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The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

(www.afterbabel.com)
346 points obscurette | 1 comments | 12 Nov 24 14:11 UTC | HN request time: 0.377s | source
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donatj ◴[12 Nov 24 15:41 UTC] No.42116365[source]▶
I work in EdTech, I have for a very long time now, and the problem I have seen is no one in education is willing to ACTUALLY let kids learn at their own level.

The promise of EdTech was that kids could learn where they are. A kid who's behind can actually continue to learn rather than being left behind. A kid who's ahead can be nurtured.

We had this. It worked well, in my opinion at least, and the number of complaints and straight up threats because kids would learn things "they shouldn't be" was just… insanely frustrating.

Now in order to keep schools paying for our services, every kid is banded into a range based on their grade. They are scored/graded based on their grade level rather than their growth. It's such a crying shame.

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bitcurious ◴[12 Nov 24 15:58 UTC] No.42116597[source]▶
> We had this. It worked well, in my opinion at least, and the number of complaints and straight up threats because kids would learn things "they shouldn't be" was just… insanely frustrating.

Can you give examples? Are we talking evolution or addition?

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shortrounddev2 ◴[12 Nov 24 16:06 UTC] No.42116677[source]▶
My guess is that the kids were learning ahead of the rest of the class and it made the teacher's life harder to keep track of where each kid is, or had to field questions outside of her expertise since often elementary school teachers only know enough to teach elementary school
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AdamN ◴[12 Nov 24 16:26 UTC] No.42116930[source]▶
Yeah - this is on OP if that is the case. No teacher wants that and it's annoying for the ahead kids and the behind kids. Better to give them something tangential to keep them engaged but still gate on moving ahead with the mainline curriculum.
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1. shortrounddev2 ◴[12 Nov 24 20:33 UTC] No.42119434[source]▶
I think it would be better to have a system where teachers aren't required to synchronize knowledge between 30 kids and some source material; where each kid can excel at their own pace and the teacher helps them manage their goals rather than being the primary source of information