Week 6. Technological Solutionism

Salomon (2016) introduced a failed case of LA students using iPads in schools. The curriculum on iPads did not allow teachers to revise it, and students began bypassing safeguards to play games on them. Therefore, teachers stopped using it altogether. The project, with a tremendous amount of money, would have been better not to do. In my home country, a similar situation happened a few years ago: an AI Digital textbook (AIDT). The majority of schools in my home country use textbooks published by government-approved publishers following a national curriculum. When the Minister of Education announced the introduction of AIDT, most publishers began developing AIDT. However, the government approved only 1-2 AIDTs based on their strict criteria, and schools had to choose among limited options. Moreover, creating students’ accounts manually, obtaining parental consent and uploading the scanned version, a bunch of administrative tasks related to AIDT, inconsistent content with paper textbooks and AIDTs, a packed national curriculum for every semester, and technical limitations and errors left teachers exhausted even before using it. No doubt, teachers have refused to use it, and the high subscription price of AIDTs has also become a major source of dissatisfaction. I was a team leader for one AIDT prototype in computer science education, who participated in developing features of the CS AIDT prototype and gathered teachers’ feedback on improvements before its introduction. (and unfortunately, the company I collaborated with did not receive government approval.) It's tragic to see its failure, and we thought AI could help students’ learning if it is used well. However, the education system did not align with the use of AIDT, and AIDT was implemented in a top-down manner, without considering the gap in real classrooms. Making the school setting more conducive to effective use, which is the prerequisite task that the Minister of Education should have done, slowly introducing it by stages, and gathering more teachers’ opinions over a longer period would have made the situation better. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Week 2. book chapter and my reflection

 Today, I read Chapter 9 of Rainie and Wellman (2013). It was about Networked Information. <Summary of the book chapter> Information wants to be networked. It is meaningful only when it is connected to other people or information, not where it is conveyed in a one-way manner. An example from the 16th-century published Talmud: annotations and notes could be written around the original text, similar to “reply” systems on online platforms. Memex: a device to store and find increasing amounts of information easily by using tags and connecting through trails.→ influenced Google search algorithms and digital networked information. Triple revolution: the development of social networks, the internet, and mobile devices. It led information to grow exponentially, people to have a tendency to find niche information rather than popular content, and other people’s reactions and reviews to be a new indicator of reliability. Information acceptance became a multistep process. Readers activel...
Read more

Week1 reflection - Is Web 4.0-supported information rosy?

This week’s topic was about how Generation C learns and acquires information. I would like to reflect on how they acquire information in Web 2.0 and 4.0. Whereas traditional learners were conveyed the one-way content, Generation C is familiar with both creating and consuming multimedia content when learning, such as reading and watching course materials and writing an essay or short-form videos of what they have learned. I am Generation C, but I mostly consume content created by others because I prefer not to disclose my presence online. However, I have written blog posts for Koreans about what I have done to move to the U.S., such as how to get a social security number and how to exchange a Korean driver’s license for an American one, so that other Koreans without acquaintances who live here can be helped. I felt connected to the visitors and encouraged by the comments whenever people thanked me or asked me more questions. This feature of Web 2.0 motivates more people who initially pr...
Read more

week4. Digital badge app design draft for a lazy grad student

When I was a master’s student, I had clear goals, such as publishing papers and getting into a PhD program. I could see my progress quickly, and I was already motivated, so I didn't need any other rewards. However, as a PhD student, I have too many things to do at once. Without motivation, I keep procrastinating and being lazy, thinking, “I can do it tomorrow.” So I tried designing a digital badge application for lazy grad students, based on the functional badge taxonomy (Horstman et al., 2020)! It might look like a simple checklist, but if I could build a digital badge app, it would look like this… There are some tags, and some of them are already set, such as research project, writing manuscripts, class study, self-directed learning, and course assignments. You can also make new tags. Design: You can note your weekly tasks on a calendar. The badges update every week, and you can exchange them for cute icons. You can see the anonymous icons of other university students on a world ...
Read more