
The Consumerization of Edtech - prostoalex
http://techcrunch.com/2015/12/12/skipping-copper-the-consumerization-of-edtech/?ncid=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29
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analog31
Well, my family spends a lot on educational technology. Two years ago we
bought a violin, and this year, a cello.

My exposure to educational software goes back to the early 1980s, when I had a
summer internship at an educational computing facility. They had a "lab" with
copies of educational software for teachers to try out. Most of it was crap:
Mostly glorified flash cards, arithmetic quizzes, and crude hypertext books.

Today, my kids are in 8th and 10th grade, and they use educational software
that is provided online. How far have we progressed? It is still crap:
Glorified flash cards, arithmetic quizzes, and crude hypertext books. The UI's
are more sophisticated and there is a larger quantity of content, but I
haven't really seen any new ideas since 30 years ago, for instance that would
qualify as "inventions" to someone like Alan Kay.

In my view a problem is that the mechanics of developing software is onerous
enough that it's too cumbersome to create very much variety or interesting
interaction. More ominous today is that the software is sold by the same
companies that peddle the school curricula and standardized tests. And the
amount of time that our kids spend wading through that crap is exactly why
they don't have time to do things like learn programming.

Still, we have plenty of educational software, but it will be hard for us to
spend 3% of our income on it, because it's all free: Scratch, Python, Arduino,
etc.

/rant

~~~
jgord
I had a great session with my 12yo getting an animated ball bouncing around a
box, programming it in javascript using the canvas api [ ~120 lines ]. He got
collision detection working with some help.

I have tried myself, with very limited success, to make some engaging and
educational software. I see a lot of edu software as mind-candy - strong on
visuals/action but weak on concepts.. but I admit I haven't found the right
mix myself.

My own efforts :

* animated sine demo [[http://treeblurb.com/dev_math/sin_canv03.html](http://treeblurb.com/dev_math/sin_canv03.html)]

* DoctorX multiplication thing [ [http://treeblurb.com/doctorx/calc.html](http://treeblurb.com/doctorx/calc.html) ]

* [http://gridmaths.com](http://gridmaths.com)

backgrounder / articles -
[https://quantblog.wordpress.com/tag/math/](https://quantblog.wordpress.com/tag/math/)

One package I really love the potential of is
[http://GeoGebra.org](http://GeoGebra.org) \- I'm trying to get the school
interested in these kinds of things to augment their 1-student-1-tablet
policy.

~~~
analog31
Thanks. That was a lot of fun, and hats off to your nice programs!

Something that I think is a problem with math, is that lots of us have ideas
about math, but if it's not "school math," then they look at you like some
kind of freak. And I think this is actually more prevalent among parents than
teachers, but the demands of parents (including the demands of college
entrance exams) do have a lot of impact.

