Retired educator Paul Bonner succinctly summarized the error at the core of education technology:
The principle fallacy of the Ed Tech movement is the supposition that input equals output. This bias is based on the idea that the human brain is merely a biological representation of a CPU. What contemporary brain science tells us is that the mass in our cranium is just a portion of the brain that is our entire body. We cannot simply plug information into our brain matter and get a preferred result. We are sentient beings. We have touch, feel, smell, hearing, and voice to interpret and act on various stimuli in our environment. We have to be in proximity to one another and various environments to adapt to the intellectual requirements needed to interact with everything around us. The various media that make up our technological tools create an incomplete data source that inhibits the developing mind if we ignore the emotional and physical aspects of intellect that bring about motivation and creativity. What we should have learned through the pandemic is that presence in a school community is critical for learning. Technological and digital tools are no substitute for human interaction.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This is exactly what someone like Gates doesn’t get, and it’s why computer-based instructional programs always fail. There is a reason why, since time immemorial, education has been about some person who knows something sharing it with someone who doesn’t yet.
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I think Gates understands the limitations of computer assisted instruction. Gates like many other wealthy tech. moguls sent his own children to non-technological private schools when he could have very easily plied them with all kinds of cutting edge technology. Gates is a capitalist that is exploiting the flaws in our corrupt system of governance in order to make money. He understands that his wealth can buy policy, even bad policy because politicians need money for campaigns. His technology driven personalized learning is not for the wealthy. It is an inferior product designed for other people’s children, not his. Gates is a greedy hypocrite.https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-smartest-people-in-the-room-what-silicon-valleys-supposed-obsession-with-tech-free-private-schools-really-tells-us/
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Greedy hypocrites have a way of convincing themselves that they are doing the right thing. The ability to do this is what they excel in.
And thank you, Ginny, for pointing out that hypocrisy. Ofc, Billy Boy, Charming Billy, Master of the Universe, thinks that half-assed education is just fine for the likes of the proletariat.
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After I retired from public schools I began looking at independent schools to continue my work. What struck me through reading various mission statements and exploring websites, all of these schools promoted the human aspect of learning and inquiry. I have a sister who is a development officer at an elite private school and one of her favorite classes to visit is the maker space lab. Anyone with a meaningful education, including the Tech Bros, knows that environmental factors build motivation and results. Google headquarters was famously filled with all sorts of toys to enhance employee satisfaction and build innovation. Public schools meanwhile have wasted billions on sit at desk technology to maintain student compliance. It simply is not a very inspiring view of learning or human purpose.
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Well said, Paul!
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Paul is correct. But it pays some people to think of us as output. This means that external influences on an individual’s view of him/herself create a self image that includes a vision of self that includes output as a part of who we are. Jesse Stuart (Thread that Runs So True author) wrote a lot of short stories about competition in farm labor. We see rampant interest in sports complete with output statistics.
So we are good targets for those who want our money to think of ourselves as input output mechanisms.
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What Paul writes is so very true. Teachers have saying for a long time that we teach children and teenagers, we do not produce widgets.
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I think, therefore you are…
Who decided WHAT metric,
is a reality measuring tool?
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You are confusing a relation with existence. Illogical.
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But your comment raises an interesting point. If the self is a construct, and if a person chooses to define himself or herself in terms of the influence that he or she has on his or her students, children, grandchildren, etc., then there is a sense in which this is so. But being and the self are two different things. Existence precedes essence.
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Yet if that existence was predicated on merely living out our days through task, then wouldn’t essence be sorely lacking? I often reflect on my experience as a teacher and school administrator. I would not change this work for anything mainly due to the wondrous encounters I had with students, educators, parents and others. Public education too often pursues the what at the expense of the why.
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“But your comment raises an interesting point.”
Yes, the kinds of points that Wilson raises in his seminal dissertation.
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“Who decided WHAT metric, is a reality measuring tool?”
The one who paid for the supposed measuring tool.
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This should be self evident to every sentient professional educator, yet the presence of50+ million Checkbooks and iPad’s in public school classrooms suggests otherwise.
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Chrome books
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I agree with Mr. Bonner. It also seems to me that the fundamental flaw with programmed learning, and with “learning” via digital modules in particular, is that there is no opening for the students to ask questions, whether for clarification or for curiosity. They are being programmed to be passive–they are being stultified. (Remember “The medium is the message?”) Homo sapiens is a social species, a story-telling species. Here is my blog piece on this from 2016 https://resseger.wordpress.com/2016/05/27/story-telling-species/
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I think what’s most missing from online education is caring. Students learn best when they feel the teacher cares about them and their progress. This is the case even in college, but it’s obviously so in low grades.
It’s also the case that students often learn a subject because they want to please the teacher, or want to appear cool or smart in front of their class mates. Curiosity I think is secondary. The last and worse motivation to learn is the grade, and the fear of failure.
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I agree that caring is crucial. The mutual respect between teacher and student is not only the key to learning, but the enabler of self-affirmation and self-actualization. As a prime example: I posted this blog with my comment on facebook. My 9th grade Ancient World History teacher “liked” my post. He was one of the most genuine and inspiring teachers I ever had. My class with him was in 1961-62.
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Well said, Professor Wierdl!!!
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Forget about the ridiculousness of Elon and being an interplanetary species. Forget about the stupidity of believing artificial intelligence will one day be “intelligent”. Science is regressing. Bill Gates is a moron. Understanding how the human brain works is the holy grail of science. Computer models are childishly simplistic. Computer-based education is for fools. The human brain is beyond imitation.
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Unfortunately, it doesn’t take truly sophisticated computers for them to be truly oppressive.
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So seamlessly aligned with Republican autocrats…
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“Technological and digital tools are no substitute for human interaction.”
Amen.
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