> The company was hemorrhaging money and wanted resignations
Unrelated, it's amazing how edtech startups have been beaten by traditional coaching institutions. Not only those institutions are profitable but they are beating growth numbers consistently.
I've never understood why tech people think computers are going to improve education. Education is a human activity, you cannot replace a human with a computer. At best a computer is going to be like a book v2, plus multiple choice problem sets / test. Learning from a book is hardly going to be more effective than a teacher who can adjust on the fly to the students.
When you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
If you ask techies to describe education, it consists of memorizing trivia. And that fits perfectly well into computerized education.
It doesn't help that so many school systems do in fact look at it that way. That's why we've gotten more and more standardized testing. They want to know they're getting value for money, so they define value in ways they can measure cheaply.
From personal experience teaching a small kid that does really well one on one learning. But with paper absolutely nothing.
One of the big benefits is of computers vs books: being able to directly give automated feedback.
Pronounce or type a word wrong, the computer instantly gives you specific feedback. If you do assignments on paper teachers checks it much further away from the point the cognitive effort has been applied. There is a much less direct feedback loop.
Especially for learning how to read a computer can give feedback whereas kids can go through texts not fully understanding, or misreading words without any correction.
Of course one on one is in some ways much more effective. But there are time constraints.
To automate certain things computer programs are most time effective. Just have to check in to make sure they are taking their work seriously.
It's also harder to pretend to be studying with a computer
With computerized education courses, kids tend to just click through the answers as quickly as possible without really engaging with the material. Only a human teacher can tell whether the student is really engaged and learning.
Computerized training only really works for older students who are already highly motivated to learn a particular skill.
And true I don't like multiple choice for that reason.
However in my experience it's much easier to check from a distance if they are messing around or not with a computer. And computer won't easily allow them to continue with wrong answers. (Certain programs are better then others)
One on one is always better, but there is not room for a lot of one one time in most schools
The problem with computers is that they can point you at a mistake, but they cannot understand why you made this mistake and explain the part that you didn't know.
Apps have greatly improved my language learning, spaced repetition has been a key for learning vocabulary and it's something that computers are very good at.
Also apps like tandem have made it free, quick and easy to find someone online to practice with.
It's the logical conclusion derived from the conceptualization of humans as programmable machines and education as their programming. After one accepts that belief, the issue merely becomes one of economy. Managing costs.
As someone who is approaching mid 40s and has gone back to college, I would say I disagree with you.
Ed tech is a problem yes, because you get only 1 kind of content on a single platform. But in general, computers have given me access to so much more than a singular human interaction could.
I'll use an example (real one). "Linear Algebra" search right here on HN yields a few results and I especially liked the animated web book. Gilbert Strang's videos are well... Gilbert Strang's videos. 3blue1brown throws a fantastic perspective. Pavel Grinfeld is brilliant too.
I have so many options now, which didn't exist in 1995. And each of them is so different and great in its own way.
> At best a computer is going to be like a book v2
Yes, I agree, but I think you underestimate just how much power v2 can bring to books.
Computers make interactive media relatively easy to create. Interactivity provides a literal new dimension to the information you can convey that makes some things easier and faster to understand than if you were to read them from a book. As a student, you can be handed a live simulation and experiment with it to "grow" an intuition for the subject matter. Nicky Case's explainers are a prime example of this in action.
it would appear that you've forgotten the key power of a human in education - adaptability.
A teacher is able to see where a student is making a mistake, why that mistake is happening and what else might be going wrong. A computer is a supplement to that. It will never be a replacement.
Where have you seen a teacher adapt to a student? I have seen them screaming when kids don't do what the teacher expects (but doesn't properly explain). A computer would never do that.
Because I've never seen a good one, and even if they exist, there's no guarantee that a particular child will have a good teacher. Half of them are below average, and we both know how incredibly bad is the average.
Unrelated, it's amazing how edtech startups have been beaten by traditional coaching institutions. Not only those institutions are profitable but they are beating growth numbers consistently.