Now’s the time to hit the brakes on old ways of teaching … and invest in edtech
Pushing a virtual ton of shiny technology into a classroom and reciting instructions to dozens of young ears isn’t much more useful than landing a plane in a forest so raccoons can fly.
Should the goal be piloting impressive machinery, or giving brains what they need, can use, then teaching them how?
They might even learn things they want to know.
There’s a growing disconnect between those deciding how students should learn and a dynamic, modern world demanding fluidity and adaptability — and that’s changing faster than anyone expected.
“Traditional methods can’t be maintained in these non-traditional times,” says Michael Gamerl, the vice president of business development for AI-tutor company Riiid Labs. “This isn’t simply a reference to COVID-19. Society has changed. Opportunities exist that weren’t imaginable a few years ago. The shift in attitude toward embracing technology in education has begun, and you see creative applications everywhere.”
The first practical question linking education to change is always funding. But even if the money is there, the people deciding where it goes still deal in absolutes: a handful of traditional subjects, uniformly taught to thousands of young minds, without accounting for individual needs or wants.
How should they learn?
How do they learn best?
What do they want to learn?
Ideally, someone would ask. Then invest.
“We’re missing entrepreneurship in education,” Gamerl says. “Investment in ed tech is starting with things like STEM funding. It needs to go further.”
And not just in ways that benefit some. Technology has made learning available to more people, regardless of income.
“We need to break the school mold and truly embrace a new paradigm for learning, which is difficult to do,” Gamerl says. “We need to challenge some fundamental precepts about how we educate people and need to be fearless to try new things.”
Change is difficult for humans comforted by the familiar, which is why incumbents have built-in advantages in elections, regardless of performance. If anything should have term limits, it’s education, because there’s no stopping the flow of time.
“Whenever there’s a discussion regarding ed tech, I’m reminded of the saying by (Indian poet Rabindranath) Tagore: ‘Do not limit a child to your own learning, for he was born in another time,’” Gamerl says.
“The rapid speed with which technology is developing is both exciting and unnerving. Yet it’s this breakneck pace making things even more challenging,” he says. “Teachers receiving training in the latest technology often lags the development of the technology itself. Pedagogical changes that are implemented have long commitment cycles and typically involve set curriculum. These constraints make it difficult to keep up, much less get ahead of the curve.”
The tech advances of the 21st Century have been breathtaking. Machines have beneficially infiltrated every corner of civilization. But the people still deciding how humans learn, themselves learned in another time. The rules have changed. How we teach hasn’t kept up, even without a pandemic radically shifting the landscape.
Riiid Labs wants to use scalable tech to help educators catch up, then get ahead of the future. The company’s AI-driven approach assesses, adjusts, and tailors material and methods to individual needs.
“Riiid Labs is cutting its own path with personalized learning options that can be delivered straight to the teacher, so updates to what students are mastering can be determined real-time,” Gamerl says. “This same system can also be used to deliver recommended content specific to each student, so teachers are not forced to ‘teach to the middle’ as outdated classroom situations often dictate.”
“Attitudes are changing and that’s a big first step. Openness to creative teaching methods and innovative technology comes next as there are several resources available just looking for the bold teacher or pioneering administrator to try something new. The possibilities are limitless.”
