Originally posted by johnny wu on June 9, 2018
Published Dec. 2017:
An interesting TEDx talk done by Mary Jo Madda a former educator turned education journalist, currently working for google in the CodeNext program. She breaks down her views on how education can’t directly fix education, but can harmonize with teachers to help improve education.
Here is a summary of her talk:
- It begins with the premise that the American Education system is broken, and outperformed in Math and Science by many other nations.
- She retired from teaching moved to Silicon Valley and joined the world of Journalism. Many headlines of how technology can fix education was the hot topic when she did.
- She endeavoured to answer the question:
- “Can Technology really solve all of our problems?”
- She breaks down a study done by USC where students in a program used technology for 90% of their learning and the teacher played a minimal role. Students of this study came in with deficiencies in Math and Literacy. The study resulted in a poor outcome for passing curriculum core standards.
- She also discusses the ipad initiative where every student in the Los Angeles Unified School District was issued an Ipad. TWO problems with this initiative:
- Very little teacher initiative went into this decision
- Little to professional development came along with this initiative
The ipad Initiative failed as it yielded little to no improvements academic performance and the chairman of this school board resigned. She examined this case and came up reflected on why it failed. She realized that the main thing that we need to for technology to fix all of our problems was…
The Teacher Factor.
Because the majority teachers develop impactful relationships that technology can’t”, and that relationship is key to using the technology effectively.
- A new chairperson took over and invested money into the teachers. Gave each classroom teacher in the board $3000 (wow!!$$$) to spend on programs, applications, licenses, etc.
Results for students since piloting investment in teachers and technology resulted in 100% graduation rate.
- She compares to the old school methodology of teaching where all students face forward and listen to one source of information to all students facing one screen and asks “is this all that different?”.
- She proposes a simple framework of ->
- Asks the question “How do we as a collective figure out the best learning environment for our students that balance the utility of technology with the beauty of human nature?”
- Finishes with a powerful line, “The relationships between teacher and student is sacred, and that should never be eliminated”.
My perspective:
Perhaps a oversimplification of the relationship between technology, teacher and student at times but she does raise some good points. As we continue to dive deeper into this program and learn about all the possibilities of each application, the core of education lies in the heart of the relationship between teacher and student. Our understanding of our students and where they need to develop is instrumental in how we choose and integrate technology into our teaching.
The image of the classroom full of students zoned in on screens, without collaboration, interaction with teachers side by side with the black and white image of students facing one teacher was a powerful reminder that teachers still have a crucial role in guiding the journey of education.
I don’t think that technology can replace teaching or classroom learning. Even with our remote learners during the pandemic, there is a significant lack of personal growth, even if the academic successes have been higher with a lack of distractions from classmates. So much of our curriculum today involves skills and personal growth factors surrounding the individual that need to come from experience. Technology can help us understand content and apply it with skill growth, but who we are as a learner matters more than what any piece of technology can provide for us.
I think this point is now even more relevant, with such a strong shift to online and remote learning in the past few months what should be becoming abundantly clear is that education has healthy, trust-based relationships at its foundation. No amount of technology can replace this, and education that focuses on the device or its capabilities at the expense of relationship building will not be successful. I intend to spend more time researching this specific challenge to develop a better understanding for how to advise educators and institutions on this challenge.