Comments on: A wish list for education technology

By: hopphaus

hopphaus — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 01:10:41 +0000

My thoughts exactly.

Although I enjoyed the article overall, it was clear to me the author was unaware of the reasons that many educators were not there. The lack of funding far outweighs the lack of interest. We have to have a lottery like drawing to see who gets to go to the conference because so many want to go and so few are allowed.

Your comment on digital report cards was spot on as well.

By: Paul Smith

Paul Smith — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 21:22:14 +0000

I much prefer a new call to attention for ‘The Four C’s’ as opposed to slyly slipping an ‘A’ in STEM.

By: Js

Js — Sun, 10 Mar 2013 14:52:01 +0000

Wow guys, I usually love Om stuff, but this little piece really irked me. Your list isn’t a bad one, but how about a point of two about the deep, underlying issues preventing these things from becoming realistic?

More teacher involvement? Guess what teachers were doing while you were enjoying yourself in Austin? Guess how much professional development time and funding teachers typically get? Guess how many schools and administrators incentivize teachers to expand their horizons and try new things? Guess how much time teachers have to connect with other teachers and teaching communities and figure out how to change their methods, tools, lesson plans, and try out new classroom models? On my wish list: let’s please talk about and address the underlying issues.

Digital report cards? How about you discuss whether schools are measuring the right stuff first, then on whether or not we have the right assessment tools, and then worry about how to report it. It’s clear that most schools are strong armed by content publishers and an expectation that a rigid factoid-based curriculum is useful for our society. As a result, assessments are rigid and fact based and that’s what we put in our report cards. On my wish list: let’s please talk about and address the underlying issues.

Thanks for listening.

By: petrnew

petrnew — Sat, 09 Mar 2013 17:40:07 +0000

Hi Ki,
I think you made very correct observations and especially in teachers involvement I can see serious lack in all discussions. That’s in my eyes it’s given partly by the fact that teachers crowd in its majority is not made out of early adopters, so they really don’t get it until they have to and from the second part I assume it indicates unfortunate situation that to actually create any change in education, we’ll have to “exchange” big part of teachers crowd. I wish teachers would have interest as well as budget to work on changes in education much more than technologists do and so far it’s the opposite way.
Petr

By: levittmo

levittmo — Sat, 09 Mar 2013 17:18:06 +0000

Thanks for sharing! I especially appreciate your point on teachers! I am the founder of an app called BrightLoop (www.brightlooplearning.com). I am also a first grade teacher. There are very few teachers who have any say in what techies are doing to “make their lives better.” Due to this we are also beginning to create and organize groups to bring teacher together to talk with people who are designing apps, tools, policies for them because until the divide is not as wide there will never be complete understanding and adoption of tech tools!