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  • EdTech is a Failure

    Technology in schools have always been neat tools of curiosity for students to explore. At its onset, any latest technological innovations were brought in as something to study, work or play with, but relegated to the sole focus of specialty courses.

    Workshops were setup for woodworking equipment, automotive classes and manufacturing. Computer labs were set aside for computer focused courses such as keyboarding, programming or (my personal favourite) communications technology. The technology was there for that class and for that purpose.

    However, all of that changed when the big tech companies recognized a lucrative market in education. Suddenly, there were talks of “1-to-1 devices” and “leveraging digital” as an “equalizer” and “preparation for the future.” Education platforms sprung up overnight and every company marketed the hell out of the “educational benefits” of their latest piece of software or hardware. Students were promised that all their education woes would be fixed and teachers were sold the dream of perfectly engaged classrooms and easy planning/marking/administrative tasks.

    With such a strong sales pitch, how could we not just flood every classroom with as much tech as a school board can reasonably afford? Just get everyone on board, learn the latest tools and ta-da! Education has been permanently “fixed.”

    Now, don’t get me wrong, some of these tools seemed pretty impressive and having a background in tech, I was curious to see what I could do with them. This would be taken to its limit during the pandemic when all learning went online and suddenly all these tech companies had to make good on their promises.

    And that’s when we found out it was all bullshit.

    In fact, every year since we started putting devices in front of students faces for all their classes, we’re discovering how horribly misguided we all were. Actually, duped would be a better term to use.

    Some of these tools are helpful within specific contexts and are of benefit in specific ways. But the overall aim of any “educational” piece of technology isn’t to make learning better/easier/more engaging. Remember, these are private companies with profit agendas, who don’t really care whether the outcome is favourable for the audience they are serving. The only concern is keeping people engaged with the platforms and finding ways to fit square pegs into round holes when necessary.

    They will find (or make up) something a teacher did at one school that looks good on the surface without showing whether it had any meaningful outcome (in magic, we call this a “flash-in-the-pan”), and then offer “certification” courses in their products. I can promise you those certifications are about as meaningful as my kids’ certificates for completing bike camp.

    Then, of course, once the cost to switch platforms becomes too high because schools have invested most of their resources in it, these companies then start making their products worse and focus on extracting as much profit as possible. Cory Doctorow discusses this brilliantly in his work, enshittification – article and book.

    They will add cute metrics such as “streaks” and “points,” but won’t produce a single metric to show whether this is any better for learning. At best, they will pay some educator influencers to provide anecdotal examples by asking them to find ways to use it in a classroom so they can showcase it. More flash-in-the-pan antics.

    As someone who drank the kool-aid for years, finding neat and “innovative” ways to use these tech tools, I constantly kept coming up against a wall of new products to use while others I built around completely changed or disappeared. However, the most important piece was finally understanding that throwing technology in front of a person doesn’t automatically build the foundation they need for learning. That takes time, deliberate practice and consistency.

    Personal case example was when I was teaching grade eight language arts. There was an “innovation” grant being offered to teachers who put up a proposal for what they would do in their classroom. Recognizing that reading rates have plummeted and many of my students don’t, won’t or refuse to read, I decided to make that my focus and proposed giving me the money for books. Paper books. In my classroom.

    They gave me $500.

    I spent the year scouring for deals, give-aways and begged others to fill out my initial grant so I can surround my students with books and then, get them reading every day. My “innovative” approach was to conference with them during their reading time, see how they’re progress is going, help them find a book that might interest them and keep pushing them until they found their gateway to reading.

    After two months of them getting the picture they couldn’t hide, they got on board. To push it further, I also had them practicing their writing every day using pen and paper. Those students with learning disabilities who required a device were given one (specific context, right?). By the end of the year, they were complaining that the 3000 word limit I set was too small for their final short story assignment.

    Could this be replicated everywhere? I’m not sure because it worked for me in my specific context. It’s like asking if you could you tell the same joke as a comedian and get the same reaction. Depends on the personality and the audience. Same goes for any other teaching approach that’s been around since the 70s. Sometimes they act as a main course and other times they make good seasoning.

    Throwing technology at students (and teachers) to be the main course and the seasoning sounds like a dream, because it is. A dream of profits for companies and nightmares for IT departments as they now have to support this infrastructure and the countless cyber-security issues it presents. Don’t even get me started on the lack of privacy, which no company can convince me they actually care about considering the inevitible “data-leaks” that always happen, and how my grade twelve students (and only them) get emails from the big G to tell them to transfer their stuff over to a personal account now that they’re graduating. Gee… a for-profit, data-mining company that spends its fortune lobbying for less regulations around their practices are building profiles of students that are supposed to be sensitive data? Who knew!?

    As I’ve shifted away from tech use in my classroom over the past few years, my students have come to tell me they really appreciated the more hands-on approach: index cards, post-it notes, chart paper, conversation, direct instruction and, wait for it… building personal connections.

    And this is where it gets really interesting—as technology in the classrooms becomes less reliable, more frustrating, distracting and shittier in their use, it’s pushing educators away, students away and pissing off parents.

    In other words, it’s failing on its own terms.

  • Nostalgia: The Drug of Choice

    If there's one drug you can accuse me of being highly addicted to, it's nostalgia. I will absolutely accept that claim and put myself forward as a victim to its tantalizing lure, rich in memories of a time that felt like a golden era. 

    After all, what's not to love about a time in your life when there were less responsibilities, more freedoms and the opportunities to recover from a night without worry?

    But here lies the danger.

    To suggest a time of the past was indeed the golden era of life that you need to live in again is to completely disregard where you are in the moment. It negates your responsibility to create a better future, not only for yourself, but those closest to you. It spits in the face of the advancements that have made life better for many (think of those with AIDS who can now live a full life thanks to medical research). It also casually ignores the many negatives from the years past, quietly sweeping them under the rug in lieu of the rose coloured lenses we put on. 

    As much as I love my 90s music, I need to remember it was born out of a generation who was depressed, angry and disgruntled with the state of the world and this was their way of expressing it... or escaping from it. As progressive as we thought we were, I currently teach in a Catholic School where I have students who are openly gay and this barely registers as a topic of conversation among their peers. That would've been unheard of back then. 

    Now, I do think we made some serious missteps in society, mainly social media. That particular addition has shifted us from caring about the argument to only focusing on who is saying it. This means it has given the opinion of stupid people with confidence the same voice as people who actually know what they're talking about, and we are all versed in who wins popularity contests. Mind you, that's just scratching the surface.

    However, I can't live in the past because that's not how time works for us. The generation of young people are growing up in a world that is where it's at and we have to meet them in the moment. They have no idea what it's like to exist in a time of legacy media and "latch-key" kids. Asking them to join us on getting society back to some nostalgic time in our heads is the equivalent of our parents asking us to join them on their nostalgic trip back. There might be an allure to it, but we have to be honest in asking what's worth keeping from that time and what's worth fighting for now. 

    In the meantime, nostalgia must remain a drug: an illusory feel-good escape that ignores the dangers of overdosing on it.

  • Life is Absurd, So Embrace It

    At its very best, life makes little sense.

    Sure, we can reflect back upon it and stitch together a coherent narrative, filling in the gaps with the best possible explanation. We can even go as far to say there was a purposeful path that it took or there was some kind of justification for everything that happened.

    But let’s be honest—are we just lying to ourselves?

    The universe doesn’t really care about your plans, luck is a major factor in all things and despite doing everything right, things can still go off the deep end. People don’t make sense on the best of days and their decisions, including ours, are usually baffling to most. Tell ten people they need to make a major lifestyle change or face death within a year and only two will do it.

    A good story gives us comfort and if we have to do incredible mental gymnastics to make it work, then so be it. We’ve all seen people make incredible justifications for whatever narrative they believe in and we’ve also witnessed society follow nonsensical ones simply because there they were convinced enough.

    There is no point where we’ve figured out life, achieved a perfect society or even really know what we’re doing. For hundreds of thousands of years, we were wandering nomads just trying to survive and figuring out ways to do that together against the elements, and sometimes against each other. Ten thousand years of civilization, where we repeat the same mistakes with different technologies, hasn’t really progressed us any further in our quest to make sense of the universe.

    This isn’t a call to just give up and do with what we will, but to embrace the absurdity of our own hubris. To stop glossing over the inconvenient or negative details, or the ones completely out of place, see them for what they are and acknowledge them.

    Let’s never stop trying to be better tomorrow than we were today, while also not letting yesterday define what that’s going to be. Sometimes, you just fall into things. Other times, you just get hit with a streak of rotten luck. It’s all simply the absurdity of what it means to live.

  • A Reassurance to Readers

    Books have been making a real comeback in recent years and the how or why it's occuring is of no concern because I'm just thrillled it's happening. As someone who made it his mission to get his grade eight students to just read a  book, I'm here for it.

    However, I want to provide some reassurance to those picking up this hobby because listening to some of the elitism around it can be discouraging.

    First, there is no line between "real" literature and the "rest." That's an imaginary line created by others who demand more from their reading and want to make themselves feel better about their self-inflicted suffering for it.

    On that note, you don't have to read the classics. They can be great if you're interested, but they're about as necessary as learning Latin. Those who tell me that literature stopped at James Joyce might as well join the camp of Catholics who proclaim that philosophy stopped at Aquinas.

    It's okay to like a book that others hated. I'm certain you like food that others hate as well, but that shouldn't stop you from enjoying it.

    The flip side is it's okay to hate a book that others have liked/loved/made popular. 

    It's okay to enjoy books that offer nothing more than fun escapism. Life can be challenging enough as it is, and tomorrow isn't guaranteed to any of us, so take whatever relaxing joy you can.

    Your aim should be consistency, not speed. It really doesn't matter how long it takes you to read a book as long as you're consistently reading. That's how habits are built.

    Graphic novels count as books.

    You don't have to read certain books and it's okay to not finish a book if it's just not working out for you. There's an infinite number of books out there and more being published every year, so just read whatever catches your interest.

    The only distinction between hard copies and ebooks is personal preference (the one exception is reading digital books on your phone while you still have notifications enabled). Audiobooks engage a different part of the brain, but do not diminish your enjoyment of literature if that's the medium you like.

    Every so often, head down to your local library and just wander through the stacks. No algorithm can offer you the serendipity of finding a random book that might just become your next favourite.

    Finally, you don't need large swaths of time to read a few lines here and there. Don't make this bigger than it needs to be. Case in point, I worked on an automtive assembly line and would read a few lines in-between cars. The person who taught me this was the guy who worked behind me and threatened me with a tire iron if I didn't start reading so my brain wouldn't turn to mush working there. I can't thank him enough.

    Simply put, if you want to read—just read.

  • Defensiveness or Growth

    Growing up in a family with several educators, I made some keen observations before starting my own journey within it. While I could spend endless time on its politics, and the societal issue with why we can never “fix” education itself, my focus remains solely on becoming a better educator.

    Within every profession, there seems to be a plateau where people develop enough skills to become proficient, maybe even good for a brief period, but then stagnate in their growth. I figured out the response to this particular moment separates the disgruntled from the masters.

    One of two things happen:

    You recognize there’s still more to learn and when you hear praise being thrown towards others, you immediately find out what they’re doing and pick up their ideas.

    Or you assume you have it figured out and when you hear praise being thrown towards others, get defensive about it.

    I suppose option three is to just give up, but speaking from an education standpoint, it’s usually one of the two above.

    The part I always find wild is that when you’re willing to put aside ego and pick up new ideas to implement, making mistakes and having missteps along the way, the defensiveness naturally subsides because you’re not even thinking about these ideas as a personal attack. It simply becomes part of the process to ask whether something works, if it can work for you and how.

    And more often than not, the best ideas tend to be old ideas that are repackaged for a new audience. As a magician, this rings so accurately that you start to wonder whether there has been any progress in the magic world. That’s why Penn & Teller’s “Fool Us” is so popular among magicians–there’s a promise of something new… but not really. Just new takes on old ideas. Usually.

    But all of this is how growth happens.

    It’s how learning happens.

    All you have to do is be open to it.

  • Left Behind?

    Keep up or get left behind.

    This was the mantra of the tech industry in the 90s, specifically, before the dot com boom and bust. It was pushed so hard that even though I was studying computers at the edge of this movement, I felt like it was already too late for me.

    But then I saw this message repeated over the years:

    “Learn about this new networking tool or you’ll be left behind.”
    “If you haven’t jumped on MySpace yet, you’re already too late.”
    “Learn this new piece of software, this app, this social media platform, this investment opportunity, this training technique, be an early adopter…” and so forth.

    And what happened?

    Things came, things went. Some of it stuck around and new stuff emerged.

    But go ahead, keep telling bestselling, award-winning authors who still write by hand that by not learning the shiny new tech toy, they’re being left behind.

    Also tell the teachers that get their students excited about learning that they will be left behind if they don’t fully embrace the latest “ed-tech” nonsense (most of which has been an *abysmal* failure).

    While you’re at it, let your plumber know they will be left behind because they didn’t prompt AI on how to fix a leaky pipe. Screw their experience with the matter.

    We can all find a regret on not getting in early for a long-term investment, but for the rest of the hype? 

    It’s time these people look up what being left behind in the world really means.

  • Dare to Be Bored

    Please refrain from showing my mother this post, but in thinking back at the times I was at Church with her, there is one thing above all else that I am thankful it brought me:

    The ability to be bored.

    Don’t get me wrong. There were many wonderful things being a part of a Church community brought me and I certainly felt an overwhelming sense of joy at being a part of it, hence why I teach Religion today, but a child sitting in the second pew of a Catholic Mass just cannot comprehend what’s going on: 20 minute homilies, litany of saints, monotone readers… all of this added up to my brain working out every conceivable way to keep myself entertained without the sharp eye of an Italian mother ready to put me in my place if I acted out.

    It was always a sigh of relief when the ushers gave the bulletins beforehand because I would have it memorized by the end of the hour. Also, it’s no wonder meditation was an easy transition for me.

    More than that, however, are the studies out today on creativity that point towards boredom as the catalyst for sparking new thinking. It’s also a great workout for the brain and forces it to do some thinking and reflecting, which are two critical points we’ve given up on today in lieu of getting the machines to do that for us.

    While I’m not against some assistance in filtering the noise in our heads, I take serious issue with failing to do the work itself.

    And while I tongue-in-cheek pointed towards Church as the foundation for learning to be bored, we used to have many other natural moments in place to help with this cause: boring classes forced very creative solutions on how to pass notes, doctors/dentists offices with their grossly outdated magazine subscriptions had you thinking about other parts of your life and sitting in your friend’s basement with no screens forced some ideas to promulgate about what to do (which was the entire basis of “That 70’s Show”).

    Unfortunately, we are stuck in a society with aggressive marketers and Napoleon-syndrome tech-bros preventing boredom from happening with their design principles of hijacking our attention for their monetary benefit. Despite knowing the need for boredom and the extreme mental, and physical, health benefits of forcing time away from their devices, they are determined to prevent any sort of boredom that might result in seeing through their smokescreen.

    Now, the Church of my childhood is not the same as it is now and therefore, not my prescription (for boredom, anyway). However, I think we can dare ourselves to be bored a little more often and see where it leads.

  • “Just Finishing”

    Thanks to a martial arts injury as a teenager, I spent decades with tendinitis in my knees and an inability to do anything high impact with them. No matter how much I rested, stretched or did something worthwhile, they always gave out.

    The more I read about the permanency of knee injuries, the more I resigned myself to thinking there was nothing I could do aside from low impact activities such as biking or yoga. Swimming seemed to be the only thing that I could feasibly do beyond that.

    By the time I hit 40, it got to the point where I dreaded stairs. The pains were sporadic up until that point, but came with more consistenty the closer I crept to that “middle age.” Then, a few years ago, a friend of mine challenged me to do a virtual exercise challenge.

    He had gotten into running as a way of staying healthy and losing weight, and wanted to take on something that we could do together. The challenge was to virtually walk/run the same distance as The Camino di Santiago, keep track of our distances and add it to the total. I told him in support I’d help him, but I’d have to walk.

    Then something happened.

    The effort to walk was feeling better on the knees each day I did it. The walking turned into periodic moments of jogging, then full on running. The one exercise that was supposed to damage me further was giving me new life.

    Then I started setting my goals higher.
    • Run a full 5k
    • Run that 5k in half an hour
    • Break the thirty minute barrier
    • Run outside
    • Complete a 5k race

    This eventually led to outdoor runs where the kilometres kept going up and the feeling of it all just got better. That 5km led to 10km and is now leading to 22km.

    However, I fell into a trap that many people do once they take on a new initaitve that was just for themselves:

    I started researching metrics and comparing myself to others. Specifically, other runners who have been training for many years, if not most of their lives.

    That moment hit me when I was finishing up a run and ran into my neighbour. He asked what distance I went that day.

    Me, feeling slightly sheepish about my amateur number, said “Only 5k.”
    He laughed.
    “Only 5k,” he mocked. “I have asthma. I wish I could run more than a kilometre without it being an issue.”

    To further solidfy the point, when I was gearing up for 10k run, I allayed my concerns to a friend about my pacing and finishing time. He asked if I knew what the world average was for finishing a run of that length.

    “Before you think too long about it, the answer is zero because most of the world can’t run that long. You should be proud for just finishing it.”

    Pardon the long garden path to get to my point, but the further entrenched we become in whatever it is we’re doing, the more we can lose sight of all we’ve done. There is no shame in telling people your goal is to “just finish” a run in the same way there shouldn’t be shame in “just finishing” any other project.

    When you compare metrics against yourself, it should be a proud moment. In this case, I’ve been accomplishing something I have never been able to physically do and have been incredibly supported by my friends and family along the way. It’s not fair to compare myself against elite, sponsored athletes who spend all their time in training.

    As that same friend who called me out also likes to say, “I’d rather be the world’s worst runner than its best couch potato.”

    It’s easy to get sucked into a small bubble and think that’s indicative of how the entire world thinks and judges. Most people simply don’t care.

    However, if you do have that competitive edge to you, then cooperate with others and compete against yourself.

  • Living in the World of Ayn Rand

    For the longest time I put off reading the self-indulgent fantasies of Ayn Rand. A big part of that had to do with reading Terry Goodkind’s “Sword of Truth” series that started as an interesting fantasy adventure; then devolved into stream-of-consciousness prostelyzing of the virtues of selfishness.

    In modern nomeclature, the series “jumped the shark” pretty quickly and never recovered. Feeling I had enough of Randian philosophy (“objectivism”), I had no interest in looking at the source material.

    It wasn’t until the last decade that her work has come forward again and preached by advocates all over the social spectrum (teenage self-interest to senators in the highest levels of government), that I took a serious look at it. Perhaps it’s my attachment to the wonders of community and seeing how it benefits all of us that gave me difficulty with believing anybody could take this seriously. I mean, the basic summary is that selfishness is a virtue, we should all act in our own rational self-interest, altruism is for suckers and the only role of government should be to protect private interests.

    In Rand’s dream world, private industry is the reason for innovation and would produce wonders for society while also extolling the achievements of humans. Ideas like romanticism, abstraction and subjectivism are tossed aside because they are not grounded in an objective world. It’s at this point that I could perhaps forgive Rand for what I assmume to be purposefully tone-deaf to the world around her and the very basics of human history that showcases how easily we are corrupted by power. She also didn’t have the foresight to know that she would eventually draw upon government assistance for her health issues late in life.

    Rational self-interest depends on people acting… well… rationally.

    I mean, if everyone acted rationally, we could just about make any system work just fine.

    Unfortunately, this leaves us in a situation in a world where we celebrate the individual and denigrate the collective for our own personal gain. It also resulted in a system where people take advantage of the collective while also harshly judging it. I believe we call this talking out of both sides of your mouth.

    “The government is inefficient and gets in the way of my progress…” while also begging government for subsidies to get this “private pursuit” going and providing a safety cushion in case it fails. This is why I roll my eyes when the financial industry tells us that we need to teach people financial literacy because they are the worst example of it. Wouldn’t we all love to just go YOLO on investments and then get a bailout in case it doesn’t work out?

    All this to say, well done Rand. In your wild swing away from communism as a corrupt and wicked form of government, you’ve persuaded us to move towards a corrupt and wicked form of individualism.

    How’s that working out for most of us?

    It’s time for a new icon. We no longer need another Howard Roark or John Galt sounding the alarm of the downfall of society because we decided to help each other out, and we certainly no longer need the narcissism this type of behaviour brings.

    What we need, is each other.

  • The Spa and the Community

    My wife and I were gifted a certificate to visit a nearby spa. It’s one of those nordic ones with various hot/cold water baths, saunas, hammocks, hot beds and a salt water pool. Extravagance, for sure, but something to excite people for a restful experience.

    Except, that’s not what happens there.

    Groups show up and jabber away in “quiet” zones while so-called “influencers” spend the day finding spots to take pictures and videos of themselves, just to post about their “relaxing time.”

    It reminds me of what’s happening in gyms today where weights/machines become a scarce commodity because someone decides to film themselves or sit there for twenty minutes on their phone between sets. The people who go there to focus on their workout have to fight this endless charade, making the experience horrible.

    The mental state you’re in at these places matters just as much as the physical one, and it’s hard to get in a good mindset when surrounded by nonsense. Circuses are meant to be entertaining, not a frustrating challenge to block out wherever you go.

    It’s not even something to get upset over—just sad.

    Then we attended a local community event.

    Our volunteer community association puts on a winter festival at the local school where there’s skating, sledding, wagon rides, coffee, hot chocolate, snacks, music and whatever else they can get in there. They also build and maintain outdoor ice rinks every year, and put on movies in the summer.

    Kids show up and run off together.
    Adults catch-up with each other.
    Everyone is soaking in the outdoors and nobody is distracted by their devices.

    It’s absolutely a lot of work, but everyone leaves there happier, while also, wait for it, feeling a stronger sense of community.

    It finally occurred to me that this is what we’re missing in our world today.

    The word “community” has been hijacked by tech companies to give a false impression that digital spaces can replace the physical ones. Psychologically, they have us all fooled on this idea and we wonder why our trust in each other has plummeted.

    People thrive in community.

    Monks, who choose a life of seclusion, must do so in a community of other monks.

    People praise Thoreau for building a cabin in the woods to escape society, but always miss the part where he moves back after a few years.

    And then there’s the tragic tale of Christopher McCandless (“Into the Wild”) who gets to the brink of death before realizing that happiness is only real when it’s shared.

    The community is energizing. Enjoyable. Relaxing, even.

    It’s also frustrating, but that’s part of what community does for you. Teaches you how to be with other people and find ways around that frustration.

    That’s because when people gather in community, they do it for a unified purpose. There’s a physical synergy that happens when you’re around others and get swept up in the energy. The digital landscape is a pale imitation of this idea because:

    a) people lie
    b) people exaggerate to the point of lying
    c) people are passively engaged

    The spa works if people are in community to relax, not isolating themselves to stress out about fake social validation.

    The gym works if the gym community is working together to push each other and not individually trying to escape the space they’re in.

    And, as a Religion teacher I can’t resist, the spirituality of a Church is dead if it doesn’t have an active community.

    I will also point out my observations of my students, who, over the past five or six years, speak about their happiest moments when they are with their community (sports, friends, etc.).

    We are hungering for it and now is the time to reclaim what makes us great as a species.

    Let’s build more community and protect them by actively blocking those who would invade those sacred spaces for their own vices.