Highlights from NY EdTech Week 2016
My exposure to EdTech isn't one most people expect. I don't have an MBA, I'm only just starting to learn how to code and when I first started as a Linguistic Consultant in 2014, I had no idea what startups even were.
After working with TechStars in New York, Intel Education in San Francisco, and the last two cohorts of NY EdTech Week I'd say I've now had very rigorous and intensive training and have my own ideas about how tech and education can help innovate our classrooms and help students learn better – it also helped that I taught in Sri Lanka, Paris and New York. I sit in mentor meetings, stressful pitch practice sessions and have countless notes from the likes of Jonathan Harber and Ash Kaluararchchi about how pitches should sound, what they need to have and the business speak needed.
I've scripted just over 150 pitches and rehearsed with countless CEOs to date - each one solving a problem and providing a simple and meaningful solution in education. This year's cohort were by far some of the strongest pitches, and listening to feedback from the audience, mumbles of impressed listeners and Twitter posts, it seemed that everyone else thought so too.
I have a special place in my heart from EdTech Week in NYC. It's incredibly well put together, the speakers are always incredible and the workshops and think tanks are a much-needed space for us to collaborate and learn about tech and education outside of what we know.
This EdTech Week was pretty inspiring with some amazing guest speakers. I'd have to say the opening StartEd Talks were the most compelling. Jim Shelton was probably my most favourite. I tend to hear very glossy overtures about how tech can solve the world's education problem, so it was refreshing to hear Shelton bring up some very real issues about edtech.
Evidence-based efficacy is needed to prove your stuff works
YES! With all the startups I've worked with, there is nothing more frustrating as a former teacher to hear things like:
Q: Why did you build your product?
A: Well, I noticed my children weren't coding at school, so I decided to create a coding app for them to use.
Q: So, the pedagogy behind it is grounded in your research? Were you a teacher before you started your company?
A: No, I have an MBA and realised there was a problem, so I created the solution.
Q: What does the research say?
A: Oh, I haven't done any, I just know it works and kids love it.
That's not to say that all startup CEOs have no background in education, as many of them don't but have amazing mentors and teams that do come from instructional/curriculum design and/or education. But it's scary how many of them don't and just 'wing it'. In short, creating apps with no pedagogical rhyme or reason. To me, this means we're putting products out there that don't really do anything for education. And that was another interesting point brought up by the introductory panel –
Larry Berger, Amplify
Deborah Kenny, Harlem Village Academies
Jim Shelton, President, Chan Zuckerberg Education
Gerard Robinson, Fellow, American Enterprise Institute, and Fmr. Secretary of Education in VA & FL
Jeanne Allen, CER
– tech in education can go so very, very wrong if it's not done properly or based on learning objectives.
This is also something I see in products that are trying to help native-speakers practice with non-native speakers with Skype-like platforms. Second Language Acquisition theories do speak to the ideas that immersion and meaningful conversation are important (among a host of others) to acquire language as an adult, and I know as an ESL trainer myself that speaking with native speakers was what my students used to crave, but sitting them virtually in front of a native speaker in the States or the UK won't do very much unless there's some sort of structure and/or scaffolding. And even then, especially as someone who has jumped through the CELTA hoops and teacher training at the British Council and has an MA in Linguistics, teaching someone a language with no teaching experience or knowledge isn't the most efficient way to go about it – otherwise, why is teacher training and the role of the teacher so specialized? I've spoken to four companies doing this, only two of which had even the slightest idea about the CEFR; the other two stared at me with stars in their eyes as if I'd just opened up the Cave of Wonders. To me, in English Language Learning, that is scary.
Jim also talked about how, for every child to learn and improve, we need one-on-one teaching but...
Can we provide that kind of education for every kid, at a cost we're willing to pay?
Uh, probably not. I find that's also a major problem on the edtech scene – are we willing to invest in something that we're not 100% sure about? It seems simple enough, right? Tech is so advanced, the next generation are consuming tech at alarming speed and sitting in a classroom with a paper and pencil clearly isn't enough anymore - why aren't we using tech to educate our kids? And this was something Larry Berger spoke about. His very cynical (and quite funny) talk about the kind of tech we need in education was frank and honest: it would be great…but the technology isn't really there yet.
We're venturing into the unknown with far-reaching ideas about AI and giving students one-on-one help but we don't have much to support the efficacy of these kinds of products. In subjects like maths, companies like Tabtor seem to be making a difference, but I'm not sure how that would translate to subjects like History, Philosophy or English Literature. My closing thoughts are from Deborah Kenny who spoke about the vital role of teachers in education. I couldn't help but be swept away by her ideas on progressive education, assessing students on things other than standardized testing (which I couldn't help but notice sounded very much like what the IB does) and in order to use tech in the classrooms, we need an army of well-trained teachers to do this, not just flashy products that 'solve' education.
Tech is here to stay and we've been 'doing' education in a non-tech way since the dawn of time, so it comes with push-back, understandably. Every industry has been shaken up by digital advances and tech, so unless we embrace it and explore the scary world of edtech, education won't advance. But, if we avoid being blindsided by the glitz and the glamour, if we keep our education hats on and take a leap of faith in our experience and expertise, we can scrutinize what can work and be part of the global education innovation movement.
I was Tweeting throughout this panel and ran my iPhone battery into the ground within the first half of the day. If you'd like to see pictures and videos, feel free to check them out @queenpitchnyc
