John Robinson blogs at The 21st Century Principal, where he takes a look back at ed tech history and the mistaken premises that have driven it.
Techno-promoters, to use a term that Larry Cuban used in his 2001 book “Oversold and Underused: Computers in the Classroom” have used a distinct set of “interlocking assumptions” to justify the expenses and adoption of technologies since the push to put PCs in every classroom and wire schools for the internet.
These “interlocking assumptions” can be captured in the following:
- availability = increased use
- increased use = efficient teaching and better learning
- efficient teaching and better learning = higher achievement and better educated and capable workers.
These assumptions (by the way come directly from Cuban’s 2001 book) have not proven to be true at all.
Ed Tech and school technology boosters have been using those assumptions to the point that they are clichés. They are as tired and worn out as an old 386 PC sitting on a shelf gathering dust and are not true.
The problem is, you can map the same assumptions on current efforts to push AI into schools. For example:
- If AI is available to students in classrooms, then there will be increased use by teachers and students.
- If students and teachers increase their use of AI in the classroom, then more efficient teaching and better learning will occur.
- If there’s more efficient teaching and better learning, then students will be better educated for the workforce and experience higher achievement.
You really have to hand it to the Ed Tech world and Ed AI boosters; they stick to the script, and not a single speck of out-of-the-box thinking here.
That’s the problem with all of the AI hype and push into education; there’s nothing original, absolutely nothing original about it.