Technology Cannot Disrupt Education From The Top Down

Computer technology has penetrated the classroom for thirty years with little impact. After hundreds of ?disruptive? education startups, the best innovation in education is still the chalkboard. This isn?t the fault of the entrepreneurs, but the fault of an education system which resists innovation at every turn. Many K-12 education technology startups target teachers and administrators by offering tools to become more productive: Lesson plan sharing, gradebooks, training tools, whiteboards and more. Devin Coldewey called them ?practical? in his TechCrunch post ?If I Were A Poor Black Kid? Inadvertently Touches On Sad Education And Tech Truths.? Coldewey concludes that education needs top-down reforms that utilize these practical technologies. He sincerely believes these technologies can improve teacher and administrator efficiency so the ?overworked? staff can gain control of their ?oversized? classes in the ?pitifully insufficient? resourced schools. Unfortunately, the top down ?practical? approach won't work for some very good reasons. Essentially, the education establishment doesn't want to be disrupted and they will leverage the $597 billion spent annually on K-12 public education to prevent true disruption.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/uOElmYY3ISk/

Rebecca Romijn Reese Witherspoon Rhona Mitra Rihanna