The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

Imagine blending the traditional educational structures into EdTech and using network engineering to clamp down what can be accessed in a classroom device to only the educational software modules needed. For example, you could put timers on how long each module is open. Give teachers the ability to override them and tap into each student individually if needed.

The issue is that the surrounding infrastructures would need to be much more competent than they currently are in education. I worked at an educational institution in the IT department, and the level of knowledge the IT staff had was abysmal. It was surprising that anything worked at all.

Additionally, not everything needs to be gamified. Somehow this notion that everything a child interacts with on a computer has to mimic a video game is a really narrow way of thinking. Instead, we could start with basic computer usage skills such as file management, and system configuration, and using core tools such as word processes and image manipulation software.

Instead of dumping kids into the world of Google which is a for-profit mechanism that is inherently designed to get people to click on stuff as much as possible, we actually as software developers need to re-think EdTech and have it be learning first.

yes, I see a lot of value in this approach, especially for ADHD learners (who represent about 10% of the student population). Imagine if the only thing a kid could access on their school computer was the thing they were supposed to be doing? How much would that help focus? On MacBooks, you can use https://gertrude.app/ to enforce this allow-list only approach, which has proven very beneficial for homeschool students.