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My Problems with Educational Technology Hype

Anyone who knows me (or at least follows me online) knows that I am not a Luddite.  On the contrary, I’m an early adopter, particularly regarding software and Web services.  I love to use the newest and shiniest tech.  This is, at least, until I understand it better.  If I can’t figure out a use-case for my personal uses, that new thing will join the digital trash heap quickly.  As a teacher, however, the use-case has to be very strong for me to even consider using a tech with my classes.  I’ve been burned too many times over the years by my own irrational exuberance only to find the tech (or more importantly, my methods) fail miserably.

As I continue to work on tempering my own use of tech in my classes, I see what looks like a myopic rush save money via educational technology.  I’m not against saving money, mind you.  I’m rather fiscally conservative. However, I am against doing anything in an uncritical way as I believe is happening how.

What got me thinking about this was a post by TechCrunch (Anticipating a Blended Classroom Boom Led by Education Startups).  This article discusses companies that may contribute to wonderful learning environments, these kinds of systems can help with automated tracking and personalized content recommendations for students.  This can, in turn, be used by teachers to then customize instructional interventions for individual students (or more likely whole classes).  The article does a good job emphasizing the collaborative role of the technologies and educators.  However, the “Boom” got me thinking about the baser realities that are likely to emerge in this space.

Tony Bates must by on a similar wave length as he posted on this yesterday (My summer paranoia: computers will replace teachers in higher education).  He detailed a whole host of problems with the desire to automatize education.  I agree with much of what he said. My responses to his end-of-post questions are below.

1. Anyone else share my paranoia? (about computers replacing computers – anything else, see a doctor) : Shared, but I wouldn’t call it paranoia, necessarily. I can’t tell you its a bad thing until I see it implemented. Of course, computers replacing human teachers is rather unlikely. However, computers reducing the number of teachers is probably on the horizon.

2. Do you believe we should replace teachers (or instructors) with computers? What are your reasons? : As above, replacing teachers is an impossibility for much of what we currently think of as education (change the definition and I’ll change my answer). However, reducing the number of teachers is possibility. Off-loading rote learning activities and basic assessment, providing useful learning objects that address some of the needs of individual students, and reducing the time that students meet with teachers can enable teachers to work with more students in the same amount of time (ideally). Again, though, it’s all in the implementation. I haven’t seen/heard of a good one yet.

3. Can online learning improve productivity in post-secondary education without getting rid of most instructors? : It can, but it won’t. The way to move anything forward in higher ed is to show that it can save money (whether it really will or not) and not that it is a more effective educational approach.

I also share his concern over MOOCs and automated marking:

Let’s start with xMOOCs and automated marking and peer review to get around the awkward point that one instructor cannot provide adequate feedback to thousands of students. No problem: a combination of big data collection and analysis and multiple-choice testing will solve most problems, and the ones that it won’t solve will be solved by dumb students marking less dumb students.

Though, I might have stated it a little differently than ” dumb students marking less dumb students.” I’d hope that this was a bit of humor and not him saying that students (or their teachers) can’t learn from one another.

The movement to crowdsource and open education is one that is rooted in the belief that there is a great amount of knowledge and power in the crowd and a great amount of value in opening education for everyone (able to afford a computer and Internet access).  I truly belief in this as well.  I think that many of those promoting MOOCs believe this as well.  However, I cannot believe that course offerings by companies like Coursera can best a course that features healthy interaction with a knowledgeable other (teacher or peer), which is a whole lot less likely in a MOOC.  Having participated in a couple, I find them little different than course offerings I had 10 years ago that gave me a reading, required me to post a response on a discussion forum, and then required me to respond to a peer.  There is value in the approach, but when you take a knowledgeable other out of the equation, it’s little more than mental masturbation.

E-learning tools for schools and education – great mind map by Jesper Isaksson

via mindomo.com

This a great resource for educators or anyone looking for web-based tools.

John Cleese on Creativity

I love John Cleese as a comedian and his talk on creativity is no disappointment. He makes some great points, particularly about the need to disconnect, at times, to center yourself and let your mind both wander and focus. This disconnection isn’t just from technology, but also from the bonds of our daily lives. The minutia that keep us from reaching our potential.

Of course the message to me is, stop blogging and Tweeting this and read your students’ papers 🙂

Exams come to the bedroom with new invigilation software – cool idea, but hardware is a non-starter for most programs

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via guardian.co.uk

This sounds like a cool system. However, it also sounds really expensive and requires participant set up on home computers. How many problems did you pick out in that last sentence?

I really don’t think that this is doable for widespread adoption, but it could work for some situations. Purely distance programs could probably make this work. The package could just be a requirement of the program. If it were utilized by most of the courses, it could be a valuable asset.

This could be good for testing centers. ETS could require these to be set up in local testing centers, particularly in those areas in which they have had problems in the past. Essentially, trying to keep the centers honest as well as the test-takers.

DICE 2010: “Design Outside the Box” Presentation Videos

Interesting view of the future. Common objects and activities from a gaming perspective. You can hate it or love it, but this is a likely future, at least in some respects.

I particularly like his comment near the very end. He wonders whether this is going to just be a marketers utopia or whether (in addition) it will cause people to try to be better people. You often don’t hear the latter, but I think this is equally important and even more so for educators.

Social Isolation and New Technology: How the internet and mobile phones impact Americans’ social networks

Social Isolation and New Technology: How the internet and mobile phones impact Americans’ social networks

Below are points offered in the executive summary. It’s good to get this information and add it to the pile.

This Pew Internet Personal Networks and Community survey is the first ever that examines the role of the internet and cell phones in the way that people interact with those in their core social network. Our key findings challenge previous research and commonplace fears about the harmful social impact of new technology:

  • Americans are not as isolated as has been previously reported. We find that the extent of social isolation has hardly changed since 1985, contrary to concerns that the prevalence of severe isolation has tripled since then. Only 6% of the adult population has no one with whom they can discuss important matters or who they consider to be “especially significant” in their life.
  • We confirm that Americans’ discussion networks have shrunk by about a third since 1985 and have become less diverse because they contain fewer non‐family members. However, contrary to the considerable concern that people’s use of the internet and cell phones could be tied to the trend towards smaller networks, we find that ownership of a mobile phone and participation in a variety of internet activities are associated with larger and more diverse core discussion networks. (Discussion networks are a key measure of people’s most important social ties.)
  • Social media activities are associated with several beneficial social activities, including having discussion networks that are more likely to contain people from different backgrounds. For instance, frequent internet users, and those who maintain a blog are much more likely to confide in someone who is of another race. Those who share photos online are more likely to report that they discuss important matters with someone who is a member of another political party.
  • When we examine people’s full personal network – their strong ties and weak ties – internet use in general and use of social networking services such as Facebook in particular are associated with having a more diverse social network. Again, this flies against the notion that technology pulls people away from social engagement.
  • Some have worried that internet use limits people’s participation in their local communities, but we find that most internet activities have little or a positive relationship to local activity. For instance, internet users are as likely as anyone else to visit with their neighbors in person. Cell phone users, those who use the internet frequently at work, and bloggers are more likely to belong to a local voluntary association, such as a youth group or a charitable organization. However, we find someevidence that use of social networking services (e.g., Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn) substitutes for some neighborhood involvement.
  • Internet use does not pull people away from public places. Rather, it is associated with engagement in places such as parks, cafes, and restaurants, the kinds of locales where research shows that people are likely to encounter a wider array of people and diverse points of view. Indeed, internet access has become a common component of people’s experiences within many public spaces. For instance, of those Americans who have been in a library within the past month, 38% logged on to the internet while they were there, 18% have done so in a café or coffee shop.
  • People’s mobile phone use outpaces their use of landline phones as a primary method of staying in touch with their closest family and friends, but face‐to‐face contact still trumps all other methods. On average in a typical year, people have in‐person contact with their core network ties on about 210 days; they have mobile‐phone contact on 195 days of the year; landline phone contact on 125 days; text‐messaging contact on the mobile phone 125 days; email contact 72 days; instant messaging contact 55 days; contact via social networking websites 39 days; and contact via letters or cards on 8 days.
  • Challenging the assumption that internet use encourages social contact across vast distances, we find that many internet technologies are used as much for local contact as they are for distant communication.
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