

No Child Left Untableted - jmclean
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/15/magazine/no-child-left-untableted.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

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ahsanhilal
I am writing this in NY while having discussed this article with multiple
teachers and principals at a charter school.

Here are some facts: The US spends over $600 billion on the K-12 education
system. Just around 0.46% of that entire budget is spent on educational
software resources. Most of the content money goes in the pockets of Pearson
and other big textbook publishers.

I have been an ed teach entrepreneur for over 1.5 yrs and I started building
ed games for ipads over 2 years ago. I actually learnt objective-c for that
purpose alone. I have tested our games and numerous other games with 100's of
kids and I can unequivocally say, that in my 'subjective' experience,
replacing workbooks/textbooks with ipads is much better for kids. iPads should
serve as a tool to optimize education.

The argument that these teachers don't know how to use them is complete BS.
For every 50 year old teacher, there is a young 23 yr old TFA graduate who is
vastly superior at integrating technology. As a society, you cannot make
decisions based on accommodating the ever shrinking population of teachers
that is too old to work with technology.

Amplify is hardly the example of disruption, they are a big company with
around a thousand employees, led by a former superintendent who greases the
superintendents all over the country. They have the resources to esentially
'buy-out' schools. Schools in turn let themselves be bought out rather than
evaluate all the options, due to district procurement rules. Good tehnology
for ed will only be available if there is an easy way to test products in
schools since most good tech is iterative. We have to go through so many
barriers to do this on a school level, but I have linked up with enough good
teachers who understand its value and are willing to put in the time and
effort to do so.

I have faced many of the same questions from parents that this article comes
up with. Those are nothing new. The question is not about tablets or or no
tablets, its the fact that all computers will be tablets (or some form of
touch devices) in 5 years. If that is the only computer that is going to be
available to us, then schools and teachers need to learn how to assimilate it.

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vezzy-fnord
Random thought dump incoming.

There are a lot of issues in the public education system. In fact, one might
ask whether the compulsory Prussian-based system is still relevant and
effective these days.

One thing's for sure: you're not going to fix these problems by pumping in
consumer electronics into the curriculum. You'll temporarily mask it, maybe
please the parents and students a little (especially the poorer ones), but
ultimately you'll have accomplished nothing.

For one thing, you're offering them locked down, DRM-packed, proprietary
tracking devices that give an abstracted user interface but won't give you
much potential to tinker with its inner workings or hack around. Most
districts go with Apple products, so even things like app development are
significantly more closed.

There is no doubt that education needs to catch up with the technological
world and the Web of Things that lies ahead, but it's being done in the most
careless and ineffective way imaginable. To the point where it might even be
hampering education.

If your objective is to make a subservient class of automatons who lack
critical thinking skills, then sure, stuffing them with iPads is the way to
go.

Public education should be online-integrated and technologically conscious,
but in my mind what we need is a radical paradigm shift: a higher acceptance
of autodidacticism and alternative education as viable learning paths. A lot
of public schools teach at a very slow pace, one that more savvy kids can be
ahead of with the global repository of information online (of course, most
prefer social networking, but I digress).

Who knows? MOOCs might make a lot of schools obsolete soon.

What's worth noting is that the private schools which the children of the
elite and the wealthy attend tend to be educated in highly selective
institutions that for the most part do not utilize contemporary technology and
rely on more traditional approaches to education. Perhaps there is something
to be noted here.

