Leonie Haimson, parent activist who fights for smaller class size and student privacy, has strong reservations about Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan’s decision to devote a considerable share of their vast fortune to “personalized learning.” She wonders whether he is making a mistake that has even larger consequences than the $100 million he squandered in Newark, led along by Mayor (now Senator) Cory Booker and Governor Chris Christie.
Haimson points out that some leading corporations in the technology industry have been data mining students and invading their privacy. That’s bad enough. But a recent OECD study concluded that the students who use computers the most in the classroom have the lowest scores, even when demography is taken into account. Zuckerberg has already funded a chain of for-profit private schools that rely heavily on computer instruction. But the history of such schools is unimpressive.
This is not a research-based approach to improving education, she writes. Some studies show that computer-based instruction actually widens achievement gaps.
The truth is there are NO good studies that show that online or blended instruction helps kids learn, and the whole notion of “personalized” learning is a misnomer, as what it usually signifies is depersonalized machine-based learning. All software can do is ask a series of multiple choice questions and then wait for the right or the wrong answer. It cannot read an essay or give feedback on how to improve an argument, or help extricate a child from a knotty math problem. It cannot encourage students to confront all the various angles in a controversy, as happens through debate and discussion with teachers and classmates. In fact, learning through computers reduces contextualization and conceptualization to stale pre-determined ideas, the opposite of the creative and critical thinking that we are supposed to be aiming for in the 21st century.
One thing is sure: Zuckerberg’s initiative will be good for the industry. Not so clear that it will be good for students.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Mistake? Or intentional act of profiteering?
My son age 13 uses a computer at a school where all kids have laptops. Its been an amazing gift for him. He is dyslexic which for him means that decoding language takes more time. His language issues are less of a problem with the use of a computer. The work is more organized because the system stays the same for all classes. He does his homework in one third of the time and he is more accurate. His process is more like the real world where they email homework to a teacher and blog. The use of technology has changed his life. Social studies, literature and science use a computer but math is still written at his school.
He has been using a computer for 3 years. The research is out there.
Wendy, assistive technology for students with dyslexia and other learning differences is a godsend. It is not, I hope, substituting for the rich discussion and collaboration that can happen in a classroom. Such usage is an entirely different issue than the push for “personalized learning.”
Leonie, thank you for being a tireless advocate for keeping children safe, because that is really what this is about — computerized learning without excellent data protection is not safe. Period. Even if computerized learning did produce excellent results, it’s not safe. Ford could create a car that gets 100 miles to the gallon, a great thing, but if the great car can’t stand up to crash tests, then it’s not safe and cannot be used, no matter how beneficial it otherwise may be. And btw, I also thought it was awful of Zuckerberg and Chan to use their newborn daughter as a vehicle to promote their new venture. As I told my daughter, if my husband and I were to write to her five hours after she was born, we wouldn’t talk about the future of education of the world’s children and what we were doing with our fortune. We’d tell how how we’re all ready in love with her, how we’ll always be there for her, and how she has her grandmother’ s eyes…New parents should be all about the baby, not about promoting themselves
Even without the data mining issue, total CAI in which computers supplant human teachers has been and will be a disaster. The groups most likely to be the recipient of Zukerberg’s LLC are the very groups most likely to not respond to this miscarriage of education, the young, the poor, special education and ELLs. I find the use with ELLs particularly disturbing because as an ESL teacher, I had lots of success with this population. At the core of working with this group was the relationship with these students and their families. Using lots of real literature and SIOP (sheltered English with content), I compacted curricula cutting out lots of unnecessary baloney to try to get these students to function ASAP while teaching necessary content simultaneously. When I worked with students that were so far behind, I felt the pressure of the ticking clock. We did NOT waste time! Lots of undereducated ELLs are bright. I had at least a dozen gifted ELLs in my career. I hate to see these students vegetate in front of a computer screen.
There is also strong evidence that reading on paper is better for students (and their eyes) than reading on screens. I find that I get a bit lost when reading a book on an e-reader when compared to a paper book. I can’t remember what I read and where to find it as well.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/reading-paper-screens/
And a very exclusive Silicon Valley school does not allow computers in the classroom.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/23/technology/at-waldorf-school-in-silicon-valley-technology-can-wait.html?_r=0
Machine learning and robot teachers for the masses; paper books and human teachers for the wealthy.
I read Leonie Hamison’s observation that:
“The truth is there are NO good studies that show that online or blended instruction helps kids learn.” with interest having watched NOVA’s “Inside Einstein’s Mind” this week.
In it, Robert Dijkgraaf at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton takes viewers into a room in the School of Physics where physicists are grappling with a Grand Unified Theory that would unite the cosmic and atomic worlds.
In that room he introduces viewers to the physicist’s weapon of choice: a blackboard.
Apparently they are unaware of Zuckerman’s initiative.
So it’s working …
If your best friends are Bill Gates, Michael Bloomberg, Warren Buffett, and Ted Turner, who are New World Order eugenicists and great supporters of the United Nations, who want to “cull the herd” and dumb down the population to accept to be plugged in to an international planned economy….then this is no mistake.
It is part of the plan of Technocrats made popular in the early part of the 20th century and revived and embraced by Zibigniew Brzeinsky and Trilateral Commission members working hard behind the scenes to make it happen today. Read Technocracy Now and weep for our nation and our children as the written plan goes live in 2015.
Or you could make fun and call me a conspiracy theorist and ignore the fact that Obama has populated his administration with Trilateral Commission members with a specific agenda that places our children in peril.
People that continually speculate as to why “they” are doing this are not reading the white papers and the books that these people love to write. Read them. They love to brag about their plans and they count on the fact that you will be too busy shopping and too mind controlled by watching TV to do a thing about it.
If you are not a conspiracy theorist who is? If any one wants know much about the Trilateral Commission please see
http://conspiracywiki.com/articles/new-world-order/the-trilateral-commission/
Note it is an article in conspiracywiki.com
I present facts of the existence of a conspiracy of people working against the best interests of the United States. People can stick their heads in the sand if they want.
The CIA created the term “conspiracy theory” as a tool to keep people from demanding a real explanation for the death of JFK. They made it a joke. That way no one can legitimately suggest something other than the Warren Commission explanations without being laughed at. It has worked beautifully for many years since that time. Can we move on? Can we raise legitimate questions now?
I don’t really have an opinion on Mr. Zuckerberg’s motives – he’s obviously enamored of tech in schools and since tech is (partly) purchasing product it’s entirely reasonable to ask if it’s a good investment for public schools.
I’m much more alarmed by the Obama Administration big marketing push for “blended learning”. I don’t think it’s the government’s role to push public schools to purchase these products, particularly because public schools have lost funding every year under President Obama.
Why is this a priority for public schools? Is this huge investment a good value for students? Will public schools regret pouring money into this experiment when they could have invested elsewhere?
I really, really hope local leaders resist the hype and make good decisions. They have a duty to use their own judgment and not get swept up in what amounts to marketing and a hard sell. They are the last line of defense on what looks to me like a government/industry sales job.
http://tech.ed.gov/netp/
I agree, I think Obama’s agenda has resulted in several instances of federal overreach and alliances with the wrong people. Obama is a corporatist. He seems oblivious to the consequences of his actions, does not seem to care, or is blinded by the simplicity of “market based solutions.”
Buried within the Obama Administration national plan for “blended learning” is a suggestion that public schools that are under-funded to the point where they don’t offer calculus or chemistry or biology purchase online versions of those courses.
How long until strapped public schools cut costs by pushing online versions of those basic classes into more and more public schools?
I mean, come on. They know how this works. If state legislatures have a cheap replacement for live classes they will grab it.
This sort of wide-eyed (fake) naive approach to this is irresponsible. I guess in an ideal world “blended learning” would consist of carefully curated open-source “play lists” as a enhancement to live classes, but we don’t live in an ideal world. We live in a world where public school funding is the first thing they cut when they’re trying to offset revenue losses due to tax cuts for rich people. What if this ends up as cheap tech replacements for live classes in lower and middle income public schools? What do we do then? Beg politicians to give us our teachers back? Fat chance.
You know, it’s great that all these wealthy and powerful people are such bold innovators that they’re happily take all kinds of reckless risk regarding other peoples’ children. The rest of us have to be more careful. We’re the ones who might lose when they roll the dice.
You’re right. Computers and robots are what the super rich want for everybody else. It keeps those pesky labor costs down. It is so easy for billionaires to buy allegiance from grubby legislators. If this keeps up, we may have a Chile on our hands with student riots and the super rich in walled compounds.
Teachers know that building relationships and interactions with students. As well as student to student interactions, support and engagement is what works. So hard to convince corporate America.
The problem is not computers but how they are used.
Most “educational software’ is designed for rote learning and regurgitation.
It’s not designed as a tool to enhance creative thinking.
Software designed for working scientists, mathematicians, artists, architects, engineers etc is FAR better for the latter. Skills are picked up as part of the process of using the software rather than being the end goal.
Students should be using software that is designed for professionals as a tool that allows them to stretch their imagination on projects they are interested in, not as a method for rote learning.
As just one example: physics classes can make use of image analysis software for performing measurements on physical processes.
And RE Zuckerberg: he knows nothing at all about designing software suited for the above purpose..If you want that, ask someone like Stephen Wolfram designer of Mathematica.
People with more money than they know what to do with who really want to improve a situation will ask the people living and working in that setting what they need.
People who refuse to that are in it for some other reason than helping others.
Zuckerberg and his ilk/cronies DO NOT CARE about the results. They have bought the government and know that all of their ideas and reforms WILL be put in place, regardless of the harm done to society, neighborhood schools, students, and society in general. This is the result that is desired because they, the wealthy, need to create a docile benign work force who will accept that status quo of stagnant and/or decrease wages, part time work, crappy jobs, and the like. Their own families will be spared from last rate educations because they will go to private schools. Hey, watch out for the next big thing to come down the pike – vouchers for elite private schools – and the only way a kid gets in is by passing an exam, which will shut out all the public school and otherwise chartered or vouchered kids. Just wait.
It will be more of a “them” “us” world in the future, and unless you have wealth now, you’ll be on the lowly rung of the ladder, and that is exactly how the “haves” like it and want it to stay. Only worse.