I read two articles on After Babel last year, about the impact of EdTech in American schools. Here are some notes I made from those articles. The notes don’t add anything to the conversation of EdTech, they just summarise the articles.
The EdTech Revolution Has Failed 1
The author argues that EdTech especially phones in schools, have negatively impacted the ability of students to learn and socialise.
They start by mentioning a bunch of studies that show positive “effect size” for a bunch of EdTech products. However, they refer to another extremely global study of teaching implements and their relevant effect sizes. These study shows that any teaching tool, with an effect size2 of less than 0.4 should be ignored and not implemented in mass in schools.
The author than suggests that because digital devices have so many distractions, students often end up multi-tasking. Which is really bad for learning, because there exists a switching cost when multitasking.
The author raises the question of what the true function of these devices are? Not true as in intended, true as in what actually ends up happening. The author proves again using data, that these devices are mostly used for social media, video games and other kinds of entertainment and very little indeed for learning.
The False Promise of Device-Based Education 3
The author starts by defining how are screens used by students in educational settings: EdTech and recreational screen time. They claims that though these two things seem mutually exclusive in practice they overlap a lot.
They compare phones and tablets to pencils or paints as they are all pieces of technology. Whenever a teacher is told to use paint in class, they are given specific instructions on how to use it. However with screens the only instructions teachers receive are “use them as much as possible”. This lack of planning is detrimental because we end up using the digital devices in the wrong way.
The rest of the article demystifies some myths about EdTech:
EdTech makes students better overall
This is false because:
- All studies showing positive results are industry-funded.
- A strong correlation exists between distractibility and the presence of screens.
- Teaching methods that specifically use EdTech haven’t been proven more effective than traditional methods.
- Global test scores began declining exactly when tons of devices saturated students time in schools. This coincidence doesn’t guarantee correlation or causation.
Digital screens as a delivery method are neutral
When compared to paper:
- EdTech apps need to sustain themselves financially either through subscriptions or ads, both of which are bad.
- EdTech apps trigger dopamine responses, which lead to a form of addiction that eventually pulls students back to their devices for entertainment.
- Screens force students to isolate themselves instead of interacting with others. (I think this is also true of books)
EdTech teaches necessary 21st century skills
- EdTech prevents students from acquiring soft-skills which are much more essential than tech skills.
Kids need fun and engaging devices to learn
- Screens capture the attention of students, not the learning material on those screens.
- The author cites Waldorf Schools that prohibit all screens until 7th grade and massively popular in Silicon Valley.
Devices are connecting
- Teen loneliness has increased YoY since 2012.
- Digital devices prevent students from participating in crucial social interactions.
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Effect size is a quantitative measure of the magnitude of a phenomenon, often used in educational research to assess the strength of the impact of an intervention or treatment on student learning outcomes. It is typically expressed in terms of standard deviations, allowing researchers to compare the effectiveness of different educational strategies or tools, such as digital technologies in the classroom. ↩