barbara fister reviewed Failure to Disrupt by Justin Reich
Review of 'Failure to Disrupt' on 'LibraryThing'
Failure to Disrupt is a very thorough and even-handed overview of how technology has been introduced into classrooms, first examining how these technologies approach learning (massive online courses, computer-aided personalized learning, and using technology to build learning communities) and then unpacking the problems that have hindered techâs promise. These have only become more obvious since the pandemic sent students and teachers home and Zoom became a common verb for online interaction.returnreturnTechnology hasnât changed the ways people teach so much as it has fostered a virtual simulacrum of traditional teaching practices. Rather than creating more access to learning opportunities, an old myth of digital democracy, it gives the rich more opportunity than they had before, and will diminish what the poor get from schooling. Routine assessment measures what is easy to measure rather than the kind of learning that people will need as automation takes the easy work away from us, …
Failure to Disrupt is a very thorough and even-handed overview of how technology has been introduced into classrooms, first examining how these technologies approach learning (massive online courses, computer-aided personalized learning, and using technology to build learning communities) and then unpacking the problems that have hindered techâs promise. These have only become more obvious since the pandemic sent students and teachers home and Zoom became a common verb for online interaction.returnreturnTechnology hasnât changed the ways people teach so much as it has fostered a virtual simulacrum of traditional teaching practices. Rather than creating more access to learning opportunities, an old myth of digital democracy, it gives the rich more opportunity than they had before, and will diminish what the poor get from schooling. Routine assessment measures what is easy to measure rather than the kind of learning that people will need as automation takes the easy work away from us, and being able to gather so much data has âtoxic powerâ (though Reich also offers a brief for data-driven educational research). If you want a thorough exploration of what weâve learned about edtech from someone who believes in its promise, but not in the hype, this is a solid overview that will tide us over until Audrey Watterâs long-awaited book, Teaching Machines, comes out next summer.