QuickWire: Obama Calls for New Education Technology Agency

Agreed that education overall is underfunded, but we are also not using the resources that we have available very efficiently either. At my university there is a huge tech literacy gap between the students and faculty. The faculty generally know much less about technology than the students. This isn’t true for everyone, but in about 75% of the cases, it holds. The problem is so bad that faculty have destroyed Smartboards and other equipment because they do not have the facility to use them in the most basic ways.

Working on tech training and innovative uses for technology in all classrooms is my dream gig. We are missing so much of our potential by ignoring current possibilities.

I agree that creating another agency is probably not a great idea. If we want educational technology to be used more effectively, we need to change the culture and funding streams in higher education, especially at research institutions. Faculty are primarily rewarded for getting research grants and for publications. Teaching takes a back seat, which also means that faculty have little incentive to learn about technologies which enhance teaching. Faculty will learn new technologies and prompt the institution to make those technologies available if they are rewarded for doing so – meaning that they get rewarded for effective teaching.

If this new agency is to be created, the most effective thing its head could do is make personal calls on the President and Provost of each major research university and create a nationwide initiative to reward teaching equally with research. Along with that, a huge federal grant program (I know, the conservatives will never back this) to fund technologies in the classroom might make a dent.

But cheerleading by an agency is unlikely to make much difference.

Somehow “the old lecture model” that was good enough in the old Sputnik days to ensure American supremacy (even without ARPA-E or DOEd present) is deemed to be “over” simply “because students want” something else. I have a different suggestion, high schools are ruined by the bogus educational initiatives (of which we are told we need more) and now it is probably too late to try to revive them. It is also the reason why students want it different, as the old model does not add much to the entertainment and does not feed their inflated but hollow self-esteems unless long hours are spent in the process.

physicsprof – I taught Physics in a well-funded very large public high school (very briefly). Of the 5 guys who taught Physics, I was the only one (besides the Dept chair) who had a degree in it, and, worse, the only one who had taken more than a freshman course in it.

It’s a HUGE and largely non-discussed problem in the high schools that most teachers really don’t know that much about their subjects. I saw English teachers who couldn’t assemble a correct sentence with a pen if their lives depended on it, Biology teachers who didn’t know an oligosaccharide from RNA, and Math teachers who couldn’t do basic calculus. Many of these teachers could probably benefit from technology, IF it came with content: if the book came, for example, with a well-done set of PowerPoint slides that the teacher could use to lecture from, then even a marginally-familiar teacher could probably follow the bouncing dot and deliver a reasonably coherent lecture.

I’ll never forget this girl, who, after our second Physics class (in the middle of her Junior year) said to me “Mr. (redacted), I understand it!” She sounded so surprised — shocked really — and delighted. Apparently, she had never attended a coherent lecture by someone who knew the material, at least in science. I can assure you that I was doing nothing special, but at least I knew the basics of the subject very well.

There are many teachers who get good evaluations by entertaining the kids (even in college); these teachers (and their students) would probably benefit greatly from technology WITH content.

There’s currently no mechanism in place to get knowledgeable people into the classrooms in any significant numbers. The requirements for a teacher to be considered “well qualified” on paper are just silly. (I’d be more accurate, but this is a family blog.) Only the “alternative” programs, in general, get people who really know what they’re teaching into the classrooms. And there are plenty of significant problems with those programs, too. (I know, I did one.) Not to mention that the teachers’ unions hate them. (Big surprise there.)

And we didn’t even mention that a teachers’ union was the #1 single contributor to Obama’s campaign. (He is not unusual among Democratic candidates in that regard.)

If I were making the rules, maybe the first thing I’d do would be bar teachers’ unions from political action. I believe that’s the biggest single difference between here and countries that do much better educating their kids. We spent much more than most of them and get so little for our money.

BTW, public school teachers send their own kids to private school at TWICE the rate of the general public. (My child has never attended a public school.)