bit to be true.
sethammons 7y ago
On mobile and wouldn't be sure where to find it anyway, but this has been done! It turned out that the proximity of the reward was critical. A cash prize for a end of unit grade had nearly no effect, while an immediate cash prize tied to, say, a daily quiz showed some decent effect on the particular quiz/assignment. The take away from the study was that shorter feedback loops are important. Questions were also raised on intrinsic vs extrinsic motivators.
rsanek 7y ago
Punished by Rewards [0] examines some of the downsides with this approach. [0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/541132.Punished_by_Rewards https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/541132.Punished_by_Rewar...

lazyasciiart 7y ago

66. "Someone made an educational video game called “Slave Trade”." Wow.

loteck 7y ago

Glad to see LA Unified's iPad disaster as #8 on the list. Tablets in general have been a... fiasco? disaster? Catastrophe? Especially for younger learners.

newguy1234 7y ago
Tablet is useful but the problem is there is not enough ed tech software out there that really takes advantage of its potential. Best use I've seen is interactive kid's reading books. Teaches the kid to learn how to read and makes it fun.

brians 7y ago

What’s worked in Ed-tech—ever? Bank street writer. It kept nascent computer classes from killing typing and made grading so much easier, saving the writing careers of many with poor handwriting. Logo: tens of millions of people have a lever to learn functional abstraction from “repeat 360 [fd 1 rt 1]” Project Athena. Frankly, I still want that ability to log in anywhere and have my setup ready to go. Project Andrew, too! 1:1 programs. For all the reasons we want a workstation per engineer, a workstation per student makes a qualitative difference in how it can be used. Wikipedia. It’s safe for my children to use unsupervised and amazingly comprehensive. What else?

unreal37 7y ago
I'd say Lynda.com was hugely successful. Or is that not considered Ed-Tech?
- ghaff 7y ago
  I suspect vocational training is considered old hat and boring. I get Lynda through my company and it can be pretty good. But it's not really that different from the sort of online training courses I've had access to in one form or another for ages.
  - newguy1234 7y ago
    Lynda became successful because companies gave it to their employees to boost up their skills...which I think might be an untapped potential market for ed tech. How about making very high quality courses that aren't sold to students. They're sold to companies which in turn make their employees take the courses and so on.
    - ghaff 7y ago
      A lot of these companies are realizing that is the market. A lot of companies put a lot of money into their internal ed programs and, in the scheme of things, adding some more general purpose ed to flesh out their offerings is cheap. Getting an employee or hobbyist to pay even $100 of their own money for a course. Or making them jump through reimbursement hoops? Not so much. Actually reminds me I should map out some Lynda courses to take in the new year.

crazygringo 7y ago

I spent years working in ed-tech, at more than one company on this list, and know people at many others. There were two overarching lessons I took from my experience. The first is that a successful educational product needs to deeply and intimately understand pedagogy and materials -- teaching and learning techniques and how they vary between students, and what kinds of materials are suitable -- deeply, I mean like at a postdoc level. I've seen so many products fail because the engineers and designers didn't have the slightest idea how students actually learn, think that algorithms could make up for crappy materials, or have zero understanding of what teachers actually do. And creating good teaching materials with good pedagogy is very expensive. You have to hire educational+domain experts. They don't come cheap. There just aren't that many people who can clearly explain complex concepts gradually, relatably, and accurately in a simple manner. For some reason, because we all went to school, so many of us think we understand teaching and learning. It's pretty humbling to discover you don't at all. The second lesson is that education software isn't sold to the kind of market you're probably familiar with. It's not bought by consumers, or even the kinds of enterprises you might be familiar with. It's bought by school districts (or universities), each of whom have incredibly extensive needs for customization -- for interoperability, for the curriculum, for whatever -- and each of whom expect to be given lots of individual attention for a long time before they sign. Your company will be primarily salespeople, not engineers. But because there is a ton of money in EDU, you actually only need a handful of school districts or universities to sustain your company. Which then turns into a problem, because it means everyone is using different products, and so much is custom-built. So standards and interoperability don't emerge -- or when they do, they're just, well, really bad. It's a complicated space. The only other space that feels similarly insanely complicated to me is healthcare.

fouc 7y ago
In my opinion.. Ed-tech will never truly be successful if it is B2B and focused on teaching. The real problem to be solved is LEARNING. The goals of teaching and learning are not the same. Focusing on efficient learning means getting away from outdated methodology like tests, long-winded lectures, and more.
- 7y ago

jcranmer 7y ago

The interactive whiteboard story I have: My school system decided to introduce those interactive whiteboards into every classroom. Including the computer room. Where all the computers ran Linux or Solaris [1], which operating systems the software couldn't support. Without the computer to run it on, those things are worse than regular whiteboards since you can't even draw on them with real markers. [1] Sun had yet to be bought by Oracle at that time.

jshaqaw 7y ago

I agree that smart boards are a joke. They suck down scarce dollars and add de minimis educational value. Then they break and become really really expensive whiteboards.

throw7 7y ago

Honestly, I just briefly skimmed the list. I thought OLPC was too low and there was some politics thrown in there at the top... anyway... Personally, the greatest ed-tech was when my parents bought me a C-128 which came with thick manuals, one of which was a Commodore BASIC programming manual. IMHO, education is throwing a wide and open experience to a kid and guiding and helping them learn to learn. Everyone is different in what they like and enjoy, and that's a very good thing.

gnicholas 7y ago

> 85. The Teacher Influencer Hustle This. I've been pitched by teacher-influencers and librarian-influencers who want to do sponsored posts about my edtech startup. Such posts are generally not marked as sponsored, and I have always declined their offers. I understand teachers need to make ends meet (my wife, mother, and grandmother work/worked in education), but that doesn't justify this sort of business practice. It's unethical and also pretty clearly illegal per FTC regulations.

impendia 7y ago

As a university professor, I'm struck at how few of these I've heard of -- and, of those which I've heard of, how little I care. I just don't feel like I have problems which I'm itching to have solved by technology. As an example of this, I've graded thousands of calculus exams in my career. It's time consuming, it's painful, and it's unpleasant. But it's also inevitable. Looking at my students' work, engaging with their mistakes, seeing what they do and don't understand -- helps to build the connection between myself and my students, helps me understand what is going on in my classroom. You can't automate that away.

newguy1234 7y ago
Khan Academy already automated that. I know their math curriculum is pretty decent. https://www.khanacademy.org/math/ap-calculus-ab https://www.khanacademy.org/math/ap-calculus-ab
- a_geeky_bro 7y ago
  Did you even read OP's comment? They specifically mentioned the need to engage with students' work to survey their (mis)understandings. The link you posted to Khan does not automate that delicate balance between teacher and student. It's a bunch of videos of Khan describing the Chain Rule. The "practice" sections are mundane - multiple choice questions or fill in the blanks. You simply cannot (as an educator) see the (mis)understandings of students like this. You need to pour over their work. Take note of where patterns occur and address them next class. Iterative. Do you honestly think Khan has "automated" that? This thread is full of asinine comments like yours that demonstrate just how much people in tech _don't_ understand what it's like to teach. Hence the original link to 100 fuck ups by engineers, product people, and VCs.

axbytg 7y ago

The author seems to miss the boat super hard on > 6. "Everyone Should Learn to Code" Her argument seems to be that teaching more kids to code, will result in more people ending up in a toxic tech industry. This may be true. But the tech industry will never, ever change until we expose more kids to engineering as a choice. If we can cause a greater number and diversity of children and young adults to consider engineering as a career, the industry will be more diverse. this seems like a bit of a no-brainer. Also the reaction to the Hour of Code makes me question whether or not the author has every lead or observed one in a meaningful way. Having led literally hundreds, almost every single one that I was involved with resulted in at least one student saying "I didn't think that this was for me / for people like me, but I really liked it". That makes it worth it. Hearing that one single time, makes every single HoC ever worth it in my opinion. I know a lot of teachers that would agree. Nobody on earth thinks kids are making significant progress towards mastery of programming from an hour of code -- it's about exposing every child and letting them know that they are capable of a career that is often, for a variety of reasons, seen as "not for them".

jkhaui 7y ago
Completely agree. The author glosses over the fact that half of coding is just pattern recognition derived from seeing something written a certain way many, many, many times over. It's not far-fetched to consider that exposing kids to an hour of code daily could make transitioning to a programming career much more feasible in their later life (whereas without this exposure, programming might seem like untouchable black magic). Heck, I think the reason my own transition to being a dev was relatively smooth is because I was obsessed making HTML websites as a kid. Despite not touching it for ~15 years, even that exposure proved invaluable in picking up the skills relatively fast
- geomark 7y ago
  I think it is broader than that. Maybe it is becoming a cliche already, but I think being able to code is a new literacy that everyone should learn even if they are not going to become software engineers or computer scientists. It's just such a useful skill now and more so in the future. I think the author doesn't get that.

HarryHirsch 7y ago

animations and lessons about “growth mindsets,” “grit,” and “mindfulness.” Dear God. We have growth mindset and grit here at this regional institution. There are students who take General Chemistry 1 (read: 10-th grade chemistry) three times with three different instructors, everyone with a different teaching philosophy, and they still don't give up. Wow. That's some grit there. This time they failed, but they can always pay more tuition, and try again. Now if their schoolteachers actually exposed them to difficult material and let them experience that with some effort they could overcome those difficulties, that would foster "growth mindset" and "grit". But instead the students want solution strategies and problem classification that takes away all the joy of discovery, and their teachers indulge them. Once I got bad student evaluation for handing out word problems with more than one step and having them figure out the solution themselves. The poor things. We'll have to wait for different teachers and especially different students.

userbinator 7y ago
I've been a CS course instructor and you brought up a great point. There is always a balance between not to discourage students who could achieve, and the reality that there are those would be much better off doing something they can actually succeed in and feel much better about themselves as a result, instead of repeatedly trying and failing. I stopped teaching a while ago but I heard that this has become more prevalent ever since the "everyone can code" propaganda.
- deleted 7y ago
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graigp 7y ago
“Grit” as its own solution strategy / problem classification in the context you describe seems masochism-adjacent. Current paradigm for students: joy of discovery < joy of submission.

mncharity 7y ago

Off topic, but... Does anyone know of a community exploring transformative improvements in science education content? Perhaps discussing topics like: Using pre-K content to inoculate against misconceptions, instead of engendering them.[1] Using industry-derived orthogonal sets of adjectives for describing perceptual properties of materials, instead of the usual adhocery. Rough quantitative description. Teaching scale down to atoms in early primary. Teaching atoms emphasizing quasi-classical nuclei balls, instead of wacky electrons. Atoms-up introduction to materials, and nanoscale emergence of bulk properties. Rough-quantitative introductory biology... in primary. The Sun is too hot, deep space is too cold, and the Earth is doing a BBQ roll between them (the space and roll bits are generally neglected). Discussions bottlenecked as much on science expertise as educational expertise. In some sense it's unhelpful discussion. Many ideas are currently undeployable, or their value is uninterestingly limited without the synergy of implausible dependencies. But personalized AR education seemingly has the potential to alter the constraint space. With a lot of work to be done, if it isn't to be merely "the usual wretchedness, now in AR". [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ud1Q_q4f-hQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ud1Q_q4f-hQ

mettamage 7y ago

One time offer here (@dang and co, if it isn’t relevant enough my apologies): I am for hire in the ed-tech space. My background as a teacher+psychology / programmer+cs hybrid is highly relevant. My focus is on people who want to learn at university and coding bootcamp level. My profile has a bit more (perhaps outdated) info. I will be reading this topic intently for side project idea inspiration.

iruby 7y ago

It’s truly fascinating how people quickly join echo chambers and often neglect thinking critically about the opinions they propagate. In computer programming, as an example, 1970s and 80s research points to many problems and dangers of wishful thinking guiding the inclusion of programming on early stages of the school curriculum. To this day, many efforts bypass these alerts and focus on engagement rather than learning or facilitating learning - while claiming benefits in learning

geomark 7y ago
I'd like to hear more about dangers of including programming in early stages. Can you comment or link to something about it?
- mandukya 7y ago
  I think he’s talking about forever-newbie / perpetual rookie syndrome.

dhruvp 7y ago

This article does point out a lot of things that have failed this decade - all fair points. But in focusing on failures it fails to capture that casual education (not formal, school education) has fundamentally shifted this decade. Today, I can learn almost anything I want for free on the internet. - I can get a world class mathematical education from 3Blue1Brown (seriously this guy's videos are just out of this world good). - I can get incredible guitar lessons on any song I want from youtube (I've taught myself guitar this year through it!). - I can find scores of language education podcasts to help me learn Spanish (I use coffee break spanish). - I can get world class SAT prep from Khan Academy (for free!). - I can get awesome yoga classes online for free (did this also this year). Seriously the wealth and quality of information available to us today is insane - it's the Library of Alexandria a search bar away. As someone who enjoys learning, there's no way I would ever go back 10 years in time.

sireat 7y ago
How do you decide which of the free resources are authorative? Maybe you learn some bad habits from that popular youtube video? * Case in point there is a popular ML guy on youtube who is also considered a bit of a hack. * When Khan was starting out some of his original videos were also critiqued when they were out of his area of expertise. * My friend learned Spanish from a teacher from Basque area. He has an intriguing accent now... * There are zillion Python videos on Youtube and many are not quite good. The problem was pointed out in 1970 Future Shock by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alvin_Toffler https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alvin_Toffler . It is much easier to spend time choosing an authoritative educational institution(online or offline) than individually choosing each teacher. You let the school do the curating for you. There will be bad teachers even at good schools but your meta cognitive load is lessened. PS I am a bit biased since I teach at various non-profit and profit institutions (I also stream on youtube but privately)

king_magic 7y ago

I spent several years working on one of the top-10 issues in that list. I won’t go into detail, but suffice it to say: the responsible party deserved every bit of criticism that came it’s way.

shafyy 7y ago

I don't understand, what's the point of writing such an article? It doesn't seem to add any value, it might even contribute negative value with spreading cynism and pessimism. A lot of things have been tried in education, and although some of them were probably just people trying to make a quick buck, I believe that most of them did it to genuinely improve something for others.

billsmithaustin 7y ago
That was my reaction too. Is there a different market where the ratio of bad ideas to good ideas is better than in education?

MCablestudent 7y ago

The focus should be to find a proven curriculum that fits the Ed-Tech format and experienced educators to adapted it.