The relative failure of edutech is, to me, the biggest disappointment of the Internet age. I remember the hope and buzz around MOOCs circa 2010 being very exciting. From my personal experience with online learning, I mostly agree with the author. No degree gamification or cheapness of distribution will overcome a lack of effort and commitment. I also think this explains the state of education in the U.S. generally. Teachers are hamstrung in holding students (and especially parents) accountable for doing the hard work. As the old saying goes, “You can lead a horse to water…”
>I also think this explains the state of education in the U.S. generally. Teachers are hamstrung in holding students (and especially parents) accountable for doing the hard work. As the old saying goes, “You can lead a horse to water…”
Many times, I've heard people focus on how the failures of large numbers of individuals are a cause of a problem: education, retirement savings, the effectiveness of propaganda. Whether or not it's true, I don't think there's a possible solution in trying to change the values of millions of unrelated individuals you have no control over. It'd be better to create "happy paths" that make it easier stumble into success.
It's like digging more wells for the horses from the pithy adage. You still can't make them drink, but fewer horses will be too far from water when they finally get thirsty.
A couple* of game reviews for high-tech LARPs earlier today on HN got me thinking in the opposite direction: they had several comments about the "minigames" that both offerings used to keep the guests feeling like protagonists who aren't just on rails in between plot points, and it had occurred to me that any reasonably deep hobby (those where mastery occurs over decades to lifetimes) naturally presents many minigame equivalents that are much better motivated, and hence probably also more satisfying.
Rather than gamifying education, maybe (even at the risk of offending Our Ford) we ought to try learnifying pasttimes?
I'd be careful of ascribing too much to intrinsic moods and behaviors there: Imagine how different it could be if passing the National Prosperous Job Exam gave one a metaphorical license to print money and the alternative was family farm labor.
I'm not saying that situation is superior by any means, but you can see it in some countries, and I think it highlights how some attitudes are culturally and economically bound.
