אולי כבר מזמן מדובר בוויכוח סרק

ריבוי מטלות פרנסתיות האפילו על הכתיבה שלי החודש, והנה, מגיעים לסוף החודש ואני מגלה שבמשך חודש שלם לא פרסמתי שום דבר בבלוג. יד על הלב, לא נורא. ממילא יש לי נטייה לחזור על עצמי, ולכן חודש ללא התלונות התכופות שלי על מצב התקשוב בחינוך לא יכול להזיק. ואם מישהו באמת שם לב לשקט ששרר כאן, ספק אם זה הפריע לו. ובכל זאת, במשך החודש נתקלתי בלא מעט דברים היו ראויים להתייחסות. בגלל זה אולי חבל על השקט הממושך. אבל אולי גם יותר מרק טיפה מוזר שכאשר עכשיו אני מנסה להחזיר את עצמי לתלם הכתיבה אני בוחר לכתוב על משהו שמעיד על כך שבתחום התקשוב החינוכי יש ויכוחים שלמרבה הצער אינם נגמרים.

בתחילת החודש, בכתב העת הקנדי המוערך The Walrus, דייוויד סאקס פרסם כתבה ארוכה:

The Failure of the iPad Classroom – How technology is hurting students

Here is where the utopianism and manifest destiny of Silicon Valley meet your child’s elementary school, and where pedagogy and philosophy intersect with politics and business. Attend a presentation of an ed tech company, watch a TED talk about education, or listen to a school superintendent talk breathlessly about the new virtual-reality goggles she just bought for your kid’s school, and the future is bright indeed.

The reality of digital education technology, which has attempted to realize this future for much of the past thirty years, is that of troubled students who have shown tremendous promise but consistently gets D’s on their report card. It is a cautious tale of what happens when schools, communities, and educators place their blind faith in digital innovation while ignoring the proven evidence and research around the benefits of analog education.

Cuban cites three reasons that policymakers typically use to justify the purchase of new technology for schools. First, the technology will improve student achievement and marks. Second, the technology will change traditional teaching to nontraditional teaching. Third, the technology will better prepare students for the modern workplace. At best, Cuban says, there is contradictory evidence for the third reason, little for the second, and none for the first.

At its most optimistic and dangerous, education technology arrives as the transformative panacea that will fix education and leaves a trail of disappointment and failure in its wake. The evidence for this just keeps on piling up. Study after study seems to confirm how the implementation of educational technology produces little net benefit to student performance, and in many cases, actually makes things worse. The examples cited here, which represent just a fraction of the existing and ongoing research into this, show the various ways educational technology falls short.

Learning in One-to-One Laptop Environments: A Meta-Analysis and Research Synthesis

A meta-analysis of 10 studies examines the impact of laptop programs on students’ academic achievement, finding significantly positive average effect sizes in English, writing, mathematics, and science. In addition, the article summarizes the impact of laptop programs on more general teaching and learning processes and perceptions as reported in these studies, again noting generally positive findings.

Bottom line: because Zheng et al. conducted a meticulously rigorous study, the education community can feel confident in Zheng et alii’s findings.

This is 2016. There are finally enough methodologically sound studies for the Zheng team to study. There simply weren’t enough such studies in 1997 — nor even in 2007.

He blames technology for the problem instead of probing to see why some schools and teachers are capable of making smart use while others flounder.

A fair and open-minded researcher would find and tell a much more complicated story complete with examples of smart technology uses to balance the bleak view Oppenheimer prefers.