EdTech history is so important, because some ideas repeat over and over. "Video lectures are the new textbook" 9/9/2020 from @mattyglesias in @voxdotcom & circa 1913 from Thomas Edison. But here's what's striking about this argument in the current moment... #failuretodisrupt
The claim is that if we build really good online microeconomics courses, then everyone will use them and education will be better. That was the 2012 MOOC argument, one of the 3 big bets of MOOCs...#failuretodisrupt
But people did build them. Maybe more than a dozen of them from top universities like MIT, Penn, Queensland, Illinois, and UC Irvine. It's probably a few million dollars of investment in this one subject area, microeconomics. #failuretodisrupt
And as far as I can tell, very few people want them. There are Microeconomics instructors at nearly every college around the world who are currently creating their own bespoke online/blended, and that seems to be exactly what students and teachers want... #failuretodisrupt
There is no groundswell of demand that I can detect of people saying "but wait, these other MOOCs/recorded lecturers are much better, let's just use those." We could be doing video textbooks right now, and we are not. #failuretodisrupt
MOOCs/recorded lectures/large-scale online courses are not currently competing against normal, functional university teaching. They are competing against pandemic/emergency/bootstrapped teaching. And they are still not making any sizable dent in market share. #failuretodisrupt
My bet is that on the 200th anniversary of Edison's claim that we are a decade away from video textbooks, we'll still mostly be using bespoke human lectures and printed texts, and people will still be claiming that video textbooks are right around the corner. #failuretodisrupt
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Over the last two months, for the @TeachLabPodcast, I've had a great series of conversations with teachers, school leaders, and researchers about Subtraction in Action: making schools simpler so we can focus on the most important things. Here's a bit of what we learned: 1/10
With @jal_mehta, we start by discussing how I used to drive my mom crazy around this time of year by jamming every light and ornament we owned on our Christmas Tree, and how schools a little too much like a overdecorated tree:
Then we had @Leidyklotz from the University of Virginia Engineering School come to talk his Nature paper "People Systematically Overlook Subtractive Solutions" and his book Subtract. tl;dr, people always want to fix things by adding! Not sustainable! teachlabpodcast.com/episodes/subtr… 3/10
We asked nearly 200 teachers to interview their (~4000) students about this past year and their hopes for next year. Then, we asked them what they planned to do differently next year as a result. This is some of what they said: 🧵
"All students were proud of something. I need to make more space for students to share what they are proud of."
"I have to stop thinking of community building as one 'unit' at the beginning that I rush through, and how community can play a much larger, systemic, role in my classroom."
We had over 150 teachers interview their students about pandemic learning and what should happen next year, and then report back. Here's what students said: 🧵
“We’re still doing school”
"I hope teachers approach whatever our return to normal looks like with the same degree of empathy as they have during the pandemic. People are just much more understanding of our lives and pressures."
There has been lots of discussion about camera-required versus camera-optional in class, but I don't think I've seen an analysis yet that looks at how virtual backgrounds can be yet another marker of social status. 1/ #failuretodisrupt
Paul Attewell proposed that the digital divide had two parts, access and usage, and even when we close gaps in access, there can still be differences in opportunities between more and less affluent students. People often hope edtech closes gaps, but it more often opens them 2/
Affluent kids are more likely to have access to quiet, private workspaces, that also communicate social status through markers of consumption positioned in frame. Poverty-impacted students are less likely to have access to such spaces in the real world. But it gets worse. 3/
On Thursday in Asia (10:15AM) and Wed in US (10:15PM ET). I'm on a panel about Reimagining Higher Education with folks from Hong Kong and Minerva. I anticipate being cranky! app.glueup.com/event/reimagin… 3/4
Tomorrow is publication day for #FailureToDisrupt from @Harvard_Press! Find bookseller links and reviews at failuretodisrupt.com. You can also sign up to join our free 10-week book club, starting Sept 21 at 3pm ET, recorded or live. We have great guests including...
Discussing instructor-guided courses like MOOCs we have @gsiemens and Liz Losh. We'll talk algorithm-guided tools like adaptive tutors w/ Cristina & Neil Heffernan from @assistments ... #failuretodisrupt