Over on Mastodon social network, Tory Patterson ponders an action about “tech use in education.” He writes:

I have a blog post forming in my mind. It’s about Tech use in education. I’ve long thought that it should be integrated by all educators as Tech has been integrated into our lives. I’m starting to wonder about that though.

A write up on Writing Across the Curriculum got me thinking about Tech as well.

As I read it, I felt the same old irritation (not at Troy, but at myself) of being a willing dupe to edtech hype over the years. It was the optimism of youth, perhaps, or the excitement of channeling my excitement with technology from an early age (13 years old) into my work as a teacher/educator. 

The Reality of Tech in Education

Today, I am still enthusiastic about technology in schools. It is the enthusiasm of someone who uses technology every day to create and make. For me, technology inspires me, enables me to create in ways I couldn’t do without it. That is the promise of technology. But, our continued pursuit of edtech hyped solutions was never sustainable. 

Let us make an end of edtech hype, relegate technology to an everyday tool that amplifies our creativity and connects us to one another in fundamental human ways, like knowing how to read and write do.

The Secret is Out

But for many who drank the Kool-Aid, the secret sends them down the path of folly. It is time to wake up. And, some have.

A lot of people have caught on, perhaps due to the perceived remote learning fiasco (you know, when thousands of teachers had to teach remotely without the benefit of years of blended learning experience, and students simply didn’t learn as well resulting in low scores on extremely expensive, high-stakes assessments on national and international tests. These expensive exams were paid for with taxpayer funding to little purpose). 

This is evident as you look at these graphs in Joanna Glasner’s (@jglasner) article, Edtech is No Longer a Funding Fave.

Perhaps, the most disappointing point in Glasner’s report? Educational Technology investments are chasing the latest fads, as if they were going to change everything in K-16. While these new tools (e.g. AI by any other name) make productivity easier, threatening to displace people who write and draw for a living.

On The Woke Salaryman’s Facebook, I found this a fascinating conversation…this is but the opening image. I encourage you to check out the whole (30+ images) online.

See the complete story, A.I. will never replace us right?

What will this look like in schools when you consider that so much of thinking and processing data/ideas/knowledge for long-term information retention involves writing and drawing in the classroom?A.I. and edtech advocacy (“Let’s rush to bring this into schools!”) are problems because they are bringing the same blind enthusiasm of new tech. I see little different in the enthusiasm with A.I. that I did in shiny digital tools of yesteryear.

Next Year’s Keynote

I can imagine school principals, superintendents, keynote speakers, saying something like…

“A.I. will transform everything. We have an urgent need to bring technology (diverting precious school funds from librarian salaries, libraries, teachers, professional learning) like this into PreK-12 classrooms, because if they don’t learn how to use it from us, they will fail in the 22nd Century. Only if we learn to use technology in this way can we solve the problems that face humanity today.

And this is all the more imperative because it is only through A.I. in K-12 education that big existential crisis like climate change, overpopulation, political divisiveness can be avoided or remedied.”

We have only to look to countries like India, Pakistan, New Zealand, Australia, to see how they are leveraging A.I. to take bread and salt from the mouths of our children as yet unborn. A massive Chinese workforce even now labors to yoke Large Language Models (LLMs) so they can seize the wheels of capitalism. 

In time, AI powered tools will find themselves in the hands of children, and it is these children, bereft of their true histories and heritage, will find the answers to save the huddled masses yearning to breathe free in third world countries.

It is they who will liberate those enslaved as lowly-paid AI data scrapers and labellers, working with the raw sewage of the human mind (not unlike the cobalt miners who glow with radioactive pride to create electric vehicles) to produce solutions like ChatGPT that trip the light fantastic, slip loose the bonds of pillaged earth.

Yes, tomorrow we test our children to assess their progress toward state goals. Today, we leverage AI technologies to teach, to enforce learning, and run critical reports that assist us in making powerful interventions, one login at a time, one AI processor at a time.

Our children will service the A.I tools that in turn allow them to transform the world. What gloriousness lies ahead!”

Ok, I had a laugh writing that. But the topic is no laughing matter.

Larry Cuban on Technology in Schools as cited by Dr. Gary Ackerman (@garyackerman@qoto.org)

EdTech Failure?

But, edtech companies have failed to show that edtech makes an academic difference in schools. It continues to fail. 

Using technology in education requires a LOT of work, and that is the problem. There was a hope that somehow, technology could swoop in and make it happen. Anyone with half a brain (including myself) should have seen right through this. Why didn’t I? Why didn’t we?

Then, I remember the cautionary words of colleagues, professors. They were the doubters, the ones who cautioned, “Tech is so much silicon snake oil,” to borrow from author Clifford Stoll.

Now, I find myself in the position of a doubting Thomas, a disbeliever, who sees how edtech advocates (including myself) believed in several big lies about teaching and learning with technology. Those may have included:

• Technology heightens engagement, and engagement leads to increased student learning and academic achievement
• Constructivist approaches work, and technology is best paired with these approaches over traditional methods
• Phonics doesn’t work, pleasure reading works better
• Projects, Problems, and Inquiry-based learning can do the heavy lifting of engaging minds and getting them to process ideas in ways that leads to long-term information retention

It is sobering to realize how much truth, and inaccuracies, exist in those ideas. But if they aren’t the whole truth, then what is? And, should I worry so much about it now that I know better? After all, isn’t the whole idea to prove something wrong to find what is true?

My Response to Troy

I wrote back to Troy on Mastodon via my Mastodon.Education account. I realize now that even with 500 characters per post, my responses didn’t quite cover the gamut of feeling, thought, and reflection I experience when responding to questions like this. But writing this blog entry does help me set aside the feeling of betrayal, the “Darn it, I wasted my time on ineffective strategies using technology. Instead, I should have been doubling down on evidence-based instructional approaches whose research was well-established when I started teaching but didn’t know about.”

Hi, Troy. Given #edtech‘s failure to achieve the wild success claims, reach the summit of hype about how it was going to transform teaching and learning, tech for #education might be seen as a black hole for funding, time, and effort.

It seems old-fashioned, research-based #instructional strategies are the way to realize student achievement goals. And, tech for productivity, making info-processing easier remains a useful addition to a workplace, like #writing and reading.

I did not get to this perspective overnight, of course. Tech has its place, but edtech hype touted for so long, so many different ways, is taken on faith that yields little academic gains.

Better to employ high-effect instructional strategies across the curriculum, using technology as a productivity and info mgmt tool that assists us in processing the wealth of data and knowledge avail to us.

So many words, what does it all mean? People learn in certain ways. We make the same mistakes and errors time and again, learning slowly. Anything that gets in the ways of those human processes is destined to fail. Anything that accelerates those may do more harm than good. We learn tech and use it at the right moments, each an individual journey inspired by the efforts of others or spurred by our desires and motivations.

But then, I’m still learning. In a few years, I may think differently and realize how wrong I was today.