The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

I worked for a couple of years in edTech and the reality is that all you need is a good teacher, pen and paper, and a chalkboard.

If you're trying to learn programming, it can be pretty handy to have a computer so you can try things and see what happens.

Indeed but "having a computer" is not edTech.

Would you be willing to share any (anonymized) anecdote(s) that helped you see this reality?

I'll share that I saw how much EdTech was infested by folks trying to leverage "gamification", and I read Kentaro Toyama's "Geek Heresy". That, and other events like Sebastian Thrun admitting "We have a lousy product" (on MOOCs) was enough to disabuse me of any notion that our generation's EdTech hype would prove any different than its predecessors (education over TV, or via Radio).

I worked leading the digital product of an education company with a whole methodology, books, teacher coaching program, etc.

The education guru of that company talked a lot about Estonia, Finland, and Singapore as models of the best education in the world (pre college). These countries get consistently good PISA scores. And guess what? Close to zero tech in education in these countries.

Some papers were released that showed fine motor control (eg pen and paper writing) has deep implications in cognitive development.

And then slowly we've started to see all the consequences of phones, tablets, social media etc on gen z and alpha. I don't think it's controversial to say kids should not be using these devices and there's plenty of research to prove it. Obviously schools in many countries are now banning them.

Thank you for sharing that!