WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.972 align:middle line:90% [SQUEAKING] 00:00:01.972 --> 00:00:04.437 align:middle line:90% [RUSTLING] 00:00:04.437 --> 00:00:05.916 align:middle line:90% [CLICKING] 00:00:05.916 --> 00:00:14.120 align:middle line:90% 00:00:14.120 --> 00:00:17.220 align:middle line:84% JUSTIN REICH: OK, congrats on turning in paper number 2, 00:00:17.220 --> 00:00:19.530 align:middle line:84% for those of you who've turned in paper number 2. 00:00:19.530 --> 00:00:23.750 align:middle line:84% And for those who are wrapping things up, good luck. 00:00:23.750 --> 00:00:27.410 align:middle line:84% Your next assignment is very, very open-ended. 00:00:27.410 --> 00:00:30.355 align:middle line:84% Paper 3-- you just get to pick what you want to do. 00:00:30.355 --> 00:00:32.870 align:middle line:90% 00:00:32.870 --> 00:00:34.430 align:middle line:84% Kind of the only restriction on it 00:00:34.430 --> 00:00:40.052 align:middle line:84% is, like, you can't turn in this assignment in another class. 00:00:40.052 --> 00:00:41.760 align:middle line:84% You can't have same paper in two classes. 00:00:41.760 --> 00:00:44.570 align:middle line:84% But other than that, there are very, very few guidelines 00:00:44.570 --> 00:00:45.540 align:middle line:90% on what you could do. 00:00:45.540 --> 00:00:48.410 align:middle line:84% I am particularly enthusiastic about anyone 00:00:48.410 --> 00:00:51.950 align:middle line:84% who picks an assignment that is connected to things 00:00:51.950 --> 00:00:53.630 align:middle line:90% they're already working on. 00:00:53.630 --> 00:00:58.302 align:middle line:84% So Kent should totally do something about MacLea. 00:00:58.302 --> 00:01:00.830 align:middle line:84% I don't know what that is, but probably no one 00:01:00.830 --> 00:01:03.797 align:middle line:84% has ever asked him, write 8 or 10 pages about what 00:01:03.797 --> 00:01:06.380 align:middle line:84% it is you're trying to do there, or do some more research that 00:01:06.380 --> 00:01:08.960 align:middle line:84% helps inform what you're doing, or design your next steps, 00:01:08.960 --> 00:01:09.960 align:middle line:90% or whatever it is. 00:01:09.960 --> 00:01:12.830 align:middle line:84% But that would be a great project for Kent. 00:01:12.830 --> 00:01:14.720 align:middle line:90% And even if Kent is-- 00:01:14.720 --> 00:01:17.882 align:middle line:84% even if his UROP is to build MacLea or whatever, 00:01:17.882 --> 00:01:19.340 align:middle line:84% it's totally fine to have something 00:01:19.340 --> 00:01:21.470 align:middle line:90% that's very adjacent to that. 00:01:21.470 --> 00:01:27.110 align:middle line:84% I've had doctoral students who did part of the literature 00:01:27.110 --> 00:01:29.120 align:middle line:84% review that they have to do for writing 00:01:29.120 --> 00:01:30.995 align:middle line:84% a chapter of their dissertation or something, 00:01:30.995 --> 00:01:32.690 align:middle line:90% and that was great. 00:01:32.690 --> 00:01:33.350 align:middle line:90% So any of the-- 00:01:33.350 --> 00:01:34.610 align:middle line:84% I mean, you could also pick something 00:01:34.610 --> 00:01:36.902 align:middle line:84% that is completely unrelated to what you're working on, 00:01:36.902 --> 00:01:39.500 align:middle line:84% just a thing that you're interested in exploring further. 00:01:39.500 --> 00:01:41.590 align:middle line:90% Anything is fine. 00:01:41.590 --> 00:01:43.340 align:middle line:84% But part of the assignment is figuring out 00:01:43.340 --> 00:01:44.632 align:middle line:90% what it is that you want to do. 00:01:44.632 --> 00:01:53.900 align:middle line:84% OK, what we want to try to do then today is talk about two 00:01:53.900 --> 00:01:58.510 align:middle line:84% of these as-yet intractable dilemmas that you've read about. 00:01:58.510 --> 00:02:00.640 align:middle line:84% So in the first half of the book and in the course, 00:02:00.640 --> 00:02:03.370 align:middle line:84% we talked about these three genres of learning and scale, 00:02:03.370 --> 00:02:05.880 align:middle line:84% tried to emphasize to you that these genres have 00:02:05.880 --> 00:02:07.830 align:middle line:84% predictable characteristics, they have 00:02:07.830 --> 00:02:13.020 align:middle line:84% semi-predictable impacts in school settings, 00:02:13.020 --> 00:02:16.240 align:middle line:84% and that their impacts are almost never transformative. 00:02:16.240 --> 00:02:19.660 align:middle line:84% They have the potential to be useful, and to some extent, 00:02:19.660 --> 00:02:23.100 align:middle line:84% there's a kind of ongoing disappointment. 00:02:23.100 --> 00:02:24.900 align:middle line:84% Think of all of the amazing things 00:02:24.900 --> 00:02:32.080 align:middle line:84% that we've developed from radio, filmstrips, television, videos, 00:02:32.080 --> 00:02:36.210 align:middle line:84% personal computers, the internet, instructional tutors, 00:02:36.210 --> 00:02:38.410 align:middle line:84% online communities, all these different things. 00:02:38.410 --> 00:02:41.860 align:middle line:84% And none of them have really blown the walls off school. 00:02:41.860 --> 00:02:43.800 align:middle line:90% School is still kind of school. 00:02:43.800 --> 00:02:45.960 align:middle line:84% And in a lot of cases, it doesn't educate people 00:02:45.960 --> 00:02:46.960 align:middle line:90% as well as we'd want to. 00:02:46.960 --> 00:02:50.550 align:middle line:84% So what are some of the reasons why these technologies don't 00:02:50.550 --> 00:02:52.800 align:middle line:84% have the transformative impacts that we 00:02:52.800 --> 00:02:55.260 align:middle line:90% keep hoping that they will? 00:02:55.260 --> 00:02:58.980 align:middle line:84% And the four as-yet intractable dilemmas-- 00:02:58.980 --> 00:03:00.770 align:middle line:84% the goal of this part of the book 00:03:00.770 --> 00:03:04.670 align:middle line:84% is to say, we know a bunch about why they don't do all the things 00:03:04.670 --> 00:03:05.990 align:middle line:90% we want them to do. 00:03:05.990 --> 00:03:10.550 align:middle line:84% We know some of the challenges that occur 00:03:10.550 --> 00:03:13.220 align:middle line:90% across these different genres. 00:03:13.220 --> 00:03:17.400 align:middle line:84% So a thing like Scratch, a MOOC, an instructional tutor, 00:03:17.400 --> 00:03:18.680 align:middle line:90% Khan Academy-- 00:03:18.680 --> 00:03:21.300 align:middle line:84% they might be really different in some dimensions, 00:03:21.300 --> 00:03:23.480 align:middle line:84% but a lot of times they still stumble 00:03:23.480 --> 00:03:25.850 align:middle line:90% across these same problems. 00:03:25.850 --> 00:03:29.790 align:middle line:84% Some of this is me writing, like making an argument to the field. 00:03:29.790 --> 00:03:32.550 align:middle line:84% Hey, if we want to do better in the future, 00:03:32.550 --> 00:03:34.250 align:middle line:84% we're going to have to figure out how 00:03:34.250 --> 00:03:35.760 align:middle line:90% we deal with these four things. 00:03:35.760 --> 00:03:37.760 align:middle line:84% We're going to have to understand these problems 00:03:37.760 --> 00:03:39.380 align:middle line:84% and how they operate, and then we're 00:03:39.380 --> 00:03:41.330 align:middle line:84% going to have to do better with them. 00:03:41.330 --> 00:03:43.760 align:middle line:84% So today, we'll talk about the curse of the familiar 00:03:43.760 --> 00:03:45.357 align:middle line:90% and the edtech Matthew effect. 00:03:45.357 --> 00:03:47.690 align:middle line:84% And then we'll talk about the trap of routine assessment 00:03:47.690 --> 00:03:51.860 align:middle line:84% and the toxic power of data and experiments. 00:03:51.860 --> 00:03:55.260 align:middle line:84% Why don't I give you a minute to chat amongst yourselves? 00:03:55.260 --> 00:03:56.760 align:middle line:84% This was from a couple of weeks ago, 00:03:56.760 --> 00:03:58.218 align:middle line:84% but turn to the person next to you. 00:03:58.218 --> 00:04:00.350 align:middle line:84% Talk to this person about what you remember 00:04:00.350 --> 00:04:01.730 align:middle line:84% of what the curse of the familiar 00:04:01.730 --> 00:04:05.750 align:middle line:84% is, why it would be a problem, what kinds of things 00:04:05.750 --> 00:04:07.980 align:middle line:84% get stuck in the curse of the familiar, 00:04:07.980 --> 00:04:10.400 align:middle line:84% and what kinds of strategies seem to exist that 00:04:10.400 --> 00:04:12.410 align:middle line:90% might help us get past that? 00:04:12.410 --> 00:04:15.530 align:middle line:84% Turn to the person next to you and just externalize what 00:04:15.530 --> 00:04:16.740 align:middle line:90% you remember about all this. 00:04:16.740 --> 00:04:17.240 align:middle line:90% Ready? 00:04:17.240 --> 00:04:19.790 align:middle line:90% Go. 00:04:19.790 --> 00:04:21.549 align:middle line:90% All right, come on back. 00:04:21.549 --> 00:04:27.865 align:middle line:90% 00:04:27.865 --> 00:04:29.990 align:middle line:84% What are some things you discussed that seemed core 00:04:29.990 --> 00:04:31.622 align:middle line:90% to the definition? 00:04:31.622 --> 00:04:34.080 align:middle line:84% If you were to quickly summarize the curse of the familiar, 00:04:34.080 --> 00:04:35.125 align:middle line:90% what are some key ideas? 00:04:35.125 --> 00:04:37.820 align:middle line:90% 00:04:37.820 --> 00:04:41.540 align:middle line:84% AUDIENCE: The idea of taking an old idea and repackaging it 00:04:41.540 --> 00:04:44.430 align:middle line:84% so that it appears to be something new that really isn't. 00:04:44.430 --> 00:04:47.820 align:middle line:84% I think we talked about the idea of Quizlet versus flashcards. 00:04:47.820 --> 00:04:50.130 align:middle line:84% It's basically the same technological premise, 00:04:50.130 --> 00:04:51.990 align:middle line:90% but you're just digitizing it. 00:04:51.990 --> 00:04:55.060 align:middle line:84% JUSTIN REICH: And what's the virtue of doing that? 00:04:55.060 --> 00:04:57.790 align:middle line:84% AUDIENCE: I guess people will think it's new 00:04:57.790 --> 00:04:59.300 align:middle line:84% and maybe even be excited by that, 00:04:59.300 --> 00:05:00.920 align:middle line:90% but there's no real change. 00:05:00.920 --> 00:05:01.712 align:middle line:90% JUSTIN REICH: Good. 00:05:01.712 --> 00:05:05.980 align:middle line:84% What do people want to add to just that particular idea? 00:05:05.980 --> 00:05:08.980 align:middle line:84% AUDIENCE: I was going to say, it kind of stems from this idea 00:05:08.980 --> 00:05:13.930 align:middle line:84% that these new inventors just have a lack of knowledge 00:05:13.930 --> 00:05:16.480 align:middle line:90% of what's come before them. 00:05:16.480 --> 00:05:18.800 align:middle line:84% And that's kind of where it can stem from. 00:05:18.800 --> 00:05:19.840 align:middle line:84% JUSTIN REICH: That can be a problem, yeah. 00:05:19.840 --> 00:05:21.770 align:middle line:84% Sabrina, what were you going to say, and then, Gloria? 00:05:21.770 --> 00:05:23.312 align:middle line:84% AUDIENCE: I was going to say how they 00:05:23.312 --> 00:05:27.050 align:middle line:84% take these new technologies, and instead of revolutionizing them, 00:05:27.050 --> 00:05:29.950 align:middle line:84% they just bend it so that it fits 00:05:29.950 --> 00:05:32.527 align:middle line:84% how it-- old institution still continues to [INAUDIBLE]. 00:05:32.527 --> 00:05:33.610 align:middle line:90% JUSTIN REICH: I like that. 00:05:33.610 --> 00:05:36.997 align:middle line:84% We take things, and we make them fit in existing institutions. 00:05:36.997 --> 00:05:39.580 align:middle line:84% AUDIENCE: Yeah, I was going to say that education and learning 00:05:39.580 --> 00:05:40.640 align:middle line:90% is very risk-averse. 00:05:40.640 --> 00:05:44.450 align:middle line:84% So people don't want their kids to be the ones experimented on. 00:05:44.450 --> 00:05:46.668 align:middle line:84% So when things are repackaged, it's still like, oh, 00:05:46.668 --> 00:05:48.710 align:middle line:84% we know this works because it's been done before, 00:05:48.710 --> 00:05:50.068 align:middle line:90% but it's still new. 00:05:50.068 --> 00:05:50.860 align:middle line:90% JUSTIN REICH: Good. 00:05:50.860 --> 00:05:53.070 align:middle line:90% All right, so I'm sensing-- 00:05:53.070 --> 00:05:55.827 align:middle line:84% which might be appropriate-- a little bit of a negative vibe 00:05:55.827 --> 00:05:57.910 align:middle line:84% on the people who are doing these kinds of things. 00:05:57.910 --> 00:06:01.800 align:middle line:84% But if we wanted to celebrate folks who take technologies that 00:06:01.800 --> 00:06:04.230 align:middle line:84% digitize existing practices, what's 00:06:04.230 --> 00:06:05.680 align:middle line:90% the virtue of that approach? 00:06:05.680 --> 00:06:08.580 align:middle line:90% What's good about it? 00:06:08.580 --> 00:06:11.378 align:middle line:84% AUDIENCE: I can carry a million flashcards in my pocket. 00:06:11.378 --> 00:06:12.420 align:middle line:90% JUSTIN REICH: Yeah, good. 00:06:12.420 --> 00:06:15.690 align:middle line:84% And everyone knows what to do with them. 00:06:15.690 --> 00:06:18.540 align:middle line:84% Quizlet might be the most widely adopted piece 00:06:18.540 --> 00:06:21.060 align:middle line:84% of education technology software used 00:06:21.060 --> 00:06:22.540 align:middle line:90% in American secondary schools. 00:06:22.540 --> 00:06:24.480 align:middle line:90% That's awesome. 00:06:24.480 --> 00:06:28.332 align:middle line:84% If you want the thing that people will use, 00:06:28.332 --> 00:06:29.790 align:middle line:84% there's some good evidence that you 00:06:29.790 --> 00:06:32.080 align:middle line:84% have to give them something they're familiar with. 00:06:32.080 --> 00:06:33.880 align:middle line:84% AUDIENCE: And also, you mentioned 00:06:33.880 --> 00:06:35.880 align:middle line:84% that you can have a million different flashcards 00:06:35.880 --> 00:06:37.422 align:middle line:84% in your pocket, but you can also have 00:06:37.422 --> 00:06:40.410 align:middle line:84% a million different flashcards from other people sharing ideas 00:06:40.410 --> 00:06:41.328 align:middle line:90% globally. 00:06:41.328 --> 00:06:42.370 align:middle line:90% JUSTIN REICH: Yeah, yeah. 00:06:42.370 --> 00:06:44.415 align:middle line:84% So we can take this idea of a flashcard, 00:06:44.415 --> 00:06:45.790 align:middle line:84% and we can tweak it a little bit. 00:06:45.790 --> 00:06:47.640 align:middle line:84% We can do some of the things that digital technologies 00:06:47.640 --> 00:06:48.340 align:middle line:90% are good at. 00:06:48.340 --> 00:06:49.300 align:middle line:90% We can make it scaled. 00:06:49.300 --> 00:06:50.217 align:middle line:90% We can make it shared. 00:06:50.217 --> 00:06:52.160 align:middle line:84% We can make all this kind of stuff, 00:06:52.160 --> 00:06:56.840 align:middle line:84% with always running into the hard limitation of, how much 00:06:56.840 --> 00:07:00.320 align:middle line:84% can you improve schooling by improving flashcards? 00:07:00.320 --> 00:07:02.990 align:middle line:84% Flashcards are-- I mean, the joke I tell often 00:07:02.990 --> 00:07:06.620 align:middle line:84% is, if you got all of the world's experts together 00:07:06.620 --> 00:07:09.112 align:middle line:84% and were like, what does education really need? 00:07:09.112 --> 00:07:11.070 align:middle line:84% What do we really need to go to the next level? 00:07:11.070 --> 00:07:12.900 align:middle line:84% No one would raise their hand and be like, 00:07:12.900 --> 00:07:14.730 align:middle line:84% there's a huge dearth of flashcards. 00:07:14.730 --> 00:07:17.940 align:middle line:84% We need to dramatically improve flashcard technology. 00:07:17.940 --> 00:07:19.710 align:middle line:90% There's plenty of index cards. 00:07:19.710 --> 00:07:21.570 align:middle line:84% There's like there's plenty of pencils. 00:07:21.570 --> 00:07:26.720 align:middle line:84% Flashcards are-- it's not an obvious thing to revolutionize. 00:07:26.720 --> 00:07:31.508 align:middle line:84% Also, I mean, I think if you talk to Andrew, 00:07:31.508 --> 00:07:33.050 align:middle line:84% he wouldn't tell you this was a thing 00:07:33.050 --> 00:07:35.240 align:middle line:90% to revolutionize education. 00:07:35.240 --> 00:07:37.100 align:middle line:84% This was just a useful thing for me 00:07:37.100 --> 00:07:39.350 align:middle line:84% to study French that other people found useful 00:07:39.350 --> 00:07:40.360 align:middle line:90% and that I could sell. 00:07:40.360 --> 00:07:43.430 align:middle line:90% 00:07:43.430 --> 00:07:45.530 align:middle line:84% I mean, these kinds of technologies 00:07:45.530 --> 00:07:47.910 align:middle line:90% are like the square boxes. 00:07:47.910 --> 00:07:49.560 align:middle line:90% It fits in the school. 00:07:49.560 --> 00:07:50.780 align:middle line:90% That's a virtue. 00:07:50.780 --> 00:07:52.910 align:middle line:84% We can only benefit from technologies 00:07:52.910 --> 00:07:54.600 align:middle line:90% that fit in our institutions. 00:07:54.600 --> 00:07:56.240 align:middle line:84% Our institutions are risk-averse, 00:07:56.240 --> 00:07:57.657 align:middle line:84% and they're conservative, and they 00:07:57.657 --> 00:07:59.840 align:middle line:90% have a bunch of constraints. 00:07:59.840 --> 00:08:00.620 align:middle line:90% Yeah, Mari. 00:08:00.620 --> 00:08:03.650 align:middle line:84% AUDIENCE: I think one point also that the chapter made 00:08:03.650 --> 00:08:07.760 align:middle line:84% is that it's a phase where people use it in ways they're 00:08:07.760 --> 00:08:10.590 align:middle line:84% familiar with, and then, after a while, 00:08:10.590 --> 00:08:14.430 align:middle line:84% they're able to use it in more revolutionary ways. 00:08:14.430 --> 00:08:17.150 align:middle line:84% So the benefit of having something that they already 00:08:17.150 --> 00:08:20.300 align:middle line:84% know how it works is that they can use it long enough 00:08:20.300 --> 00:08:23.120 align:middle line:84% to get to that point where they might feel comfortable 00:08:23.120 --> 00:08:25.317 align:middle line:84% using it in a way that hasn't been used before. 00:08:25.317 --> 00:08:26.150 align:middle line:90% JUSTIN REICH: Great. 00:08:26.150 --> 00:08:28.070 align:middle line:84% That is one of the two ideas that I've 00:08:28.070 --> 00:08:31.530 align:middle line:84% proposed, with not great research evidence behind them, 00:08:31.530 --> 00:08:34.500 align:middle line:84% that might be a way of getting past the curse of the familiar, 00:08:34.500 --> 00:08:37.130 align:middle line:84% that you introduce things in schools that 00:08:37.130 --> 00:08:39.750 align:middle line:84% have a kind of familiar structure to them 00:08:39.750 --> 00:08:42.735 align:middle line:84% but open them up in ways that go somewhere else. 00:08:42.735 --> 00:08:44.360 align:middle line:84% I don't think there's a lot of evidence 00:08:44.360 --> 00:08:46.880 align:middle line:84% that Quizlet has been able to do that. 00:08:46.880 --> 00:08:48.735 align:middle line:90% Quizlet gives you flashcards. 00:08:48.735 --> 00:08:50.860 align:middle line:84% Actually, I just took a screenshot of their website 00:08:50.860 --> 00:08:52.150 align:middle line:90% right now. 00:08:52.150 --> 00:08:54.340 align:middle line:90% Quizlet is more than flashcards. 00:08:54.340 --> 00:08:56.750 align:middle line:84% If you have to say that you're more than flashcards, 00:08:56.750 --> 00:08:59.660 align:middle line:90% you're probably just flashcards. 00:08:59.660 --> 00:09:02.980 align:middle line:90% You're special pleading there. 00:09:02.980 --> 00:09:06.880 align:middle line:84% All right, you all have described this part 00:09:06.880 --> 00:09:08.300 align:middle line:90% of the curse of the familiar. 00:09:08.300 --> 00:09:11.080 align:middle line:84% What would be some key ideas of the flip side 00:09:11.080 --> 00:09:12.443 align:middle line:90% of the curse of the familiar? 00:09:12.443 --> 00:09:14.860 align:middle line:84% What are the challenges you run into if you make something 00:09:14.860 --> 00:09:16.155 align:middle line:90% that's really new and novel? 00:09:16.155 --> 00:09:21.483 align:middle line:90% 00:09:21.483 --> 00:09:23.900 align:middle line:84% AUDIENCE: Maybe, just going back to what was said earlier, 00:09:23.900 --> 00:09:27.490 align:middle line:84% people don't want their kids to be experimented on. 00:09:27.490 --> 00:09:31.420 align:middle line:84% When something's new, it's not proven to be successful yet. 00:09:31.420 --> 00:09:34.420 align:middle line:84% And it's obviously replacing something else that maybe isn't 00:09:34.420 --> 00:09:36.170 align:middle line:84% the most accessible, but in some cases, 00:09:36.170 --> 00:09:39.130 align:middle line:84% it's there because it is teaching someone something. 00:09:39.130 --> 00:09:41.540 align:middle line:84% So there's this idea that if you introduce something new, 00:09:41.540 --> 00:09:43.457 align:middle line:84% you have no evidence to back up whether or not 00:09:43.457 --> 00:09:44.930 align:middle line:90% it will actually be beneficial. 00:09:44.930 --> 00:09:45.722 align:middle line:90% JUSTIN REICH: Good. 00:09:45.722 --> 00:09:46.840 align:middle line:90% So people are risk-averse. 00:09:46.840 --> 00:09:49.770 align:middle line:84% You used a phrase-- it was like, we know this thing in schools 00:09:49.770 --> 00:09:52.110 align:middle line:90% teaches someone something. 00:09:52.110 --> 00:09:55.930 align:middle line:84% There might even be a lower threshold of acceptability, 00:09:55.930 --> 00:09:59.520 align:middle line:84% which is something like, we know this thing works in schools. 00:09:59.520 --> 00:10:01.740 align:middle line:84% Sometimes a thing works in schools 00:10:01.740 --> 00:10:03.470 align:middle line:84% because people learned something. 00:10:03.470 --> 00:10:06.330 align:middle line:84% Sometimes it works in schools because kids 00:10:06.330 --> 00:10:09.340 align:middle line:84% are quiet and well-behaved and busy and other 00:10:09.340 --> 00:10:11.340 align:middle line:84% things like that, like not even really learning. 00:10:11.340 --> 00:10:16.330 align:middle line:90% 00:10:16.330 --> 00:10:19.410 align:middle line:84% If you've kept hundreds of adolescents in a building safe 00:10:19.410 --> 00:10:24.621 align:middle line:84% and for a day, you've kind of made school work 00:10:24.621 --> 00:10:27.430 align:middle line:84% at one of the baseline levels of it. 00:10:27.430 --> 00:10:31.030 align:middle line:84% So there's practices that we would consider baseline, 00:10:31.030 --> 00:10:32.760 align:middle line:84% not because they teach, but because they 00:10:32.760 --> 00:10:35.850 align:middle line:84% work to do the other things that we ask schools to do. 00:10:35.850 --> 00:10:36.900 align:middle line:90% Yeah, Mari. 00:10:36.900 --> 00:10:38.775 align:middle line:84% AUDIENCE: I think we also talked a little bit 00:10:38.775 --> 00:10:41.050 align:middle line:84% about fear, which is part of the risk-averse aspect, 00:10:41.050 --> 00:10:43.450 align:middle line:84% not only from families, but the students themselves, 00:10:43.450 --> 00:10:45.950 align:middle line:84% the professors, the teachers, as well. 00:10:45.950 --> 00:10:48.200 align:middle line:90% And it was also an aspect of-- 00:10:48.200 --> 00:10:48.750 align:middle line:90% I don't know. 00:10:48.750 --> 00:10:52.850 align:middle line:84% I would put it as credibility because even students, 00:10:52.850 --> 00:10:54.545 align:middle line:84% if something is too different, they're 00:10:54.545 --> 00:10:56.670 align:middle line:84% going to feel like, oh, this is not serious enough. 00:10:56.670 --> 00:10:58.220 align:middle line:84% I would rather just have a lecture 00:10:58.220 --> 00:11:00.960 align:middle line:84% because this is something I've seen being done before. 00:11:00.960 --> 00:11:03.020 align:middle line:90% So they don't-- 00:11:03.020 --> 00:11:05.090 align:middle line:84% JUSTIN REICH: And you know how to do it. 00:11:05.090 --> 00:11:09.870 align:middle line:84% There's a bunch of people who go into school that are like, look, 00:11:09.870 --> 00:11:11.130 align:middle line:90% there's a deal here. 00:11:11.130 --> 00:11:14.190 align:middle line:84% You tell me to do things that I know how to do, 00:11:14.190 --> 00:11:16.880 align:middle line:90% and I will do those things. 00:11:16.880 --> 00:11:19.970 align:middle line:84% Sometimes in lower-performing schools, 00:11:19.970 --> 00:11:23.330 align:middle line:84% that can be expressed as, give me a set of tasks 00:11:23.330 --> 00:11:26.840 align:middle line:84% that I understand how to do, and the day will be quiet 00:11:26.840 --> 00:11:29.360 align:middle line:90% and function. 00:11:29.360 --> 00:11:30.935 align:middle line:84% Or in high-performing schools, it 00:11:30.935 --> 00:11:32.810 align:middle line:84% can be something like, give me a set of tasks 00:11:32.810 --> 00:11:34.970 align:middle line:84% that I know how to get an A on, and I 00:11:34.970 --> 00:11:39.085 align:middle line:84% won't have my parents call you and cause difficulties 00:11:39.085 --> 00:11:39.960 align:middle line:90% and things like that. 00:11:39.960 --> 00:11:42.140 align:middle line:90% But it's the same kind of deal. 00:11:42.140 --> 00:11:46.390 align:middle line:84% New routines break up that arrangement, 00:11:46.390 --> 00:11:49.600 align:middle line:84% and students can be some of the most conservative stakeholders 00:11:49.600 --> 00:11:50.540 align:middle line:90% in these systems. 00:11:50.540 --> 00:11:53.420 align:middle line:84% People can come in and be like, look at this new, awesome thing 00:11:53.420 --> 00:11:55.300 align:middle line:90% we might have us try. 00:11:55.300 --> 00:11:58.215 align:middle line:84% And they'll be like, I don't know how to get an A doing that. 00:11:58.215 --> 00:11:59.590 align:middle line:84% Why don't we go back to the thing 00:11:59.590 --> 00:12:02.110 align:middle line:84% that I know how to get an A doing? 00:12:02.110 --> 00:12:04.030 align:middle line:84% Early on in the days of MOOCs, there 00:12:04.030 --> 00:12:07.072 align:middle line:84% were a handful of people that were trying different things, 00:12:07.072 --> 00:12:09.280 align:middle line:84% and there would always be learners that would show up 00:12:09.280 --> 00:12:11.930 align:middle line:84% in these somewhat novel enterprises being like, 00:12:11.930 --> 00:12:13.010 align:middle line:90% this isn't real learning. 00:12:13.010 --> 00:12:13.970 align:middle line:90% This isn't serious learning. 00:12:13.970 --> 00:12:15.860 align:middle line:84% Why don't we get back to what we were supposed to be-- it's like, 00:12:15.860 --> 00:12:17.060 align:middle line:90% my god, it's optional. 00:12:17.060 --> 00:12:20.902 align:middle line:90% No one is making you be here. 00:12:20.902 --> 00:12:22.360 align:middle line:84% If you want something else, there's 00:12:22.360 --> 00:12:24.110 align:middle line:84% zillions of these courses being developed. 00:12:24.110 --> 00:12:28.970 align:middle line:84% I think there's something in the chapter on MOOCs about that. 00:12:28.970 --> 00:12:29.980 align:middle line:90% Yeah, Armon? 00:12:29.980 --> 00:12:31.990 align:middle line:84% AUDIENCE: I think teachers can also 00:12:31.990 --> 00:12:36.310 align:middle line:84% get overwhelmed by introducing an entirely new, novel idea 00:12:36.310 --> 00:12:37.360 align:middle line:90% while teaching. 00:12:37.360 --> 00:12:39.500 align:middle line:84% JUSTIN REICH: Especially if that novel idea-- 00:12:39.500 --> 00:12:40.940 align:middle line:84% what if you have to change the curriculum? 00:12:40.940 --> 00:12:42.350 align:middle line:84% What if you have to change the schedule? 00:12:42.350 --> 00:12:44.558 align:middle line:84% What if you have to change your grading arrangements? 00:12:44.558 --> 00:12:46.360 align:middle line:90% A new technology can-- 00:12:46.360 --> 00:12:49.150 align:middle line:84% if it's actually changing the way teaching happens, 00:12:49.150 --> 00:12:51.960 align:middle line:84% it's probably trying to simultaneously change 00:12:51.960 --> 00:12:55.950 align:middle line:84% a whole bunch of things that are going on, 00:12:55.950 --> 00:12:58.962 align:middle line:84% which can be stressful, which can be difficult. 00:12:58.962 --> 00:13:00.420 align:middle line:84% AUDIENCE: So a lot of teachers have 00:13:00.420 --> 00:13:02.220 align:middle line:84% to prepare students for a certain exam 00:13:02.220 --> 00:13:04.012 align:middle line:84% at the end of the school year, whether it's 00:13:04.012 --> 00:13:05.950 align:middle line:84% the standardized assessments or AP exams, 00:13:05.950 --> 00:13:09.780 align:middle line:84% and they can't really afford to go off trail and maybe 00:13:09.780 --> 00:13:11.490 align:middle line:84% stick with what they know because that's 00:13:11.490 --> 00:13:13.110 align:middle line:90% what gets the results. 00:13:13.110 --> 00:13:15.690 align:middle line:84% JUSTIN REICH: Which means that different parts of school 00:13:15.690 --> 00:13:18.360 align:middle line:84% systems have different amounts of flexibility 00:13:18.360 --> 00:13:19.718 align:middle line:90% to try really new things. 00:13:19.718 --> 00:13:21.510 align:middle line:84% One of the fun things about being a history 00:13:21.510 --> 00:13:25.425 align:middle line:84% teacher in Massachusetts is that, until this year, when 00:13:25.425 --> 00:13:27.550 align:middle line:84% we just launched an eighth grade civics assessment, 00:13:27.550 --> 00:13:29.610 align:middle line:84% there was no standardized assessment. 00:13:29.610 --> 00:13:32.415 align:middle line:84% I mean, there has been some SAT IIs in history, AP US history, 00:13:32.415 --> 00:13:34.290 align:middle line:84% and things like that, but they're usually not 00:13:34.290 --> 00:13:36.280 align:middle line:84% the centerpiece of people's efforts. 00:13:36.280 --> 00:13:40.740 align:middle line:84% And so history, social studies, electives for seniors, 00:13:40.740 --> 00:13:43.380 align:middle line:84% and then anything in the co-curricular domains-- 00:13:43.380 --> 00:13:45.530 align:middle line:84% theater, arts, dance, physical education-- a lot 00:13:45.530 --> 00:13:47.030 align:middle line:84% of times, those are places where you 00:13:47.030 --> 00:13:49.130 align:middle line:84% can do really different kinds of things. 00:13:49.130 --> 00:13:51.332 align:middle line:84% The mathematics sequence is often 00:13:51.332 --> 00:13:52.790 align:middle line:84% a place where you're like, oh, boy, 00:13:52.790 --> 00:13:56.215 align:middle line:84% this really better work, not only 00:13:56.215 --> 00:13:57.840 align:middle line:84% because people need to do well in math, 00:13:57.840 --> 00:13:59.940 align:middle line:84% but if you don't get eighth grade math, 00:13:59.940 --> 00:14:01.760 align:middle line:90% ninth grade math is really hard. 00:14:01.760 --> 00:14:03.650 align:middle line:84% If you don't get Earth science, you 00:14:03.650 --> 00:14:05.510 align:middle line:84% might still be OK in physics or something 00:14:05.510 --> 00:14:07.520 align:middle line:84% like that because they're just sufficiently different and so 00:14:07.520 --> 00:14:08.020 align:middle line:90% forth. 00:14:08.020 --> 00:14:10.790 align:middle line:84% So the stakes in different parts of schools are different. 00:14:10.790 --> 00:14:14.540 align:middle line:84% There's an old saw in any kind of education development 00:14:14.540 --> 00:14:18.343 align:middle line:84% that the elementary school curriculum is pretty locked. 00:14:18.343 --> 00:14:19.760 align:middle line:84% There's just some reading and math 00:14:19.760 --> 00:14:21.760 align:middle line:84% and a handful of other things people need to do. 00:14:21.760 --> 00:14:23.658 align:middle line:84% The high school curriculum is pretty locked 00:14:23.658 --> 00:14:25.950 align:middle line:84% because they use tracks and exams and things like that. 00:14:25.950 --> 00:14:29.070 align:middle line:84% And middle school is maybe the most open-ended space, 00:14:29.070 --> 00:14:32.450 align:middle line:84% so quite a few new products for education will find themselves 00:14:32.450 --> 00:14:36.680 align:middle line:84% in middle schools, not because 12-year-olds are a particularly 00:14:36.680 --> 00:14:39.150 align:middle line:84% great group to embrace new ideas or something like that. 00:14:39.150 --> 00:14:41.950 align:middle line:84% It's just, that curriculum is more flexible in some ways 00:14:41.950 --> 00:14:44.800 align:middle line:90% than others are. 00:14:44.800 --> 00:14:46.990 align:middle line:84% So we have this example of Quizlet. 00:14:46.990 --> 00:14:50.530 align:middle line:84% I feel like the connectivist MOOCs 00:14:50.530 --> 00:14:53.320 align:middle line:84% that we talked about before are the quintessential example 00:14:53.320 --> 00:14:56.620 align:middle line:84% of, here's some really cool ideas, some really 00:14:56.620 --> 00:14:59.660 align:middle line:84% cool technologies, potentially very different, 00:14:59.660 --> 00:15:03.010 align:middle line:84% solving some very meaningful problems that higher 00:15:03.010 --> 00:15:05.590 align:middle line:84% education had not figured out good ways of solving, 00:15:05.590 --> 00:15:10.220 align:middle line:84% and were essentially rejected by the higher education system-- 00:15:10.220 --> 00:15:13.370 align:middle line:84% a spark of interest for a little while, and then people are like, 00:15:13.370 --> 00:15:14.330 align:middle line:90% this is weird. 00:15:14.330 --> 00:15:15.380 align:middle line:90% This is different. 00:15:15.380 --> 00:15:17.110 align:middle line:90% What we're doing is fine. 00:15:17.110 --> 00:15:19.930 align:middle line:90% And all this stuff kind of died. 00:15:19.930 --> 00:15:22.480 align:middle line:84% So the question then is, are there 00:15:22.480 --> 00:15:25.713 align:middle line:84% strategies that would get you past the curse of the familiar? 00:15:25.713 --> 00:15:27.130 align:middle line:84% Are there things that you could do 00:15:27.130 --> 00:15:29.530 align:middle line:84% in developing products and services that 00:15:29.530 --> 00:15:33.340 align:middle line:84% would let you use technology to do really different kinds 00:15:33.340 --> 00:15:34.960 align:middle line:90% of teaching and learning? 00:15:34.960 --> 00:15:37.300 align:middle line:84% And I think there are two strategies that 00:15:37.300 --> 00:15:40.070 align:middle line:84% have some evidence behind them that they might work. 00:15:40.070 --> 00:15:42.310 align:middle line:84% One of them, Mari alluded to before, which is, 00:15:42.310 --> 00:15:45.850 align:middle line:84% build a technology that starts somewhere familiar 00:15:45.850 --> 00:15:49.450 align:middle line:84% and goes to a different place somehow. 00:15:49.450 --> 00:15:51.680 align:middle line:84% You enter it, and you're like, I know what that is. 00:15:51.680 --> 00:15:54.013 align:middle line:84% And then you're like, whoa, I could do these other kinds 00:15:54.013 --> 00:15:55.270 align:middle line:90% of things, too. 00:15:55.270 --> 00:15:59.830 align:middle line:84% The second crucial idea is something around cultivating 00:15:59.830 --> 00:16:01.280 align:middle line:90% professional communities. 00:16:01.280 --> 00:16:05.080 align:middle line:84% The easy part of scaling online technologies 00:16:05.080 --> 00:16:07.780 align:middle line:84% is getting people to download stuff. 00:16:07.780 --> 00:16:11.240 align:middle line:84% It's not that difficult to get an app on people's machines, 00:16:11.240 --> 00:16:12.260 align:middle line:90% on schools' machines. 00:16:12.260 --> 00:16:14.762 align:middle line:84% It's not that difficult to get millions of YouTube views 00:16:14.762 --> 00:16:16.220 align:middle line:84% or other kinds of things like that. 00:16:16.220 --> 00:16:19.730 align:middle line:84% What's really hard is not scaling technology, 00:16:19.730 --> 00:16:21.050 align:middle line:90% but scaling community. 00:16:21.050 --> 00:16:23.170 align:middle line:84% How do you get groups of educators 00:16:23.170 --> 00:16:27.140 align:middle line:84% to share the ideas for new practices with other people? 00:16:27.140 --> 00:16:29.410 align:middle line:84% But there are a couple of organizations 00:16:29.410 --> 00:16:35.440 align:middle line:84% that have done a demonstrably good job of not only scaling 00:16:35.440 --> 00:16:38.770 align:middle line:84% their product, but scaling the ideas, the pedagogies, 00:16:38.770 --> 00:16:40.210 align:middle line:90% the new ideas underneath that. 00:16:40.210 --> 00:16:45.570 align:middle line:84% So the two I like to talk about are Scratch and Desmos. 00:16:45.570 --> 00:16:49.470 align:middle line:84% They've probably made the most progress on this. 00:16:49.470 --> 00:16:56.770 align:middle line:84% Scratch maybe has never achieved a familiar place to start, 00:16:56.770 --> 00:17:00.370 align:middle line:84% but they have thought a lot about entry points, 00:17:00.370 --> 00:17:02.770 align:middle line:90% about how you get people in. 00:17:02.770 --> 00:17:04.650 align:middle line:84% Seymour Papert had this famous line 00:17:04.650 --> 00:17:07.630 align:middle line:84% that you want technologies with low floors and high ceilings. 00:17:07.630 --> 00:17:09.486 align:middle line:84% Yousef referred to it a few times ago. 00:17:09.486 --> 00:17:11.069 align:middle line:84% You want something that is pretty easy 00:17:11.069 --> 00:17:15.119 align:middle line:84% to get people into and also things that they can really 00:17:15.119 --> 00:17:18.390 align:middle line:90% do awesome stuff later on. 00:17:18.390 --> 00:17:20.040 align:middle line:84% Sometimes the Scratch people have also 00:17:20.040 --> 00:17:21.790 align:middle line:90% talked about narrow entryways. 00:17:21.790 --> 00:17:24.190 align:middle line:84% You want people to get into the software-- 00:17:24.190 --> 00:17:27.450 align:middle line:84% get into the platform, have some more clear ideas about what 00:17:27.450 --> 00:17:30.070 align:middle line:84% to do with a few things, and then go other places. 00:17:30.070 --> 00:17:33.480 align:middle line:84% For a while, Scratch was experimenting 00:17:33.480 --> 00:17:36.650 align:middle line:84% with these micro worlds, where you would get a smaller 00:17:36.650 --> 00:17:39.450 align:middle line:84% set of blocks, a smaller set of sprites, 00:17:39.450 --> 00:17:41.818 align:middle line:84% and they would be connected to what 00:17:41.818 --> 00:17:43.860 align:middle line:84% they thought young people would be interested in. 00:17:43.860 --> 00:17:46.380 align:middle line:84% So I think there was a stand-up comedy micro world. 00:17:46.380 --> 00:17:47.880 align:middle line:90% There was a fashion micro world. 00:17:47.880 --> 00:17:49.310 align:middle line:90% There was a dance micro world. 00:17:49.310 --> 00:17:51.770 align:middle line:84% It was like, don't learn everything about Scratch. 00:17:51.770 --> 00:17:54.500 align:middle line:84% Just learn enough to make there be a little stand-up comedy 00:17:54.500 --> 00:17:56.390 align:middle line:84% routine or to make there be a little dance or things 00:17:56.390 --> 00:17:56.820 align:middle line:90% like that. 00:17:56.820 --> 00:17:58.920 align:middle line:84% So you have a set of sprites that are relevant to that. 00:17:58.920 --> 00:18:01.045 align:middle line:84% You have a set of blocks that are relevant to that. 00:18:01.045 --> 00:18:02.610 align:middle line:84% And once you learn that smaller part, 00:18:02.610 --> 00:18:05.690 align:middle line:90% go into more complex things. 00:18:05.690 --> 00:18:08.990 align:middle line:84% A thing that I think Scratch has done a very good job of 00:18:08.990 --> 00:18:13.400 align:middle line:84% is scaling community, is basically saying-- 00:18:13.400 --> 00:18:17.690 align:middle line:84% is acknowledging that if educators just download Scratch 00:18:17.690 --> 00:18:20.577 align:middle line:84% into their machines, that is not enough to get over 00:18:20.577 --> 00:18:21.660 align:middle line:90% the curse of the familiar. 00:18:21.660 --> 00:18:23.840 align:middle line:84% They know exactly what happens when 00:18:23.840 --> 00:18:26.420 align:middle line:84% people who don't understand the pedagogy of Scratch 00:18:26.420 --> 00:18:27.240 align:middle line:90% download Scratch. 00:18:27.240 --> 00:18:28.823 align:middle line:84% And you heard Yousef talking about it. 00:18:28.823 --> 00:18:30.450 align:middle line:84% They just turn it into a recipe book. 00:18:30.450 --> 00:18:32.240 align:middle line:84% So instead of having it be this place 00:18:32.240 --> 00:18:34.370 align:middle line:84% for computational creativity, you 00:18:34.370 --> 00:18:35.830 align:middle line:84% see all the students in lockstep, 00:18:35.830 --> 00:18:37.330 align:middle line:84% all building the same greeting card, 00:18:37.330 --> 00:18:40.060 align:middle line:84% or all building the same roller coaster, or whatever it is. 00:18:40.060 --> 00:18:43.840 align:middle line:84% So they have all kinds of programs that 00:18:43.840 --> 00:18:45.615 align:middle line:90% are developed for educators. 00:18:45.615 --> 00:18:47.990 align:middle line:84% They have a World Scratch Day, where people get together. 00:18:47.990 --> 00:18:49.550 align:middle line:84% They have Scratch educator meetups. 00:18:49.550 --> 00:18:51.940 align:middle line:84% They had, for a while, Minutes with Mitch, 00:18:51.940 --> 00:18:55.550 align:middle line:84% which were Mitch Resnick giving short talks about ideas 00:18:55.550 --> 00:18:56.050 align:middle line:90% and things. 00:18:56.050 --> 00:18:58.960 align:middle line:84% And Natalie's Notes-- they have other kinds of projects 00:18:58.960 --> 00:19:00.790 align:middle line:90% and tools and things like that. 00:19:00.790 --> 00:19:05.170 align:middle line:84% A big part of them is meant to get scratch educators connected 00:19:05.170 --> 00:19:06.550 align:middle line:90% with each other. 00:19:06.550 --> 00:19:08.960 align:middle line:84% If you-- and a few studies have done this. 00:19:08.960 --> 00:19:13.400 align:middle line:84% If you interview teachers about how they adopt new pedagogies, 00:19:13.400 --> 00:19:17.260 align:middle line:84% the number one answer they will give you is from other teachers. 00:19:17.260 --> 00:19:20.440 align:middle line:84% The main reason why a teacher is willing to try a new practice 00:19:20.440 --> 00:19:23.620 align:middle line:84% is because they see that practice working 00:19:23.620 --> 00:19:26.533 align:middle line:84% in somebody else's classroom, ideally someone who 00:19:26.533 --> 00:19:29.200 align:middle line:84% teaches in a place like them, in a grade like them, in a subject 00:19:29.200 --> 00:19:30.940 align:middle line:90% like them, that's near them. 00:19:30.940 --> 00:19:34.230 align:middle line:84% What that means is that any of these kinds of curriculum 00:19:34.230 --> 00:19:36.090 align:middle line:84% change, technology change problems 00:19:36.090 --> 00:19:37.930 align:middle line:84% are really peer learning problems. 00:19:37.930 --> 00:19:40.170 align:middle line:84% You have to figure, out how do you get teachers 00:19:40.170 --> 00:19:41.650 align:middle line:90% to share with one another? 00:19:41.650 --> 00:19:44.760 align:middle line:84% That is just immensely more complicated 00:19:44.760 --> 00:19:50.280 align:middle line:84% than it is to get software to be disseminated widely. 00:19:50.280 --> 00:19:52.548 align:middle line:84% It's particularly difficult in most places 00:19:52.548 --> 00:19:54.090 align:middle line:84% in the world in education, definitely 00:19:54.090 --> 00:19:55.600 align:middle line:84% in the United States in education, 00:19:55.600 --> 00:20:00.060 align:middle line:84% because there are weak professional-- 00:20:00.060 --> 00:20:02.460 align:middle line:84% the professional organization level of education 00:20:02.460 --> 00:20:03.600 align:middle line:90% is really weak. 00:20:03.600 --> 00:20:07.500 align:middle line:84% If you were like, man, I want all of the emergency room 00:20:07.500 --> 00:20:09.843 align:middle line:84% doctors to do something different and better, 00:20:09.843 --> 00:20:12.010 align:middle line:84% you'd be like, oh, let's go to whatever it's called, 00:20:12.010 --> 00:20:13.770 align:middle line:84% the American Academy of Emergency Physicians 00:20:13.770 --> 00:20:14.500 align:middle line:90% or something like that. 00:20:14.500 --> 00:20:15.810 align:middle line:84% If you wanted all the pediatricians 00:20:15.810 --> 00:20:18.268 align:middle line:84% to do something different, you'd go to the American Academy 00:20:18.268 --> 00:20:21.870 align:middle line:84% of Pediatricians, and you would convince some senior steering 00:20:21.870 --> 00:20:24.270 align:middle line:84% committee of the American Academy of Pediatricians 00:20:24.270 --> 00:20:26.080 align:middle line:84% that we're going to do this new practice. 00:20:26.080 --> 00:20:28.600 align:middle line:84% And they would be like, yes, this is a good practice. 00:20:28.600 --> 00:20:29.560 align:middle line:90% Let's all do that. 00:20:29.560 --> 00:20:32.100 align:middle line:84% And then that group has a Journal of Pediatrics, 00:20:32.100 --> 00:20:35.447 align:middle line:84% and all the pediatricians read it, and you can get people, 00:20:35.447 --> 00:20:38.030 align:middle line:84% even though there are thousands and thousands of pediatricians 00:20:38.030 --> 00:20:39.863 align:middle line:84% in the country, you can get them to be like, 00:20:39.863 --> 00:20:41.580 align:middle line:84% OK, this is a new and better idea. 00:20:41.580 --> 00:20:45.330 align:middle line:84% Education does not have that professional organization level. 00:20:45.330 --> 00:20:47.870 align:middle line:84% There's no authoritative body that says, 00:20:47.870 --> 00:20:49.680 align:middle line:84% this is a good way to teach second graders, 00:20:49.680 --> 00:20:52.820 align:middle line:84% or this is a good way to teach math or reading. 00:20:52.820 --> 00:20:55.087 align:middle line:84% We have teachers unions which organize teachers 00:20:55.087 --> 00:20:57.170 align:middle line:84% in a bunch of places in the US, and they sometimes 00:20:57.170 --> 00:20:59.253 align:middle line:84% have a professional learning role, but usually not 00:20:59.253 --> 00:21:01.948 align:middle line:90% this kind of authoritative one. 00:21:01.948 --> 00:21:04.490 align:middle line:84% There are organizations like the National Council of Teachers 00:21:04.490 --> 00:21:07.073 align:middle line:84% of Mathematics or the National Council of Teachers of English, 00:21:07.073 --> 00:21:09.282 align:middle line:84% and they sort of have some things that are like this, 00:21:09.282 --> 00:21:11.480 align:middle line:84% but they're very weak compared to other professions 00:21:11.480 --> 00:21:14.240 align:middle line:90% and other kinds of things. 00:21:14.240 --> 00:21:17.420 align:middle line:84% How many of you use Desmos in schools? 00:21:17.420 --> 00:21:18.650 align:middle line:90% OK, a lot more now. 00:21:18.650 --> 00:21:22.670 align:middle line:84% This is way more than you would have said five or six years ago. 00:21:22.670 --> 00:21:25.910 align:middle line:84% Desmos was originally developed as a graphing calculator. 00:21:25.910 --> 00:21:27.650 align:middle line:84% Its earliest functions were just, 00:21:27.650 --> 00:21:32.690 align:middle line:84% we're going to make a TI-84 available on every machine 00:21:32.690 --> 00:21:34.280 align:middle line:90% for free. 00:21:34.280 --> 00:21:36.140 align:middle line:84% And one of the brilliant things they did 00:21:36.140 --> 00:21:39.540 align:middle line:84% was they got, instead of consumers to pay for it, 00:21:39.540 --> 00:21:42.620 align:middle line:84% they got testing companies and publishers to pay for it. 00:21:42.620 --> 00:21:44.102 align:middle line:90% And what that meant was-- 00:21:44.102 --> 00:21:45.560 align:middle line:84% I mean, that was the way they could 00:21:45.560 --> 00:21:47.600 align:middle line:84% make a high-quality project available for free, 00:21:47.600 --> 00:21:49.440 align:middle line:84% without ads, without subscriptions, 00:21:49.440 --> 00:21:52.860 align:middle line:84% without costs to the education system. 00:21:52.860 --> 00:21:56.690 align:middle line:84% And of course, for anybody who's used a TI-84 before, you look 00:21:56.690 --> 00:21:58.620 align:middle line:84% at something like this, and you're like, yeah, 00:21:58.620 --> 00:21:59.490 align:middle line:90% I know what to do there. 00:21:59.490 --> 00:22:01.198 align:middle line:84% I'm going to start teaching in equations, 00:22:01.198 --> 00:22:04.070 align:middle line:84% and it's going to start graphing them for me. 00:22:04.070 --> 00:22:06.470 align:middle line:84% I mean, for those of you who grew up 00:22:06.470 --> 00:22:09.860 align:middle line:84% in affluent environments, replacing a TI-84 might not 00:22:09.860 --> 00:22:10.762 align:middle line:90% be a big deal. 00:22:10.762 --> 00:22:12.470 align:middle line:84% But there are lots of households and lots 00:22:12.470 --> 00:22:15.380 align:middle line:84% of families where an $80 cost, $120 cost 00:22:15.380 --> 00:22:19.370 align:middle line:84% is a big deal, a real obstacle to kids' education, schools 00:22:19.370 --> 00:22:21.000 align:middle line:84% where they just have TI-84 and boxes, 00:22:21.000 --> 00:22:23.000 align:middle line:84% and they hand them out at the beginning of class 00:22:23.000 --> 00:22:25.458 align:middle line:84% and put them back in the box at the end of class and things 00:22:25.458 --> 00:22:26.330 align:middle line:90% like that. 00:22:26.330 --> 00:22:30.940 align:middle line:84% But you could give just this to lots of math teachers and lots 00:22:30.940 --> 00:22:32.870 align:middle line:84% of students, and they would be like, great. 00:22:32.870 --> 00:22:35.620 align:middle line:84% I totally know what to do with this. 00:22:35.620 --> 00:22:37.810 align:middle line:84% And then on top of that, there was 00:22:37.810 --> 00:22:41.500 align:middle line:84% all kinds of other crazy things that you could do with Desmos. 00:22:41.500 --> 00:22:43.150 align:middle line:84% One of the things they do every year is 00:22:43.150 --> 00:22:45.650 align:middle line:84% have an art-- maybe they still don't do it, but for a while, 00:22:45.650 --> 00:22:47.080 align:middle line:84% they would have art competitions, 00:22:47.080 --> 00:22:49.553 align:middle line:84% where you have people who create drawings using 00:22:49.553 --> 00:22:50.720 align:middle line:90% graphs and things like that. 00:22:50.720 --> 00:22:51.317 align:middle line:90% I don't know. 00:22:51.317 --> 00:22:52.900 align:middle line:84% What were the kinds of things that you 00:22:52.900 --> 00:22:54.880 align:middle line:84% did with Desmos that were very different 00:22:54.880 --> 00:22:57.487 align:middle line:84% from a graphing calculator, for those 00:22:57.487 --> 00:22:58.695 align:middle line:90% of you who raised your hands? 00:22:58.695 --> 00:23:03.700 align:middle line:90% 00:23:03.700 --> 00:23:05.200 align:middle line:84% AUDIENCE: I think this is something 00:23:05.200 --> 00:23:06.770 align:middle line:84% you could do on a graphing calculator 00:23:06.770 --> 00:23:10.120 align:middle line:84% but that was made so much easier was just 00:23:10.120 --> 00:23:13.510 align:middle line:84% seeing just different versions of the same graph 00:23:13.510 --> 00:23:18.010 align:middle line:84% simultaneously or being able to slide the coefficients 00:23:18.010 --> 00:23:19.030 align:middle line:90% and the variables. 00:23:19.030 --> 00:23:19.780 align:middle line:90% JUSTIN REICH: Yep. 00:23:19.780 --> 00:23:22.930 align:middle line:84% And so modeling is a term that a lot of math teachers 00:23:22.930 --> 00:23:24.230 align:middle line:90% might use to describe that. 00:23:24.230 --> 00:23:26.080 align:middle line:84% You can look at the same equation 00:23:26.080 --> 00:23:30.900 align:middle line:84% across a range of parameters and things like that. 00:23:30.900 --> 00:23:34.186 align:middle line:90% AUDIENCE: Sometimes we had TI-- 00:23:34.186 --> 00:23:36.270 align:middle line:90% was it TI-83? 00:23:36.270 --> 00:23:40.590 align:middle line:84% So it's a lot easier to input stuff into Desmos 00:23:40.590 --> 00:23:42.298 align:middle line:84% when compared to traditional calculators. 00:23:42.298 --> 00:23:43.090 align:middle line:90% JUSTIN REICH: Yeah. 00:23:43.090 --> 00:23:45.270 align:middle line:84% So some of it, it just made some efficiency gains. 00:23:45.270 --> 00:23:47.190 align:middle line:84% They just figured out some ways of doing 00:23:47.190 --> 00:23:50.160 align:middle line:84% some mathematical inputs that are a little bit easier if you 00:23:50.160 --> 00:23:53.200 align:middle line:84% learn them on a keyboard than on a number pad. 00:23:53.200 --> 00:23:53.700 align:middle line:90% Hmm? 00:23:53.700 --> 00:23:56.550 align:middle line:84% AUDIENCE: Finding intersections of two polynomials-- you just 00:23:56.550 --> 00:23:58.118 align:middle line:84% click on it, as opposed to, let's 00:23:58.118 --> 00:23:59.910 align:middle line:84% go through the directions of how to find it 00:23:59.910 --> 00:24:01.077 align:middle line:90% on your graphing calculator. 00:24:01.077 --> 00:24:03.090 align:middle line:90% Go left, go right, go-- 00:24:03.090 --> 00:24:04.650 align:middle line:90% it's so much less bandwidth. 00:24:04.650 --> 00:24:06.310 align:middle line:84% AUDIENCE: And just to add on to that, 00:24:06.310 --> 00:24:09.420 align:middle line:84% I think I heard somewhere, I don't remember when, 00:24:09.420 --> 00:24:13.230 align:middle line:84% but some technologies like ChatGPT 00:24:13.230 --> 00:24:15.420 align:middle line:84% are like extremely bad for beginners 00:24:15.420 --> 00:24:16.830 align:middle line:90% because it distracts them. 00:24:16.830 --> 00:24:20.990 align:middle line:84% In this case, I literally made this analogy the other day. 00:24:20.990 --> 00:24:22.240 align:middle line:90% I think it was just yesterday. 00:24:22.240 --> 00:24:24.700 align:middle line:84% I was talking to somebody about this class, and I said, 00:24:24.700 --> 00:24:26.700 align:middle line:84% a calculator, sometimes, if you don't know how to use it, 00:24:26.700 --> 00:24:28.617 align:middle line:84% it'll be more distracting than helpful to you. 00:24:28.617 --> 00:24:32.690 align:middle line:84% And for some people, Desmos was easier in my classrooms 00:24:32.690 --> 00:24:34.538 align:middle line:84% than a traditional graphing calculator. 00:24:34.538 --> 00:24:35.330 align:middle line:90% JUSTIN REICH: Yeah. 00:24:35.330 --> 00:24:39.560 align:middle line:84% If you lower the barrier to learning 00:24:39.560 --> 00:24:41.300 align:middle line:84% the interface-- learning the interface 00:24:41.300 --> 00:24:42.510 align:middle line:90% is not useful to anyone. 00:24:42.510 --> 00:24:43.890 align:middle line:90% What's useful is doing math. 00:24:43.890 --> 00:24:46.140 align:middle line:84% And if the barrier to learning the interface is high, 00:24:46.140 --> 00:24:48.723 align:middle line:84% then you're spending a bunch of your math time not doing math. 00:24:48.723 --> 00:24:54.050 align:middle line:84% You're doing user interface on 1980s era calculators. 00:24:54.050 --> 00:24:56.600 align:middle line:84% I mean, yeah, the calculator-- calculators 00:24:56.600 --> 00:24:59.040 align:middle line:84% are a remarkable piece of technology. 00:24:59.040 --> 00:25:01.740 align:middle line:84% They cost, like, $0.50 to make or something like that, 00:25:01.740 --> 00:25:05.930 align:middle line:84% and they sell them for $100 because they have a regulatory 00:25:05.930 --> 00:25:09.518 align:middle line:84% lock-in because you get the testing companies to agree 00:25:09.518 --> 00:25:11.810 align:middle line:84% to mandate them, and then the curriculum companies have 00:25:11.810 --> 00:25:15.440 align:middle line:84% to mandate them, and then Texas Instruments can charge $100 00:25:15.440 --> 00:25:18.860 align:middle line:84% for something that should be a lot less. 00:25:18.860 --> 00:25:20.690 align:middle line:84% All right, so what are some things 00:25:20.690 --> 00:25:26.470 align:middle line:84% that Desmos did to try to get folks excited about some 00:25:26.470 --> 00:25:33.250 align:middle line:84% of the other capacities in Desmos 00:25:33.250 --> 00:25:39.580 align:middle line:84% is, in addition to promoting the technology of Desmos, 00:25:39.580 --> 00:25:42.580 align:middle line:84% their leadership promoted alternative approaches 00:25:42.580 --> 00:25:44.230 align:middle line:90% to teaching mathematics. 00:25:44.230 --> 00:25:48.490 align:middle line:84% So Dan Meyer, who is the chief academic officer of Desmos, 00:25:48.490 --> 00:25:52.387 align:middle line:84% he did a bunch of teaching in low-income schools 00:25:52.387 --> 00:25:54.970 align:middle line:84% and in schools with a bunch of kids who would have been pretty 00:25:54.970 --> 00:25:57.280 align:middle line:84% turned off to math, thought a lot about, 00:25:57.280 --> 00:25:59.710 align:middle line:84% What kinds of pedagogies really engage students? 00:25:59.710 --> 00:26:03.580 align:middle line:84% and came up with this framework he called 3 Act Math. 00:26:03.580 --> 00:26:05.510 align:middle line:90% It was very media-based. 00:26:05.510 --> 00:26:10.720 align:middle line:84% So he would take a picture of himself shooting a basketball. 00:26:10.720 --> 00:26:12.610 align:middle line:84% So you'd watch a video of him shooting 00:26:12.610 --> 00:26:14.810 align:middle line:84% a free throw, and about halfway through the shot, 00:26:14.810 --> 00:26:16.187 align:middle line:90% he would stop it. 00:26:16.187 --> 00:26:18.020 align:middle line:84% And that's all the video that you would see. 00:26:18.020 --> 00:26:20.103 align:middle line:84% Actually, I'll give you my favorite example of it. 00:26:20.103 --> 00:26:22.920 align:middle line:84% Do you remember in geometry, you are always 00:26:22.920 --> 00:26:26.830 align:middle line:84% encountering hexagonal fish tanks and things like that? 00:26:26.830 --> 00:26:29.830 align:middle line:84% You're always encountering these shapes that would never exist. 00:26:29.830 --> 00:26:34.620 align:middle line:84% So he found a hexagonal fish tank and gets a hose 00:26:34.620 --> 00:26:37.230 align:middle line:84% and holds the hose on top of the fish tank 00:26:37.230 --> 00:26:40.080 align:middle line:84% and just makes a video of 30 seconds of just water filling 00:26:40.080 --> 00:26:40.950 align:middle line:90% up. 00:26:40.950 --> 00:26:43.478 align:middle line:84% And usually when he shows this video, at some point, 00:26:43.478 --> 00:26:45.520 align:middle line:84% some kid is like, how long is this going to take? 00:26:45.520 --> 00:26:47.100 align:middle line:90% And he goes, exactly. 00:26:47.100 --> 00:26:49.770 align:middle line:84% And then you stop the video there. 00:26:49.770 --> 00:26:53.662 align:middle line:84% But these videos inspire a natural curiosity. 00:26:53.662 --> 00:26:55.620 align:middle line:84% How long does it take the fish tank to fill up? 00:26:55.620 --> 00:26:57.690 align:middle line:90% Will the basketball go in? 00:26:57.690 --> 00:26:59.573 align:middle line:84% And then what he does-- that's the first act, 00:26:59.573 --> 00:27:01.240 align:middle line:84% sort of setting up some kind of problem. 00:27:01.240 --> 00:27:03.600 align:middle line:84% The second act is trying to figure out 00:27:03.600 --> 00:27:04.960 align:middle line:90% what's going on in the setting. 00:27:04.960 --> 00:27:07.440 align:middle line:84% So students have a chance to ask a bunch of questions. 00:27:07.440 --> 00:27:09.460 align:middle line:84% How far away was this person from the basket? 00:27:09.460 --> 00:27:10.720 align:middle line:90% How high is the basket? 00:27:10.720 --> 00:27:12.130 align:middle line:90% How fast is the ball moving? 00:27:12.130 --> 00:27:12.940 align:middle line:90% What is the arc? 00:27:12.940 --> 00:27:14.047 align:middle line:90% How big is the fish tank? 00:27:14.047 --> 00:27:15.130 align:middle line:90% How wide is the fish tank? 00:27:15.130 --> 00:27:16.330 align:middle line:90% How tall is the fish tank? 00:27:16.330 --> 00:27:18.690 align:middle line:84% What is the angle on each side of the fish tank? 00:27:18.690 --> 00:27:19.720 align:middle line:90% How wide is the hose? 00:27:19.720 --> 00:27:21.428 align:middle line:84% How much water is coming out of the hose? 00:27:21.428 --> 00:27:22.680 align:middle line:90% All these kinds of things. 00:27:22.680 --> 00:27:27.150 align:middle line:84% Some of these details Dan or other teachers will give 00:27:27.150 --> 00:27:28.890 align:middle line:84% to their students, and some they won't. 00:27:28.890 --> 00:27:31.140 align:middle line:84% And then they agree on a question, 00:27:31.140 --> 00:27:33.010 align:middle line:84% or the teacher imposes a question. 00:27:33.010 --> 00:27:34.530 align:middle line:84% OK, the question is going to be, how long is this 00:27:34.530 --> 00:27:35.620 align:middle line:90% going to take to fill up? 00:27:35.620 --> 00:27:38.310 align:middle line:84% And I'm going to give you these pieces of information. 00:27:38.310 --> 00:27:42.630 align:middle line:84% Now, because it's a real-world environment, 00:27:42.630 --> 00:27:44.400 align:middle line:84% it's actually kind mathematically 00:27:44.400 --> 00:27:49.390 align:middle line:84% impossible to determine the exact answer to these questions. 00:27:49.390 --> 00:27:51.840 align:middle line:84% The amount of water that's flowing through the hose 00:27:51.840 --> 00:27:53.880 align:middle line:84% through a municipal water system is not 00:27:53.880 --> 00:27:57.930 align:middle line:84% a completely predictable amount that's coming out every time. 00:27:57.930 --> 00:27:59.890 align:middle line:84% He'll give some measurements of the tank, 00:27:59.890 --> 00:28:01.920 align:middle line:84% but the tank probably wasn't measured 00:28:01.920 --> 00:28:04.740 align:middle line:84% to the hundredth of a millimeter or something like that. 00:28:04.740 --> 00:28:06.923 align:middle line:84% So students start creating models. 00:28:06.923 --> 00:28:08.340 align:middle line:84% They say, all right, well, I think 00:28:08.340 --> 00:28:10.090 align:middle line:84% it's going to be this-- here's what I know. 00:28:10.090 --> 00:28:11.760 align:middle line:84% And sometimes, there's a little instruction. 00:28:11.760 --> 00:28:13.135 align:middle line:84% Oh, so to figure this out, you're 00:28:13.135 --> 00:28:16.090 align:middle line:84% going to have to calculate the area of a hexagonal solid. 00:28:16.090 --> 00:28:16.800 align:middle line:90% OK. 00:28:16.800 --> 00:28:18.880 align:middle line:84% Here is the formula that you need to do that, 00:28:18.880 --> 00:28:19.540 align:middle line:90% and here's why it'll work. 00:28:19.540 --> 00:28:21.332 align:middle line:84% And then you figure out these other things. 00:28:21.332 --> 00:28:26.840 align:middle line:84% So then the third act is Dan will show the video again, 00:28:26.840 --> 00:28:28.775 align:middle line:84% and the water will be pouring into the tank, 00:28:28.775 --> 00:28:30.150 align:middle line:84% and the water will be filling up. 00:28:30.150 --> 00:28:33.000 align:middle line:84% Usually he accelerates it so it goes a little bit faster. 00:28:33.000 --> 00:28:35.190 align:middle line:84% And he puts a clock in the corner of the video. 00:28:35.190 --> 00:28:37.970 align:middle line:84% Now all of the students have made some kind of prediction 00:28:37.970 --> 00:28:40.260 align:middle line:84% about when they think the tank will fill up, 00:28:40.260 --> 00:28:42.860 align:middle line:84% but it's pretty much impossible to predict exactly. 00:28:42.860 --> 00:28:46.550 align:middle line:84% And he's got great videos of kids watching these Third Act 00:28:46.550 --> 00:28:50.160 align:middle line:84% videos where you see, ah, ugh, like their time 00:28:50.160 --> 00:28:51.120 align:middle line:90% they predict to go off. 00:28:51.120 --> 00:28:53.420 align:middle line:84% And then at some point in the middle of the video, 00:28:53.420 --> 00:28:55.500 align:middle line:84% a third of the class cheers, yeah, 00:28:55.500 --> 00:28:58.108 align:middle line:84% because their time was roughly or something like that. 00:28:58.108 --> 00:28:59.900 align:middle line:84% And it's just this great moment to be like, 00:28:59.900 --> 00:29:02.760 align:middle line:84% typically when you get an answer right in math class, 00:29:02.760 --> 00:29:05.690 align:middle line:84% you don't stand up and cheer and stuff like that. 00:29:05.690 --> 00:29:10.500 align:middle line:84% But there's a few key features of the pedagogy. 00:29:10.500 --> 00:29:12.650 align:middle line:84% First of all, one thing he talks about 00:29:12.650 --> 00:29:15.320 align:middle line:90% is it dials up the math slowly. 00:29:15.320 --> 00:29:18.410 align:middle line:84% So an exercise like this starts at a level of intuition 00:29:18.410 --> 00:29:20.620 align:middle line:84% and questioning that, even if you don't really 00:29:20.620 --> 00:29:25.340 align:middle line:84% understand polynomial functions or complex geometry of solids 00:29:25.340 --> 00:29:27.980 align:middle line:84% well, you can still ask basic questions about it. 00:29:27.980 --> 00:29:30.560 align:middle line:84% You can still make observations about what's important. 00:29:30.560 --> 00:29:32.470 align:middle line:84% And then you ratchet the mathematics 00:29:32.470 --> 00:29:34.540 align:middle line:84% up slowly until you get to the point where you're 00:29:34.540 --> 00:29:36.970 align:middle line:84% working with particular equations, and functions, 00:29:36.970 --> 00:29:38.840 align:middle line:84% and numbers, and those kinds of things. 00:29:38.840 --> 00:29:40.940 align:middle line:84% And that it's impossible to be right-- 00:29:40.940 --> 00:29:43.990 align:middle line:84% everyone in the room is just trying to be the least wrong 00:29:43.990 --> 00:29:47.387 align:middle line:84% that they can and making a series of assumptions, which 00:29:47.387 --> 00:29:48.970 align:middle line:84% hopefully get more and more reasonable 00:29:48.970 --> 00:29:51.350 align:middle line:84% as kids get more and more proficient mathematically, 00:29:51.350 --> 00:29:53.440 align:middle line:90% but will never be perfect. 00:29:53.440 --> 00:29:56.240 align:middle line:90% So Desmos is a tool-- 00:29:56.240 --> 00:29:59.260 align:middle line:84% hopefully you can see how a tool like the slider that [INAUDIBLE] 00:29:59.260 --> 00:30:01.493 align:middle line:84% described before might be quite useful in building 00:30:01.493 --> 00:30:03.160 align:middle line:84% mathematical models of how long it takes 00:30:03.160 --> 00:30:05.530 align:middle line:84% to fill up a tank with a hose and other kinds of things 00:30:05.530 --> 00:30:06.610 align:middle line:90% like that. 00:30:06.610 --> 00:30:10.090 align:middle line:84% Dan Meyer has given talks at math conferences in all 50 00:30:10.090 --> 00:30:11.050 align:middle line:90% states. 00:30:11.050 --> 00:30:14.020 align:middle line:84% He goes around to places all the time. 00:30:14.020 --> 00:30:17.590 align:middle line:84% Probably even more important than Dan going to all 50 states 00:30:17.590 --> 00:30:20.130 align:middle line:84% to give talks is you can still go to math conference-- 00:30:20.130 --> 00:30:24.030 align:middle line:84% probably this year, you could go to a math conference in all 50 00:30:24.030 --> 00:30:27.240 align:middle line:84% states, and someone will be giving a presentation on 3 Act 00:30:27.240 --> 00:30:31.800 align:middle line:84% Math tasks because not just Dan, but other mathematics educators 00:30:31.800 --> 00:30:35.280 align:middle line:84% have taken up the mantle of these ideas. 00:30:35.280 --> 00:30:38.550 align:middle line:84% Probably in those talks, they'll explain how you can use Desmos 00:30:38.550 --> 00:30:39.550 align:middle line:90% for doing these things. 00:30:39.550 --> 00:30:42.270 align:middle line:84% And so all of a sudden, you have not just a new technology 00:30:42.270 --> 00:30:44.550 align:middle line:84% to do math, but you have a whole community 00:30:44.550 --> 00:30:47.410 align:middle line:84% of people that are sharing new practices of how to do it, 00:30:47.410 --> 00:30:49.890 align:middle line:84% just like in Scratch has a whole community of people 00:30:49.890 --> 00:30:51.840 align:middle line:84% who are trying to say, let's not just 00:30:51.840 --> 00:30:54.070 align:middle line:84% teach computer programming as puzzle-solving. 00:30:54.070 --> 00:30:56.830 align:middle line:84% Let's teach it as computational creativity and things like that. 00:30:56.830 --> 00:30:59.080 align:middle line:84% I want to emphasize to you, I mean, 00:30:59.080 --> 00:31:01.590 align:middle line:84% these are like powerful, powerful strategies 00:31:01.590 --> 00:31:03.850 align:middle line:84% for changing teaching and learning, 00:31:03.850 --> 00:31:06.690 align:middle line:84% and they're super hard, and time-consuming, 00:31:06.690 --> 00:31:07.930 align:middle line:90% and energy-consuming. 00:31:07.930 --> 00:31:10.270 align:middle line:84% They require charismatic leaders. 00:31:10.270 --> 00:31:12.100 align:middle line:90% They require really good ideas. 00:31:12.100 --> 00:31:15.400 align:middle line:84% They require technologies that fit with pedagogy. 00:31:15.400 --> 00:31:17.570 align:middle line:84% They require convincing educators, 00:31:17.570 --> 00:31:20.490 align:middle line:84% these risk-averse educators who you described 00:31:20.490 --> 00:31:22.760 align:middle line:84% who are preparing their students for math tests, 00:31:22.760 --> 00:31:24.590 align:middle line:84% here's a better way of doing this. 00:31:24.590 --> 00:31:27.650 align:middle line:84% Nuke a part of your geometry solids unit 00:31:27.650 --> 00:31:29.402 align:middle line:90% and try this new thing. 00:31:29.402 --> 00:31:31.110 align:middle line:84% So there's a whole lot that goes into it. 00:31:31.110 --> 00:31:34.640 align:middle line:84% But those, I think, are the two key strategies 00:31:34.640 --> 00:31:38.660 align:middle line:84% for how we might get past the curse of the familiar. 00:31:38.660 --> 00:31:40.610 align:middle line:84% Start with the familiar and then go new places 00:31:40.610 --> 00:31:42.900 align:middle line:84% and think about not just scaling technology, 00:31:42.900 --> 00:31:44.480 align:middle line:84% but scaling community, cultivating 00:31:44.480 --> 00:31:46.160 align:middle line:90% professional communities. 00:31:46.160 --> 00:31:48.320 align:middle line:84% What observations or thoughts or questions 00:31:48.320 --> 00:31:49.825 align:middle line:90% do you have about those ideas? 00:31:49.825 --> 00:31:56.240 align:middle line:90% 00:31:56.240 --> 00:31:57.568 align:middle line:90% Yeah, Omar? 00:31:57.568 --> 00:31:58.235 align:middle line:90% AUDIENCE: Sorry. 00:31:58.235 --> 00:32:03.350 align:middle line:84% I have a spoiler to my essay, but I did mention that-- 00:32:03.350 --> 00:32:05.150 align:middle line:90% I'll be as vague as possible-- 00:32:05.150 --> 00:32:09.440 align:middle line:84% the target that I was recommending my technology to 00:32:09.440 --> 00:32:14.480 align:middle line:84% actually had the infrastructure implemented like five years 00:32:14.480 --> 00:32:15.680 align:middle line:90% before COVID. 00:32:15.680 --> 00:32:18.580 align:middle line:84% And they started doing a lot of professional teaching 00:32:18.580 --> 00:32:20.240 align:middle line:90% within the entire district. 00:32:20.240 --> 00:32:22.040 align:middle line:84% So by the time COVID came around, 00:32:22.040 --> 00:32:25.750 align:middle line:84% they were ready for distance learning without necessarily 00:32:25.750 --> 00:32:27.490 align:middle line:90% preparing for that. 00:32:27.490 --> 00:32:31.420 align:middle line:84% And they just happened to have the resources necessary 00:32:31.420 --> 00:32:32.870 align:middle line:90% because everybody was involved. 00:32:32.870 --> 00:32:36.070 align:middle line:84% And I remember, there would be teachers having 00:32:36.070 --> 00:32:39.200 align:middle line:84% separate meetings just to talk about what went well, 00:32:39.200 --> 00:32:40.660 align:middle line:90% what didn't go well. 00:32:40.660 --> 00:32:42.850 align:middle line:84% And then I was one of the volunteers 00:32:42.850 --> 00:32:45.950 align:middle line:84% during the last accreditation self-study, 00:32:45.950 --> 00:32:49.270 align:middle line:84% and I was in there listening to what 00:32:49.270 --> 00:32:50.830 align:middle line:90% happened during the pandemic. 00:32:50.830 --> 00:32:53.770 align:middle line:90% This was-- I don't know-- 00:32:53.770 --> 00:32:56.200 align:middle line:90% at the end of COVID. 00:32:56.200 --> 00:32:59.090 align:middle line:84% And then they were recruiting for that self-study. 00:32:59.090 --> 00:33:00.650 align:middle line:84% But I was able to listen in on that, 00:33:00.650 --> 00:33:02.830 align:middle line:84% and it was really cool to see the community 00:33:02.830 --> 00:33:04.228 align:middle line:90% that the teachers had built up. 00:33:04.228 --> 00:33:05.020 align:middle line:90% JUSTIN REICH: Yeah. 00:33:05.020 --> 00:33:09.010 align:middle line:84% It is impossible to change teaching practice in schools 00:33:09.010 --> 00:33:12.190 align:middle line:84% without communities of educators teaching and learning 00:33:12.190 --> 00:33:13.090 align:middle line:90% with one another. 00:33:13.090 --> 00:33:15.310 align:middle line:84% Every instructional improvement problem in a school 00:33:15.310 --> 00:33:17.950 align:middle line:84% is, in some dimension, a peer learning problem. 00:33:17.950 --> 00:33:23.380 align:middle line:84% And you can imagine how many education technology startups 00:33:23.380 --> 00:33:26.030 align:middle line:84% have, as one of their first five hires, 00:33:26.030 --> 00:33:28.090 align:middle line:84% someone who's really good at facilitating peer 00:33:28.090 --> 00:33:29.890 align:middle line:90% learning amongst educators? 00:33:29.890 --> 00:33:31.510 align:middle line:90% No one, right? 00:33:31.510 --> 00:33:32.925 align:middle line:90% You need someone who can-- 00:33:32.925 --> 00:33:35.050 align:middle line:84% you need a front-end person, and a back-end person, 00:33:35.050 --> 00:33:37.675 align:middle line:84% and someone who knows pedagogy, and a marketing guy, or finance 00:33:37.675 --> 00:33:39.890 align:middle line:84% guy or lady, or something like that. 00:33:39.890 --> 00:33:43.360 align:middle line:84% They're just organizations that are not intuitively equipped 00:33:43.360 --> 00:33:44.930 align:middle line:90% for those kinds of things. 00:33:44.930 --> 00:33:47.000 align:middle line:90% When Andy was starting Quizlet-- 00:33:47.000 --> 00:33:49.250 align:middle line:84% I mean, he's a high school-- he doesn't know anything. 00:33:49.250 --> 00:33:52.680 align:middle line:84% He just knows how to make flashcards online. 00:33:52.680 --> 00:33:54.430 align:middle line:84% And part of what their organization needed 00:33:54.430 --> 00:33:56.703 align:middle line:84% to build over time was people who 00:33:56.703 --> 00:33:59.120 align:middle line:84% could interface with schools, not just to sell to schools, 00:33:59.120 --> 00:34:00.730 align:middle line:84% but to help them think about, what 00:34:00.730 --> 00:34:02.530 align:middle line:90% could different look like here? 00:34:02.530 --> 00:34:03.830 align:middle line:90% Where do we fit into practice? 00:34:03.830 --> 00:34:06.310 align:middle line:84% How do we train teachers or have students become better 00:34:06.310 --> 00:34:09.100 align:middle line:90% at using these things? 00:34:09.100 --> 00:34:13.830 align:middle line:84% AUDIENCE: I feel like this whole talk is about how difficult this 00:34:13.830 --> 00:34:14.500 align:middle line:90% can be. 00:34:14.500 --> 00:34:17.190 align:middle line:84% And even with these two ideas that you've brought up, 00:34:17.190 --> 00:34:19.780 align:middle line:84% this still requires a lot of people buy-in 00:34:19.780 --> 00:34:21.699 align:middle line:84% and just other people supporting it. 00:34:21.699 --> 00:34:24.060 align:middle line:84% It makes me think about how difficult this 00:34:24.060 --> 00:34:27.639 align:middle line:84% can be for schools that aren't out of public schools. 00:34:27.639 --> 00:34:30.449 align:middle line:84% And even you have your charter schools 00:34:30.449 --> 00:34:32.230 align:middle line:84% that then have their own set of curricula. 00:34:32.230 --> 00:34:35.010 align:middle line:84% And if you're trying to really gain this type of support 00:34:35.010 --> 00:34:38.730 align:middle line:84% nationwide, if you have this whole subset of schools that 00:34:38.730 --> 00:34:43.020 align:middle line:84% are avoiding your technology, it can make things really hard, 00:34:43.020 --> 00:34:45.018 align:middle line:90% thinking about-- 00:34:45.018 --> 00:34:46.560 align:middle line:84% because I had written my paper-- it's 00:34:46.560 --> 00:34:49.860 align:middle line:84% my high school, which was a Catholic high school 00:34:49.860 --> 00:34:50.710 align:middle line:90% in Philadelphia. 00:34:50.710 --> 00:34:52.951 align:middle line:84% And those schools don't do anything 00:34:52.951 --> 00:34:55.409 align:middle line:84% to try and improve schools because they are just struggling 00:34:55.409 --> 00:34:57.270 align:middle line:90% to keep kids in the schools. 00:34:57.270 --> 00:35:02.460 align:middle line:84% So thinking about trying to improve a system that can't even 00:35:02.460 --> 00:35:05.010 align:middle line:84% look that far is really interesting, too, of, 00:35:05.010 --> 00:35:07.090 align:middle line:84% those teachers don't have time to cultivate 00:35:07.090 --> 00:35:09.090 align:middle line:84% that professional community because they're just 00:35:09.090 --> 00:35:11.362 align:middle line:84% trying to cultivate a school community. 00:35:11.362 --> 00:35:13.070 align:middle line:84% JUSTIN REICH: I mean, almost every school 00:35:13.070 --> 00:35:17.300 align:middle line:84% has a certain amount of time to do professional learning 00:35:17.300 --> 00:35:18.120 align:middle line:90% amongst faculty. 00:35:18.120 --> 00:35:19.680 align:middle line:90% That's baked into most schools. 00:35:19.680 --> 00:35:23.735 align:middle line:84% But there's only one block of that. 00:35:23.735 --> 00:35:26.840 align:middle line:84% That is what you'll use to improve your assessment 00:35:26.840 --> 00:35:29.280 align:middle line:84% practices, to address chronic absenteeism, 00:35:29.280 --> 00:35:31.050 align:middle line:84% to deal with violence in schools, 00:35:31.050 --> 00:35:34.310 align:middle line:84% to take on a new state initiative about sex education, 00:35:34.310 --> 00:35:38.960 align:middle line:84% to do a dozen different things that might come along. 00:35:38.960 --> 00:35:41.390 align:middle line:84% I mean, Omar described the school 00:35:41.390 --> 00:35:43.640 align:middle line:84% that, five years before COVID, happened 00:35:43.640 --> 00:35:46.160 align:middle line:84% to decide that online learning, distance 00:35:46.160 --> 00:35:48.390 align:middle line:84% learning was a good thing for them to work on. 00:35:48.390 --> 00:35:50.180 align:middle line:84% But it might have been equally reasonable 00:35:50.180 --> 00:35:52.430 align:middle line:84% for them to work on phonics instruction, 00:35:52.430 --> 00:35:56.330 align:middle line:84% or executive functioning, or any one of a dozen other things that 00:35:56.330 --> 00:35:58.430 align:middle line:90% helps improve schools. 00:35:58.430 --> 00:36:02.360 align:middle line:84% So yeah, thinking about, what are the resources 00:36:02.360 --> 00:36:05.790 align:middle line:84% that institutions have to make themselves better 00:36:05.790 --> 00:36:07.790 align:middle line:84% and to make the kinds of changes that are needed 00:36:07.790 --> 00:36:09.510 align:middle line:90% for new practices to work? 00:36:09.510 --> 00:36:12.078 align:middle line:90% 00:36:12.078 --> 00:36:13.870 align:middle line:84% AUDIENCE: We talked a lot about cultivating 00:36:13.870 --> 00:36:15.230 align:middle line:90% professional communities. 00:36:15.230 --> 00:36:18.310 align:middle line:84% But do you think that the professional community, 00:36:18.310 --> 00:36:22.580 align:middle line:84% also with teachers, for example, cultivating that is enough? 00:36:22.580 --> 00:36:27.960 align:middle line:84% Or do we also need to cultivate the students' communities, as 00:36:27.960 --> 00:36:28.460 align:middle line:90% well? 00:36:28.460 --> 00:36:29.960 align:middle line:84% Because I was surprised when reading 00:36:29.960 --> 00:36:32.410 align:middle line:84% the chapter that students themselves sometimes 00:36:32.410 --> 00:36:38.090 align:middle line:84% are also afraid or concerned about using this new technology. 00:36:38.090 --> 00:36:39.010 align:middle line:90% JUSTIN REICH: Yeah. 00:36:39.010 --> 00:36:42.560 align:middle line:84% So I mean, it's exciting to hear what Omar talked about, 00:36:42.560 --> 00:36:46.150 align:middle line:84% about bringing students in on these kinds of change 00:36:46.150 --> 00:36:47.120 align:middle line:90% initiatives. 00:36:47.120 --> 00:36:51.190 align:middle line:84% It would be interesting-- almost every edtech company has 00:36:51.190 --> 00:36:53.410 align:middle line:84% some kind of ambassador program, which 00:36:53.410 --> 00:36:56.203 align:middle line:84% is hiring a group of teachers to be the folks who 00:36:56.203 --> 00:36:58.120 align:middle line:84% go to these conferences and share what they're 00:36:58.120 --> 00:36:59.150 align:middle line:90% doing with other people. 00:36:59.150 --> 00:37:01.690 align:middle line:84% I don't know of any technology company that has a student 00:37:01.690 --> 00:37:04.540 align:middle line:90% ambassador program. 00:37:04.540 --> 00:37:07.750 align:middle line:84% I mean, one reason is that the teachers stay, and the students 00:37:07.750 --> 00:37:08.830 align:middle line:90% leave, which is good. 00:37:08.830 --> 00:37:11.220 align:middle line:84% That's what the students are supposed to do. 00:37:11.220 --> 00:37:16.140 align:middle line:84% You probably have to be a certain age to be useful doing-- 00:37:16.140 --> 00:37:17.778 align:middle line:84% a first grade ambassador would probably 00:37:17.778 --> 00:37:19.320 align:middle line:84% do some interesting things but is not 00:37:19.320 --> 00:37:23.460 align:middle line:84% that helpful for what they can accomplish. 00:37:23.460 --> 00:37:28.410 align:middle line:84% But I do think that, generally speaking, school systems 00:37:28.410 --> 00:37:31.080 align:middle line:84% change agents tend to underestimate students 00:37:31.080 --> 00:37:34.740 align:middle line:84% as potential partners because when 00:37:34.740 --> 00:37:38.340 align:middle line:84% you get them really engaged, they can be 00:37:38.340 --> 00:37:39.725 align:middle line:90% transformative in institutions. 00:37:39.725 --> 00:37:41.100 align:middle line:84% When students get together and be 00:37:41.100 --> 00:37:44.040 align:middle line:84% like, oh, we should do this, sometimes that's 00:37:44.040 --> 00:37:45.850 align:middle line:84% when faculty light bulbs go off and go, 00:37:45.850 --> 00:37:47.640 align:middle line:90% you're interested in that? 00:37:47.640 --> 00:37:48.520 align:middle line:90% Absolutely. 00:37:48.520 --> 00:37:49.720 align:middle line:90% Let's do it. 00:37:49.720 --> 00:37:53.950 align:middle line:84% AUDIENCE: I'm asking because I met this girl. 00:37:53.950 --> 00:37:58.060 align:middle line:84% She's doing her master's at the Graduate School of Education 00:37:58.060 --> 00:37:58.560 align:middle line:90% in Harvard. 00:37:58.560 --> 00:38:01.530 align:middle line:84% And in Brazil a few years back, she 00:38:01.530 --> 00:38:04.920 align:middle line:84% was supposed to start giving an entrepreneurship 00:38:04.920 --> 00:38:06.850 align:middle line:90% course to middle-schoolers. 00:38:06.850 --> 00:38:08.630 align:middle line:84% And she wanted to use Figma to do it 00:38:08.630 --> 00:38:11.670 align:middle line:90% very interactive, experiential. 00:38:11.670 --> 00:38:15.530 align:middle line:84% And teachers were completely closed off to the idea. 00:38:15.530 --> 00:38:17.660 align:middle line:84% And then she simply bypassed them 00:38:17.660 --> 00:38:20.960 align:middle line:84% and started reaching out to the students, and they loved it. 00:38:20.960 --> 00:38:26.220 align:middle line:84% And it worked so well that the excitement from the students 00:38:26.220 --> 00:38:27.800 align:middle line:84% convinced the teachers themselves 00:38:27.800 --> 00:38:29.900 align:middle line:84% to actually give it a go because if there's 00:38:29.900 --> 00:38:32.450 align:middle line:84% one thing they have in common is they're really concerned, 00:38:32.450 --> 00:38:34.610 align:middle line:90% and they care about students. 00:38:34.610 --> 00:38:36.500 align:middle line:84% So she ended up even giving a TED Talk 00:38:36.500 --> 00:38:40.130 align:middle line:84% about how she believes this whole transformation is 00:38:40.130 --> 00:38:41.630 align:middle line:90% going to come from students. 00:38:41.630 --> 00:38:42.380 align:middle line:90% JUSTIN REICH: Yep. 00:38:42.380 --> 00:38:44.750 align:middle line:84% AUDIENCE: So that's why I was interested in-- 00:38:44.750 --> 00:38:46.418 align:middle line:84% I think we do that less than we could. 00:38:46.418 --> 00:38:47.210 align:middle line:90% JUSTIN REICH: Yeah. 00:38:47.210 --> 00:38:51.300 align:middle line:84% The exact nature of the technology matters, too. 00:38:51.300 --> 00:38:53.930 align:middle line:84% The more the technology-- the more the business model 00:38:53.930 --> 00:38:57.980 align:middle line:84% of the technology has some kind of freemium or introduction kind 00:38:57.980 --> 00:38:58.590 align:middle line:90% of model-- 00:38:58.590 --> 00:38:59.720 align:middle line:90% I don't know. 00:38:59.720 --> 00:39:01.310 align:middle line:84% If you wanted to implement something 00:39:01.310 --> 00:39:05.640 align:middle line:84% with robotics in a school, and the robotics kits are expensive, 00:39:05.640 --> 00:39:07.310 align:middle line:84% it's pretty hard to be like, hey, kids 00:39:07.310 --> 00:39:10.610 align:middle line:84% go get your own robotics kits, and we'll go around the system. 00:39:10.610 --> 00:39:13.250 align:middle line:84% Somebody needs to buy the robotics kits. 00:39:13.250 --> 00:39:15.500 align:middle line:90% Part of what makes-- 00:39:15.500 --> 00:39:17.420 align:middle line:84% like the example you gave of Figma works 00:39:17.420 --> 00:39:21.170 align:middle line:84% is that Figma has a built-in freemium model as a consumer 00:39:21.170 --> 00:39:24.020 align:middle line:84% product that educators can piggyback on 00:39:24.020 --> 00:39:25.268 align:middle line:90% to try those things out. 00:39:25.268 --> 00:39:26.810 align:middle line:84% But yeah, I mean, I would say anybody 00:39:26.810 --> 00:39:29.040 align:middle line:84% who has a change strategy in schools, 00:39:29.040 --> 00:39:31.650 align:middle line:84% if your students are part of that change strategy, 00:39:31.650 --> 00:39:35.463 align:middle line:84% it's pretty likely to be better than if they're not. 00:39:35.463 --> 00:39:36.880 align:middle line:84% AUDIENCE: Yeah, related to that, I 00:39:36.880 --> 00:39:39.510 align:middle line:84% know that Wolfram Technologies, which created Mathematica, 00:39:39.510 --> 00:39:42.030 align:middle line:84% has a student ambassador program that I did in high school. 00:39:42.030 --> 00:39:44.630 align:middle line:84% So you present at their conference 00:39:44.630 --> 00:39:47.240 align:middle line:84% and, yeah, I don't know, talk about all your friends 00:39:47.240 --> 00:39:48.840 align:middle line:90% and host webinars and things. 00:39:48.840 --> 00:39:50.580 align:middle line:84% So yeah, that's one example of that. 00:39:50.580 --> 00:39:53.570 align:middle line:84% JUSTIN REICH: No, I had not known that. 00:39:53.570 --> 00:39:58.940 align:middle line:84% And again, yeah, Wolfram is in a pretty competitive space 00:39:58.940 --> 00:40:01.730 align:middle line:84% of different kinds of mathematics software 00:40:01.730 --> 00:40:05.260 align:middle line:84% where, absolutely, cultivating student preferences could 00:40:05.260 --> 00:40:07.351 align:middle line:90% totally make a difference. 00:40:07.351 --> 00:40:08.893 align:middle line:84% All right, let's talk about another-- 00:40:08.893 --> 00:40:12.100 align:middle line:90% 00:40:12.100 --> 00:40:14.810 align:middle line:84% let's do another one of these challenges, 00:40:14.810 --> 00:40:17.260 align:middle line:84% since I'm trying to double up this week, which 00:40:17.260 --> 00:40:22.150 align:middle line:84% is the edtech Matthew effect, which is really 00:40:22.150 --> 00:40:23.820 align:middle line:90% supposed to be here somewhere. 00:40:23.820 --> 00:40:25.925 align:middle line:90% Ah, this is the one I used. 00:40:25.925 --> 00:40:26.425 align:middle line:90% OK. 00:40:26.425 --> 00:40:32.284 align:middle line:90% 00:40:32.284 --> 00:40:39.190 align:middle line:84% Here are three variants of mythologies that people have 00:40:39.190 --> 00:40:41.470 align:middle line:90% about technology and schools. 00:40:41.470 --> 00:40:43.910 align:middle line:84% One is that edtech will destroy the system. 00:40:43.910 --> 00:40:46.010 align:middle line:84% We've talked about how that probably won't happen. 00:40:46.010 --> 00:40:50.480 align:middle line:84% And instead, new technologies domesticate education. 00:40:50.480 --> 00:40:52.760 align:middle line:84% Actually, that article that Yousef shared-- 00:40:52.760 --> 00:40:54.370 align:middle line:84% I thought it was Mimi Ito and I who 00:40:54.370 --> 00:40:57.070 align:middle line:84% came up with this metaphor, particularly Mimi. 00:40:57.070 --> 00:41:00.130 align:middle line:84% But that article that Yousef shared 00:41:00.130 --> 00:41:02.630 align:middle line:84% of Seymour Papert responding to Tyack and Cuban 00:41:02.630 --> 00:41:05.578 align:middle line:84% had a very similar framing of what schools-- 00:41:05.578 --> 00:41:07.870 align:middle line:84% I don't know if they exactly used the word domesticate, 00:41:07.870 --> 00:41:09.630 align:middle line:90% but it's pretty close. 00:41:09.630 --> 00:41:11.940 align:middle line:84% New technologies don't come in and blow up schools. 00:41:11.940 --> 00:41:13.830 align:middle line:84% Instead, schools take new technologies 00:41:13.830 --> 00:41:16.650 align:middle line:90% and go, OK, you fit here. 00:41:16.650 --> 00:41:20.530 align:middle line:84% People are always hoping that new technologies-- 00:41:20.530 --> 00:41:23.138 align:middle line:84% a word they really like is democratizing. 00:41:23.138 --> 00:41:25.680 align:middle line:84% I think people like the word democratizing because you're not 00:41:25.680 --> 00:41:28.000 align:middle line:84% exactly sure what it means, but it sounds pretty good. 00:41:28.000 --> 00:41:29.830 align:middle line:84% It would be better to have more democracy. 00:41:29.830 --> 00:41:31.690 align:middle line:90% But it's like, is that cheaper? 00:41:31.690 --> 00:41:32.740 align:middle line:90% Is that more equal? 00:41:32.740 --> 00:41:33.700 align:middle line:90% Is that more just? 00:41:33.700 --> 00:41:35.580 align:middle line:90% Is that better? 00:41:35.580 --> 00:41:37.650 align:middle line:84% I'll show you in a bit, we really 00:41:37.650 --> 00:41:41.070 align:middle line:84% have pretty good evidence that new technologies 00:41:41.070 --> 00:41:43.237 align:middle line:84% disproportionately benefit the advantaged. 00:41:43.237 --> 00:41:44.820 align:middle line:84% They disproportionately benefit people 00:41:44.820 --> 00:41:46.710 align:middle line:84% with the financial, social, and technical capital 00:41:46.710 --> 00:41:48.400 align:middle line:84% to take advantage of new innovations. 00:41:48.400 --> 00:41:50.680 align:middle line:84% So people are always hoping, like, oh, this new thing, 00:41:50.680 --> 00:41:52.673 align:middle line:84% it'll be distributed for free on the internet. 00:41:52.673 --> 00:41:54.090 align:middle line:84% The people who are good at finding 00:41:54.090 --> 00:41:56.580 align:middle line:84% free stuff on the internet are affluent people 00:41:56.580 --> 00:41:59.505 align:middle line:84% with good internet access, with discretionary leisure time, 00:41:59.505 --> 00:42:00.880 align:middle line:84% with parents who went to college, 00:42:00.880 --> 00:42:02.088 align:middle line:90% all of those kinds of things. 00:42:02.088 --> 00:42:07.220 align:middle line:90% 00:42:07.220 --> 00:42:10.730 align:middle line:84% So this is a figure that I use to describe the edtech Matthew 00:42:10.730 --> 00:42:12.140 align:middle line:90% effect-- but I'll say it again-- 00:42:12.140 --> 00:42:15.900 align:middle line:84% that in educational systems, especially highly 00:42:15.900 --> 00:42:17.400 align:middle line:84% unequal ones like the United States, 00:42:17.400 --> 00:42:21.800 align:middle line:84% we assume that folks from higher socioeconomic backgrounds 00:42:21.800 --> 00:42:25.790 align:middle line:84% have better educational outcomes, generically, 00:42:25.790 --> 00:42:28.680 align:middle line:84% than folks from low socioeconomic outcomes. 00:42:28.680 --> 00:42:31.740 align:middle line:84% And the hope is that, through technology innovation, 00:42:31.740 --> 00:42:33.480 align:middle line:90% everyone will learn. 00:42:33.480 --> 00:42:35.090 align:middle line:84% But maybe we can build things that 00:42:35.090 --> 00:42:37.280 align:middle line:90% particularly help this group. 00:42:37.280 --> 00:42:39.330 align:middle line:84% When people talk about democratizing education, 00:42:39.330 --> 00:42:42.080 align:middle line:84% this is basically a graph of what they mean. 00:42:42.080 --> 00:42:43.970 align:middle line:84% What actually happens, though, is probably 00:42:43.970 --> 00:42:46.202 align:middle line:84% something like this, which is that new innovations 00:42:46.202 --> 00:42:48.660 align:middle line:84% disproportionately benefit people who are already affluent. 00:42:48.660 --> 00:42:50.930 align:middle line:84% And a thing which is tricky about this 00:42:50.930 --> 00:42:53.255 align:middle line:90% is they probably help everyone. 00:42:53.255 --> 00:42:55.130 align:middle line:84% There are not a lot of education technologies 00:42:55.130 --> 00:42:57.540 align:middle line:84% that we build that really make things worse. 00:42:57.540 --> 00:42:59.600 align:middle line:84% Maybe there are, but typically they just 00:42:59.600 --> 00:43:04.870 align:middle line:84% help advantaged people more than they help disadvantaged folks. 00:43:04.870 --> 00:43:08.630 align:middle line:84% So when we studied massive open online courses, 00:43:08.630 --> 00:43:12.910 align:middle line:84% the democratizing rhetoric was very active. 00:43:12.910 --> 00:43:16.063 align:middle line:84% Udacity, for a while, their tagline was "democratizing 00:43:16.063 --> 00:43:17.480 align:middle line:84% education" or something like that. 00:43:17.480 --> 00:43:19.700 align:middle line:84% And we're like, eh, that's pretty unlikely to happen, 00:43:19.700 --> 00:43:21.490 align:middle line:90% I think. 00:43:21.490 --> 00:43:24.910 align:middle line:84% So we did these kind of cool studies where-- 00:43:24.910 --> 00:43:27.100 align:middle line:84% all these studies were based on the fact 00:43:27.100 --> 00:43:29.780 align:middle line:90% that when edX was founded. 00:43:29.780 --> 00:43:32.750 align:middle line:84% and you had to register for it, someone was like, 00:43:32.750 --> 00:43:34.550 align:middle line:90% let's get people's addresses. 00:43:34.550 --> 00:43:39.040 align:middle line:84% So people would type, free form, their addresses into edX. 00:43:39.040 --> 00:43:41.320 align:middle line:84% Why did anyone collect their addresses? 00:43:41.320 --> 00:43:42.260 align:middle line:90% I've never learned. 00:43:42.260 --> 00:43:44.300 align:middle line:84% Were they going to mail them something? 00:43:44.300 --> 00:43:44.990 align:middle line:90% I don't know. 00:43:44.990 --> 00:43:48.100 align:middle line:90% But we had their addresses. 00:43:48.100 --> 00:43:51.050 align:middle line:84% Through the magic of residential segregation, 00:43:51.050 --> 00:43:53.230 align:middle line:84% if you know someone's address, you 00:43:53.230 --> 00:43:56.600 align:middle line:84% can make a pretty good guess about how affluent they are, 00:43:56.600 --> 00:43:59.040 align:middle line:84% or what their education level is, or something like that. 00:43:59.040 --> 00:44:01.915 align:middle line:84% There are these units that are called census block tracts, 00:44:01.915 --> 00:44:04.290 align:middle line:84% which are something like the 1,200 homes that are nearest 00:44:04.290 --> 00:44:05.190 align:middle line:90% yours. 00:44:05.190 --> 00:44:08.850 align:middle line:84% And wherever you live, the average median income 00:44:08.850 --> 00:44:12.543 align:middle line:84% of the 1,200 homes around you is pretty close to yours. 00:44:12.543 --> 00:44:13.960 align:middle line:84% And we might not be exactly right, 00:44:13.960 --> 00:44:16.210 align:middle line:84% but if you do it over hundreds of thousands of people, 00:44:16.210 --> 00:44:18.060 align:middle line:90% it works out pretty well. 00:44:18.060 --> 00:44:21.510 align:middle line:84% So this is a graph of people's average median income 00:44:21.510 --> 00:44:23.070 align:middle line:90% at different ages. 00:44:23.070 --> 00:44:25.300 align:middle line:84% This is all of the people in the United States. 00:44:25.300 --> 00:44:29.520 align:middle line:84% And these are the people who sign up for HarvardX and MITx. 00:44:29.520 --> 00:44:33.540 align:middle line:84% So for sure, there were people from every possible income 00:44:33.540 --> 00:44:35.490 align:middle line:84% bracket that you imagined who had signed up 00:44:35.490 --> 00:44:37.380 align:middle line:90% for Harvard and MITx courses. 00:44:37.380 --> 00:44:41.700 align:middle line:84% But at every age level, a typical HarvardX or MITx 00:44:41.700 --> 00:44:43.740 align:middle line:84% participant is going to be wealthier 00:44:43.740 --> 00:44:47.250 align:middle line:90% than a typical US resident. 00:44:47.250 --> 00:44:50.500 align:middle line:84% This is a kind of study called a case control study, 00:44:50.500 --> 00:44:53.310 align:middle line:84% and it comes from epidemiology, where 00:44:53.310 --> 00:44:56.490 align:middle line:84% you're comparing a particular group to a whole population. 00:44:56.490 --> 00:45:00.070 align:middle line:84% And it's usually used for people who get viruses. 00:45:00.070 --> 00:45:03.360 align:middle line:84% So for folks who hated MOOCs, we were basically 00:45:03.360 --> 00:45:05.910 align:middle line:84% treating MOOC participants as if they had a virus, 00:45:05.910 --> 00:45:08.190 align:middle line:84% and they thought that was pretty funny. 00:45:08.190 --> 00:45:11.890 align:middle line:84% This is the amount of education that their parents had. 00:45:11.890 --> 00:45:14.550 align:middle line:84% And so clearly, the people who signed up for HarvardX and MITx 00:45:14.550 --> 00:45:17.217 align:middle line:84% are more educated than the typical population. 00:45:17.217 --> 00:45:18.550 align:middle line:90% What was the question you asked? 00:45:18.550 --> 00:45:20.842 align:middle line:84% AUDIENCE: I was just saying, I love how there's someone 00:45:20.842 --> 00:45:25.590 align:middle line:84% who's under 20 with over $90,000 in median-- 00:45:25.590 --> 00:45:28.603 align:middle line:84% JUSTIN REICH: In the income of the census block tract. 00:45:28.603 --> 00:45:30.270 align:middle line:84% AUDIENCE: OK, so it's not an individual. 00:45:30.270 --> 00:45:31.312 align:middle line:90% JUSTIN REICH: Yeah, yeah. 00:45:31.312 --> 00:45:34.360 align:middle line:84% It's not like there are a bunch of loaded 16-year-olds-- 00:45:34.360 --> 00:45:35.610 align:middle line:90% AUDIENCE: I want to take that. 00:45:35.610 --> 00:45:37.402 align:middle line:84% JUSTIN REICH: --who are taking our courses. 00:45:37.402 --> 00:45:41.700 align:middle line:84% No, but if you were 15 or 16 or 17, 00:45:41.700 --> 00:45:43.570 align:middle line:84% and you were taking a HarvardX class, 00:45:43.570 --> 00:45:46.310 align:middle line:84% it was very likely that you were-- 00:45:46.310 --> 00:45:48.750 align:middle line:84% you were much more likely to be from a census block 00:45:48.750 --> 00:45:53.755 align:middle line:84% tract with a much higher average median income than comparable. 00:45:53.755 --> 00:45:54.630 align:middle line:90% AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] 00:45:54.630 --> 00:45:55.672 align:middle line:90% JUSTIN REICH: Yeah, yeah. 00:45:55.672 --> 00:45:58.190 align:middle line:90% I mean, you can also figure-- 00:45:58.190 --> 00:46:00.000 align:middle line:84% it's not that people become poorer. 00:46:00.000 --> 00:46:02.840 align:middle line:84% They move to crummy college neighborhoods, 00:46:02.840 --> 00:46:05.780 align:middle line:84% and then their livelihood improves over time 00:46:05.780 --> 00:46:07.742 align:middle line:90% until they get old. 00:46:07.742 --> 00:46:09.200 align:middle line:84% AUDIENCE: I also like the subtitle. 00:46:09.200 --> 00:46:10.440 align:middle line:84% JUSTIN REICH: The long, boring subtitle. 00:46:10.440 --> 00:46:11.940 align:middle line:84% It did have a long, boring subtitle. 00:46:11.940 --> 00:46:14.000 align:middle line:90% It meant something. 00:46:14.000 --> 00:46:14.700 align:middle line:90% What was this? 00:46:14.700 --> 00:46:20.120 align:middle line:90% This was the odds ratio of-- 00:46:20.120 --> 00:46:27.350 align:middle line:84% these were the odds that you were-- 00:46:27.350 --> 00:46:32.480 align:middle line:84% oh, if you had a parent who graduated from college, 00:46:32.480 --> 00:46:36.600 align:middle line:84% this was the odds that you were more likely to complete a class. 00:46:36.600 --> 00:46:41.810 align:middle line:84% So for particularly people who were the youngest-- so actually, 00:46:41.810 --> 00:46:47.150 align:middle line:84% for old learners, some of their socioeconomic characteristics 00:46:47.150 --> 00:46:49.460 align:middle line:84% seem to be less predictive of whether or not 00:46:49.460 --> 00:46:53.000 align:middle line:84% they would be successful in a class, which you might assume 00:46:53.000 --> 00:46:56.800 align:middle line:84% to mean something like, by the time people are 40 years old 00:46:56.800 --> 00:47:00.520 align:middle line:84% or something like that, your initial family upbringing 00:47:00.520 --> 00:47:02.200 align:middle line:84% maybe matters less for the people who 00:47:02.200 --> 00:47:03.490 align:middle line:90% are signing up for this class. 00:47:03.490 --> 00:47:05.802 align:middle line:84% But for really young folks, if your parents 00:47:05.802 --> 00:47:07.510 align:middle line:84% graduated from college, you were way more 00:47:07.510 --> 00:47:10.360 align:middle line:84% likely to complete the class than if you signed up, 00:47:10.360 --> 00:47:13.000 align:middle line:84% and your parents had not graduated from college, 00:47:13.000 --> 00:47:16.420 align:middle line:84% presumably because you lived in a household in which you 00:47:16.420 --> 00:47:17.883 align:middle line:84% both had more support at the time 00:47:17.883 --> 00:47:20.050 align:middle line:84% that you were taking the class, and you had grown up 00:47:20.050 --> 00:47:22.180 align:middle line:84% with many more academic and financial supports 00:47:22.180 --> 00:47:25.210 align:middle line:90% than other kinds of people. 00:47:25.210 --> 00:47:29.830 align:middle line:84% And I mean, MOOC organizations at this time 00:47:29.830 --> 00:47:31.850 align:middle line:84% were telling stories like we mentioned before, 00:47:31.850 --> 00:47:33.400 align:middle line:84% like the Boy Genius of Ulan Bator, 00:47:33.400 --> 00:47:34.900 align:middle line:84% about all these people who are-- far 00:47:34.900 --> 00:47:37.275 align:middle line:84% flung places who are taking courses and being successful. 00:47:37.275 --> 00:47:38.980 align:middle line:90% And all of that was true. 00:47:38.980 --> 00:47:41.415 align:middle line:84% There were people from every walk of life, 00:47:41.415 --> 00:47:43.790 align:middle line:84% from all corners of the world who were really successful. 00:47:43.790 --> 00:47:47.332 align:middle line:84% It was like MOOCs opened a door, and a handful 00:47:47.332 --> 00:47:48.790 align:middle line:84% of people who definitely would have 00:47:48.790 --> 00:47:50.257 align:middle line:84% not have access to higher education 00:47:50.257 --> 00:47:51.590 align:middle line:90% before walked through that door. 00:47:51.590 --> 00:47:54.000 align:middle line:84% But the vast majority of people who walk through the door 00:47:54.000 --> 00:47:56.740 align:middle line:84% were already educated, already affluent people. 00:47:56.740 --> 00:47:59.308 align:middle line:84% So maybe there's a way that you could describe that 00:47:59.308 --> 00:48:01.350 align:middle line:84% as democratizing, but it didn't seem particularly 00:48:01.350 --> 00:48:02.750 align:middle line:90% democratizing to us. 00:48:02.750 --> 00:48:06.280 align:middle line:90% 00:48:06.280 --> 00:48:09.910 align:middle line:84% This was my doctoral research, which I'll summarize quickly. 00:48:09.910 --> 00:48:13.650 align:middle line:84% So just like today, there's all these ideas 00:48:13.650 --> 00:48:15.790 align:middle line:84% like, man, AI is going to transform education. 00:48:15.790 --> 00:48:16.800 align:middle line:84% And just like 10 years ago, there 00:48:16.800 --> 00:48:18.090 align:middle line:84% was all these-- oh, man, MOOCs are 00:48:18.090 --> 00:48:19.360 align:middle line:90% going to transform education. 00:48:19.360 --> 00:48:23.220 align:middle line:84% In 2007, 2008, 2009, it was social media 00:48:23.220 --> 00:48:24.850 align:middle line:84% that was going to transform education. 00:48:24.850 --> 00:48:27.640 align:middle line:84% It was blogs, and wikis, and peer production. 00:48:27.640 --> 00:48:29.950 align:middle line:84% It sounds silly now, but believe me, at the time, 00:48:29.950 --> 00:48:31.595 align:middle line:90% people thought-- 00:48:31.595 --> 00:48:32.970 align:middle line:84% so we did this kind of cool study 00:48:32.970 --> 00:48:37.230 align:middle line:84% where we knocked on the door of a company that 00:48:37.230 --> 00:48:38.560 align:middle line:90% let you set up wikis. 00:48:38.560 --> 00:48:40.590 align:middle line:84% At the time, it was called PBworks. 00:48:40.590 --> 00:48:42.840 align:middle line:84% And we were like-- maybe it was called PBwiki 00:48:42.840 --> 00:48:44.110 align:middle line:90% and then changed to PBworks. 00:48:44.110 --> 00:48:45.930 align:middle line:84% And we were like, can we have a list 00:48:45.930 --> 00:48:47.770 align:middle line:84% of all of your education-related wikis? 00:48:47.770 --> 00:48:49.505 align:middle line:90% And they were like, yeah, sure. 00:48:49.505 --> 00:48:50.880 align:middle line:84% In theory, it's something that we 00:48:50.880 --> 00:48:52.510 align:middle line:84% could have scraped from their website, 00:48:52.510 --> 00:48:54.090 align:middle line:90% but they just handed it over. 00:48:54.090 --> 00:48:55.210 align:middle line:90% So that was pretty cool. 00:48:55.210 --> 00:48:57.300 align:middle line:84% Now we had 200,000 wikis that someone had labeled 00:48:57.300 --> 00:48:58.270 align:middle line:90% as education-related. 00:48:58.270 --> 00:48:59.895 align:middle line:84% And these weren't wikis like Wikipedia, 00:48:59.895 --> 00:49:01.180 align:middle line:90% that everyone would work on. 00:49:01.180 --> 00:49:03.360 align:middle line:84% They would be like a class, or a school, or something like that 00:49:03.360 --> 00:49:04.402 align:middle line:90% would foster these wikis. 00:49:04.402 --> 00:49:07.230 align:middle line:84% So we took 1% of them, and then I 00:49:07.230 --> 00:49:11.310 align:middle line:84% hired a small army of research assistants 00:49:11.310 --> 00:49:13.060 align:middle line:84% to figure out what they all were. 00:49:13.060 --> 00:49:16.990 align:middle line:84% So we like labeled the characteristics of them. 00:49:16.990 --> 00:49:19.050 align:middle line:84% We did this private investigation work 00:49:19.050 --> 00:49:21.370 align:middle line:84% to figure out what school they were from. 00:49:21.370 --> 00:49:23.800 align:middle line:84% And then if you know something about a school, 00:49:23.800 --> 00:49:27.030 align:middle line:84% you know what neighborhood it's in and how many of its students 00:49:27.030 --> 00:49:28.953 align:middle line:84% are eligible for free and reduced-price lunch 00:49:28.953 --> 00:49:30.370 align:middle line:84% and what its racial divisions are. 00:49:30.370 --> 00:49:33.270 align:middle line:84% You can know all kinds of demographic characteristics. 00:49:33.270 --> 00:49:35.190 align:middle line:84% One of the things that we focused on 00:49:35.190 --> 00:49:38.448 align:middle line:84% was whether or not they were Title I schools, where 00:49:38.448 --> 00:49:39.990 align:middle line:84% a certain percentage of students were 00:49:39.990 --> 00:49:41.740 align:middle line:84% eligible for free and reduced-price lunch, 00:49:41.740 --> 00:49:43.170 align:middle line:90% and those who are not. 00:49:43.170 --> 00:49:48.210 align:middle line:84% And we basically identified like four different types of wikis 00:49:48.210 --> 00:49:49.560 align:middle line:90% that people created-- 00:49:49.560 --> 00:49:52.450 align:middle line:84% things that just didn't work, like someone 00:49:52.450 --> 00:49:55.170 align:middle line:84% created it and then never updated it, threw it away 00:49:55.170 --> 00:49:55.670 align:middle line:90% or whatever. 00:49:55.670 --> 00:49:56.620 align:middle line:90% That's fine. 00:49:56.620 --> 00:49:58.090 align:middle line:84% Things that were teacher-centered, 00:49:58.090 --> 00:49:59.630 align:middle line:90% content-delivery devices-- 00:49:59.630 --> 00:50:02.120 align:middle line:84% so things that were basically just like simple websites. 00:50:02.120 --> 00:50:04.540 align:middle line:84% So in some respects, definitely what 00:50:04.540 --> 00:50:08.380 align:middle line:90% you did not want wikis to be. 00:50:08.380 --> 00:50:12.110 align:middle line:84% The other one was individual student assignment or portfolio, 00:50:12.110 --> 00:50:14.050 align:middle line:84% like something an individual student made, 00:50:14.050 --> 00:50:16.420 align:middle line:84% and then a collaborative multimedia 00:50:16.420 --> 00:50:17.480 align:middle line:90% assignment or workplace. 00:50:17.480 --> 00:50:19.063 align:middle line:84% So the first thing that we figured out 00:50:19.063 --> 00:50:21.310 align:middle line:84% is that the vast majority of wikis 00:50:21.310 --> 00:50:23.320 align:middle line:84% either didn't work or were teacher-centered, 00:50:23.320 --> 00:50:25.060 align:middle line:90% content-delivery devices. 00:50:25.060 --> 00:50:28.660 align:middle line:84% This is a kind of curse of the familiar example. 00:50:28.660 --> 00:50:32.560 align:middle line:84% If you give to people this never-before-seen tool 00:50:32.560 --> 00:50:35.410 align:middle line:84% to do collaborative writing, schools 00:50:35.410 --> 00:50:38.320 align:middle line:84% will use it to just broadcast things to students 00:50:38.320 --> 00:50:41.590 align:middle line:84% or to make students turn in their assignments with it. 00:50:41.590 --> 00:50:43.600 align:middle line:84% They're very unlikely to do the thing 00:50:43.600 --> 00:50:45.910 align:middle line:90% that wikis were supposed to do. 00:50:45.910 --> 00:50:49.903 align:middle line:84% But they were more likely to fail in Title I schools, 00:50:49.903 --> 00:50:51.820 align:middle line:84% and they were a little bit more likely to have 00:50:51.820 --> 00:50:53.650 align:middle line:84% some kind of student component in it 00:50:53.650 --> 00:50:56.290 align:middle line:84% in the non-poor, more affluent schools. 00:50:56.290 --> 00:50:58.133 align:middle line:84% So all of these things were free. 00:50:58.133 --> 00:51:00.550 align:middle line:84% They were freely accessible on the internet, all the kinds 00:51:00.550 --> 00:51:01.383 align:middle line:90% of things like that. 00:51:01.383 --> 00:51:04.960 align:middle line:84% But you could see, from their very beginning, schools 00:51:04.960 --> 00:51:06.568 align:middle line:84% that had more resources were going 00:51:06.568 --> 00:51:08.360 align:middle line:84% to be able to use them in more interesting, 00:51:08.360 --> 00:51:09.860 align:middle line:84% more student-centered kinds of ways. 00:51:09.860 --> 00:51:12.297 align:middle line:90% 00:51:12.297 --> 00:51:13.130 align:middle line:90% We'll skip that one. 00:51:13.130 --> 00:51:17.630 align:middle line:84% Oh, this is one of my favorite pieces of research 00:51:17.630 --> 00:51:19.420 align:middle line:90% that's an example of this. 00:51:19.420 --> 00:51:23.190 align:middle line:84% So we make kids take this test that we've discussed before, 00:51:23.190 --> 00:51:25.190 align:middle line:84% the National Assessment of Educational Progress. 00:51:25.190 --> 00:51:26.690 align:middle line:84% And when we make them take the test, 00:51:26.690 --> 00:51:28.360 align:middle line:90% we also make them take a survey. 00:51:28.360 --> 00:51:31.450 align:middle line:84% And in 2011, kids took a math test, 00:51:31.450 --> 00:51:33.860 align:middle line:84% and we asked them questions like, 00:51:33.860 --> 00:51:37.450 align:middle line:84% do you use a computer for drill and practice in math? 00:51:37.450 --> 00:51:41.060 align:middle line:84% Do you use computers for simulations and applications? 00:51:41.060 --> 00:51:43.460 align:middle line:84% And you can ascribe a few things from this. 00:51:43.460 --> 00:51:46.660 align:middle line:84% We're more likely to have students do drill and practice 00:51:46.660 --> 00:51:49.110 align:middle line:84% kinds of things than we are to have 00:51:49.110 --> 00:51:51.025 align:middle line:84% them do simulations and applications 00:51:51.025 --> 00:51:51.900 align:middle line:90% and things like that. 00:51:51.900 --> 00:51:52.442 align:middle line:90% I don't know. 00:51:52.442 --> 00:51:54.030 align:middle line:84% This would be like IXL, and this would 00:51:54.030 --> 00:51:56.850 align:middle line:84% be like Geometer's Sketchpad or Desmos. 00:51:56.850 --> 00:51:59.148 align:middle line:84% We make Black students do drill and practice things 00:51:59.148 --> 00:52:00.190 align:middle line:90% more than white students. 00:52:00.190 --> 00:52:01.830 align:middle line:84% We make poor students do drill and practice things 00:52:01.830 --> 00:52:02.997 align:middle line:90% more than non-poor students. 00:52:02.997 --> 00:52:06.120 align:middle line:84% When we give people access to new technologies, 00:52:06.120 --> 00:52:09.490 align:middle line:84% even if they have equitable access to the technologies, 00:52:09.490 --> 00:52:11.623 align:middle line:84% they often have inequitable access 00:52:11.623 --> 00:52:13.540 align:middle line:84% to different kinds of opportunities with them. 00:52:13.540 --> 00:52:16.890 align:middle line:84% So one of the papers that I assigned to you was one 00:52:16.890 --> 00:52:19.830 align:middle line:84% of my very favorites by a guy named Paul Attewell called 00:52:19.830 --> 00:52:21.870 align:middle line:84% "The First and Second Digital Divide." 00:52:21.870 --> 00:52:25.560 align:middle line:84% And his argument is that the digital divide was originally 00:52:25.560 --> 00:52:27.700 align:middle line:90% conceived as an access divide. 00:52:27.700 --> 00:52:29.230 align:middle line:84% Who has computers, and who doesn't? 00:52:29.230 --> 00:52:30.820 align:middle line:84% Who has broadband, and who doesn't? 00:52:30.820 --> 00:52:32.790 align:middle line:84% But even if you could snap your fingers 00:52:32.790 --> 00:52:35.220 align:middle line:84% and give everyone the exact same access, 00:52:35.220 --> 00:52:37.750 align:middle line:84% there would still be a digital divide of usage. 00:52:37.750 --> 00:52:43.170 align:middle line:84% There's evidence that people from low-income backgrounds 00:52:43.170 --> 00:52:44.790 align:middle line:84% are more likely to use technology 00:52:44.790 --> 00:52:46.520 align:middle line:84% for drill and practice kinds of things, 00:52:46.520 --> 00:52:47.940 align:middle line:90% rather than creative things. 00:52:47.940 --> 00:52:50.540 align:middle line:84% And they're more likely to use it with less adult mentorship 00:52:50.540 --> 00:52:54.410 align:middle line:84% and support than more affluent folks are. 00:52:54.410 --> 00:52:56.930 align:middle line:84% But the funny thing, when I read this 2011 summary, 00:52:56.930 --> 00:52:59.150 align:middle line:90% was I was like, man. 00:52:59.150 --> 00:53:00.650 align:middle line:84% It was like having the experience 00:53:00.650 --> 00:53:02.580 align:middle line:90% of reading a plagiarized paper. 00:53:02.580 --> 00:53:07.280 align:middle line:84% You're like, I swear I've read this exact same study before. 00:53:07.280 --> 00:53:11.430 align:middle line:84% This is what a Apple MacBook looked like in 1996. 00:53:11.430 --> 00:53:12.960 align:middle line:84% This is what it looked like in 2011, 00:53:12.960 --> 00:53:18.140 align:middle line:84% so 15 years of pretty good technological progress. 00:53:18.140 --> 00:53:21.470 align:middle line:84% But these are the same findings from 1996. 00:53:21.470 --> 00:53:25.370 align:middle line:84% And as you can see, the numbers are exactly the same. 00:53:25.370 --> 00:53:27.510 align:middle line:84% We asked these kids these questions 15 years apart. 00:53:27.510 --> 00:53:28.770 align:middle line:84% If you see any difference in the numbers, 00:53:28.770 --> 00:53:30.645 align:middle line:84% they're probably statistically insignificant. 00:53:30.645 --> 00:53:34.130 align:middle line:84% It's just a little bit of variation in the sampling. 00:53:34.130 --> 00:53:36.470 align:middle line:84% But essentially, I mean, this was-- 00:53:36.470 --> 00:53:40.580 align:middle line:84% 1996 to 2011 was a pretty big decade and a half 00:53:40.580 --> 00:53:42.620 align:middle line:90% for technology and math. 00:53:42.620 --> 00:53:46.215 align:middle line:84% And we made almost no change in the fundamental ways 00:53:46.215 --> 00:53:48.340 align:middle line:84% that young people were being able to access and use 00:53:48.340 --> 00:53:49.040 align:middle line:90% technology. 00:53:49.040 --> 00:53:51.100 align:middle line:84% Does that argument make sense to you? 00:53:51.100 --> 00:53:54.550 align:middle line:84% Totally striking pair of findings there. 00:53:54.550 --> 00:53:58.850 align:middle line:84% But Ulrich Boser did not plagiarize from Wolenski. 00:53:58.850 --> 00:54:00.860 align:middle line:90% They just had the same findings. 00:54:00.860 --> 00:54:02.050 align:middle line:90% Yeah? 00:54:02.050 --> 00:54:03.910 align:middle line:84% AUDIENCE: Out of curiosity, is there 00:54:03.910 --> 00:54:08.110 align:middle line:84% a lot of difference between public schools and charter 00:54:08.110 --> 00:54:10.130 align:middle line:84% schools or private schools in the US-- 00:54:10.130 --> 00:54:13.840 align:middle line:84% somehow those things happen in real life? 00:54:13.840 --> 00:54:18.250 align:middle line:90% 00:54:18.250 --> 00:54:20.340 align:middle line:90% JUSTIN REICH: Yeah. 00:54:20.340 --> 00:54:23.950 align:middle line:84% There can be-- those things have enormous different gradations 00:54:23.950 --> 00:54:25.180 align:middle line:90% in the United States. 00:54:25.180 --> 00:54:27.490 align:middle line:84% So Dana was talking about Catholic schools 00:54:27.490 --> 00:54:28.553 align:middle line:90% in Philadelphia. 00:54:28.553 --> 00:54:30.470 align:middle line:84% Those are, strictly speaking, private schools. 00:54:30.470 --> 00:54:32.350 align:middle line:84% But they might be serving some of the most 00:54:32.350 --> 00:54:33.970 align:middle line:84% low-income neighborhoods and families 00:54:33.970 --> 00:54:40.900 align:middle line:84% in Philadelphia, where a Catholic school in inner city 00:54:40.900 --> 00:54:44.550 align:middle line:84% Philadelphia might have more in common with its public neighbor 00:54:44.550 --> 00:54:47.875 align:middle line:84% than it does to Sidwell Friends or something 00:54:47.875 --> 00:54:50.250 align:middle line:84% like that, a super elite private school, which might also 00:54:50.250 --> 00:54:52.020 align:middle line:84% be in Philadelphia, but might as well be 00:54:52.020 --> 00:54:54.060 align:middle line:90% in a whole different world. 00:54:54.060 --> 00:55:00.720 align:middle line:84% So to some extent, tax status or organizational status 00:55:00.720 --> 00:55:03.820 align:middle line:84% can be related to those kinds of things, 00:55:03.820 --> 00:55:07.230 align:middle line:84% but not necessarily, because we have public schools that 00:55:07.230 --> 00:55:08.493 align:middle line:90% serve that serve-- 00:55:08.493 --> 00:55:10.660 align:middle line:84% a public school in an extremely wealthy neighborhood 00:55:10.660 --> 00:55:12.060 align:middle line:84% might have more in common with a private school 00:55:12.060 --> 00:55:14.393 align:middle line:84% than it does with another public school in an inner city 00:55:14.393 --> 00:55:15.690 align:middle line:90% neighborhood. 00:55:15.690 --> 00:55:18.750 align:middle line:84% This was a cool study that was done 00:55:18.750 --> 00:55:22.800 align:middle line:84% looking at three schools that had adopted 00:55:22.800 --> 00:55:25.140 align:middle line:90% a whole bunch of technology. 00:55:25.140 --> 00:55:28.570 align:middle line:84% So they had roughly the same levels of access. 00:55:28.570 --> 00:55:30.410 align:middle line:84% They had bought the same kind of stuff. 00:55:30.410 --> 00:55:32.970 align:middle line:90% 00:55:32.970 --> 00:55:34.360 align:middle line:90% They were all in the Bay Area. 00:55:34.360 --> 00:55:35.230 align:middle line:90% These aren't real names-- 00:55:35.230 --> 00:55:37.813 align:middle line:84% Heathcliff Academy, which is a private, mostly wealthy, mostly 00:55:37.813 --> 00:55:39.372 align:middle line:84% white school; Sheldon Jr. High, which 00:55:39.372 --> 00:55:41.830 align:middle line:84% is a public, mostly middle-class and Asian-American school; 00:55:41.830 --> 00:55:44.540 align:middle line:84% Cesar Chavez Middle School, public, mostly working class 00:55:44.540 --> 00:55:45.090 align:middle line:90% and Latino. 00:55:45.090 --> 00:55:47.840 align:middle line:84% And again, they had all bought roughly the same amount 00:55:47.840 --> 00:55:49.340 align:middle line:90% of stuff. 00:55:49.340 --> 00:55:50.370 align:middle line:90% Each kid had a laptop. 00:55:50.370 --> 00:55:52.430 align:middle line:84% The laptop was connected to broadband. 00:55:52.430 --> 00:55:55.383 align:middle line:84% Of course, they're going to be differences, some access 00:55:55.383 --> 00:55:57.050 align:middle line:84% differences in the really wealthy places 00:55:57.050 --> 00:55:58.470 align:middle line:84% and the more working-class places, 00:55:58.470 --> 00:56:02.030 align:middle line:84% but trying to find not striking differences. 00:56:02.030 --> 00:56:05.990 align:middle line:84% But what Matt found was that the way people discussed 00:56:05.990 --> 00:56:08.420 align:middle line:90% technology was quite different. 00:56:08.420 --> 00:56:13.640 align:middle line:84% So at the mostly white Heathcliff Academy, 00:56:13.640 --> 00:56:16.150 align:middle line:84% playing around with technology was viewed as essential. 00:56:16.150 --> 00:56:18.650 align:middle line:84% So if there were kids who were goofing around with Minecraft 00:56:18.650 --> 00:56:20.487 align:middle line:90% and stuff, that was encouraged. 00:56:20.487 --> 00:56:21.570 align:middle line:90% Oh, you're playing around. 00:56:21.570 --> 00:56:22.195 align:middle line:90% You're hacking. 00:56:22.195 --> 00:56:24.770 align:middle line:84% You're doing all these kind of neat things. 00:56:24.770 --> 00:56:26.390 align:middle line:84% Whereas in the mostly middle-class, 00:56:26.390 --> 00:56:30.920 align:middle line:84% Asian-American school, goofy hacking applications 00:56:30.920 --> 00:56:32.670 align:middle line:84% of technology were considered threatening. 00:56:32.670 --> 00:56:34.680 align:middle line:84% It's like, oh, this is a risk to your education. 00:56:34.680 --> 00:56:36.920 align:middle line:90% This is a risk to your progress. 00:56:36.920 --> 00:56:40.740 align:middle line:84% Whereas in the mostly working-class Latino school, 00:56:40.740 --> 00:56:44.840 align:middle line:84% there wasn't encouragement or discourage-- 00:56:44.840 --> 00:56:46.320 align:middle line:84% it was just considered irrelevant. 00:56:46.320 --> 00:56:47.780 align:middle line:84% People weren't really paying attention 00:56:47.780 --> 00:56:48.780 align:middle line:90% to what they were doing. 00:56:48.780 --> 00:56:51.890 align:middle line:84% So again, the idea here being is that here are three institutions 00:56:51.890 --> 00:56:55.340 align:middle line:84% that had roughly similar levels of technology access, 00:56:55.340 --> 00:56:58.640 align:middle line:84% but the faculty and community gave very different 00:56:58.640 --> 00:57:01.190 align:middle line:84% cultural messages about what playing around 00:57:01.190 --> 00:57:02.930 align:middle line:90% with that technology meant. 00:57:02.930 --> 00:57:05.100 align:middle line:84% And for the kids who were already advantaged, 00:57:05.100 --> 00:57:07.675 align:middle line:84% they were encouraged to play, and hack, and goof around, 00:57:07.675 --> 00:57:08.550 align:middle line:90% and things like that. 00:57:08.550 --> 00:57:10.650 align:middle line:84% But for the kids who were not already advantaged, 00:57:10.650 --> 00:57:12.320 align:middle line:84% they got different messages from their community 00:57:12.320 --> 00:57:14.116 align:middle line:84% about the values of those technology. 00:57:14.116 --> 00:57:18.290 align:middle line:90% 00:57:18.290 --> 00:57:20.510 align:middle line:84% Yeah, this is another myth pair, the idea 00:57:20.510 --> 00:57:23.060 align:middle line:84% that technical and economic barriers are what keep people 00:57:23.060 --> 00:57:25.710 align:middle line:84% out, that if we could just get people the stuff, 00:57:25.710 --> 00:57:28.530 align:middle line:84% they would have great education with technology, 00:57:28.530 --> 00:57:31.730 align:middle line:84% whereas instead, it's social and cultural exclusions which 00:57:31.730 --> 00:57:34.160 align:middle line:90% can often be the hardest. 00:57:34.160 --> 00:57:39.080 align:middle line:84% We've talked in the class before about connected learning, some 00:57:39.080 --> 00:57:40.600 align:middle line:84% of these ideas about, how do kids 00:57:40.600 --> 00:57:42.550 align:middle line:84% do informal learning in their own communities 00:57:42.550 --> 00:57:43.675 align:middle line:90% and other things like that? 00:57:43.675 --> 00:57:47.110 align:middle line:84% Some of the things that the connected learning researchers 00:57:47.110 --> 00:57:49.510 align:middle line:84% are most worried about right now is 00:57:49.510 --> 00:58:00.010 align:middle line:84% that as America's polarization increasingly 00:58:00.010 --> 00:58:04.000 align:middle line:84% is expressed on social media, more and more kids 00:58:04.000 --> 00:58:08.200 align:middle line:84% feel uncomfortable communicating and expressing themselves there. 00:58:08.200 --> 00:58:11.680 align:middle line:84% And white, affluent dudes are the least 00:58:11.680 --> 00:58:13.850 align:middle line:84% likely to feel threatened in those spaces, 00:58:13.850 --> 00:58:15.892 align:middle line:84% and kids with all kinds of different marginalized 00:58:15.892 --> 00:58:18.820 align:middle line:84% backgrounds are the ones who are more likely to withdraw 00:58:18.820 --> 00:58:21.790 align:middle line:84% from posting their fanfiction, to sharing 00:58:21.790 --> 00:58:25.330 align:middle line:84% their art on DeviantArt, on other kinds of things like that. 00:58:25.330 --> 00:58:29.950 align:middle line:84% Basically what they saw was, in recent years, 00:58:29.950 --> 00:58:32.530 align:middle line:84% again, across all kinds of ages, and racial groups, 00:58:32.530 --> 00:58:34.340 align:middle line:84% and backgrounds and things like that, a 00:58:34.340 --> 00:58:36.650 align:middle line:84% withdrawing from public learning on social media, 00:58:36.650 --> 00:58:39.600 align:middle line:84% but a withdrawing would seem much more pronounced from people 00:58:39.600 --> 00:58:42.480 align:middle line:84% from marginalized backgrounds than they did from people 00:58:42.480 --> 00:58:43.810 align:middle line:90% from more affluent backgrounds. 00:58:43.810 --> 00:58:46.020 align:middle line:84% And all of those kids have more access to technology 00:58:46.020 --> 00:58:47.620 align:middle line:90% than they've ever had before. 00:58:47.620 --> 00:58:49.590 align:middle line:84% But there are social and cultural exclusions 00:58:49.590 --> 00:58:51.548 align:middle line:84% that are keeping them from learning experiences 00:58:51.548 --> 00:58:53.520 align:middle line:90% in ways that are new. 00:58:53.520 --> 00:58:55.890 align:middle line:90% OK, what can we do about this? 00:58:55.890 --> 00:58:58.200 align:middle line:84% This is one of the most frustrating problems 00:58:58.200 --> 00:59:02.340 align:middle line:84% to talk about because I feel like the problem is extremely 00:59:02.340 --> 00:59:03.900 align:middle line:90% well-understood. 00:59:03.900 --> 00:59:05.880 align:middle line:84% This is one in which I feel like the evidence-- 00:59:05.880 --> 00:59:08.770 align:middle line:84% we can say for sure, if you build a new edtech thing, 00:59:08.770 --> 00:59:11.100 align:middle line:84% it is very likely to disproportionately benefit 00:59:11.100 --> 00:59:15.030 align:middle line:84% the affluent, especially if you're not attentive to all 00:59:15.030 --> 00:59:19.270 align:middle line:90% to how these issues operate. 00:59:19.270 --> 00:59:21.630 align:middle line:84% We should not assume that new generative AI tools are 00:59:21.630 --> 00:59:23.050 align:middle line:90% going to democratize education. 00:59:23.050 --> 00:59:25.000 align:middle line:84% They just are very unlikely to do that. 00:59:25.000 --> 00:59:27.540 align:middle line:84% But then you might say, well, all right, A, there 00:59:27.540 --> 00:59:28.890 align:middle line:90% are some things. 00:59:28.890 --> 00:59:31.510 align:middle line:84% You read some studies of things like ASSISTments and Carnegie 00:59:31.510 --> 00:59:33.510 align:middle line:84% Learning that seem to disproportionately benefit 00:59:33.510 --> 00:59:36.015 align:middle line:84% people with low prior achievement in mathematics. 00:59:36.015 --> 00:59:37.890 align:middle line:90% What are they doing right? 00:59:37.890 --> 00:59:39.770 align:middle line:84% What are technologies that disproportionately 00:59:39.770 --> 00:59:42.480 align:middle line:84% benefit the learners who are furthest from opportunities? 00:59:42.480 --> 00:59:45.140 align:middle line:84% And I would say, that, we don't know very well. 00:59:45.140 --> 00:59:50.330 align:middle line:84% The research on how to fix this problem is more novel, 00:59:50.330 --> 00:59:51.210 align:middle line:90% is more nascent. 00:59:51.210 --> 00:59:54.380 align:middle line:84% But here are a few things that maybe would be promising 00:59:54.380 --> 00:59:56.150 align:middle line:90% directions to explore. 00:59:56.150 --> 01:00:00.690 align:middle line:84% So one, think about technologies that align home, school, 01:00:00.690 --> 01:00:01.610 align:middle line:90% and community. 01:00:01.610 --> 01:00:05.955 align:middle line:84% If affluent kids automatically get an educational support 01:00:05.955 --> 01:00:07.830 align:middle line:84% infrastructure from their homes and families, 01:00:07.830 --> 01:00:10.205 align:middle line:84% from their college-educated parents, and stuff like that, 01:00:10.205 --> 01:00:12.860 align:middle line:84% how would you build technologies or technology infrastructures 01:00:12.860 --> 01:00:16.580 align:middle line:84% that help all parents do more of this stuff? 01:00:16.580 --> 01:00:19.250 align:middle line:84% So Family Creative Learning is a super cool project 01:00:19.250 --> 01:00:22.070 align:middle line:84% by a woman named Ricarose Roque who got a PhD here 01:00:22.070 --> 01:00:24.890 align:middle line:84% who basically was trying to figure out, 01:00:24.890 --> 01:00:26.900 align:middle line:84% how would you help boys and girls 01:00:26.900 --> 01:00:31.610 align:middle line:84% clubs, after-schools support parents in doing a better job 01:00:31.610 --> 01:00:33.540 align:middle line:90% helping their kids use Scratch? 01:00:33.540 --> 01:00:36.142 align:middle line:84% All right, so we know kids of software engineers 01:00:36.142 --> 01:00:37.850 align:middle line:84% are the most likely folks to use Scratch, 01:00:37.850 --> 01:00:40.600 align:middle line:84% but what if we just helped all of the parents support 01:00:40.600 --> 01:00:41.450 align:middle line:90% kids doing Scratch? 01:00:41.450 --> 01:00:44.080 align:middle line:84% So she would do these multi-generational programs 01:00:44.080 --> 01:00:47.110 align:middle line:84% in after school, YMCAs, boys and girls clubs, and stuff 01:00:47.110 --> 01:00:47.750 align:middle line:90% like that. 01:00:47.750 --> 01:00:49.640 align:middle line:84% You bring parents and grandparents in. 01:00:49.640 --> 01:00:50.690 align:middle line:90% You feed them dinner. 01:00:50.690 --> 01:00:52.280 align:middle line:84% You break the parents and the kids up. 01:00:52.280 --> 01:00:54.260 align:middle line:84% You each teach them something about computers. 01:00:54.260 --> 01:00:56.350 align:middle line:84% You put them back together and share their projects and stuff 01:00:56.350 --> 01:00:57.220 align:middle line:90% like that. 01:00:57.220 --> 01:01:00.100 align:middle line:90% And that seems pretty cool. 01:01:00.100 --> 01:01:04.870 align:middle line:84% How do you make it so that the kinds of things that you're 01:01:04.870 --> 01:01:10.270 align:middle line:84% working on with technology align with young people's interests? 01:01:10.270 --> 01:01:13.990 align:middle line:84% So this was a photo from a project that 01:01:13.990 --> 01:01:17.110 align:middle line:84% was done at Georgia Tech trying to help 01:01:17.110 --> 01:01:19.570 align:middle line:84% more African-American males in the Atlanta area 01:01:19.570 --> 01:01:23.200 align:middle line:84% get involved in computer science, computer programming. 01:01:23.200 --> 01:01:27.597 align:middle line:84% And this was a researcher who found that a lot of these kids 01:01:27.597 --> 01:01:29.180 align:middle line:84% were really interested in video games, 01:01:29.180 --> 01:01:32.480 align:middle line:84% and they were interested in the problems in the video games-- 01:01:32.480 --> 01:01:34.030 align:middle line:84% bugs, glitches, and things like that. 01:01:34.030 --> 01:01:37.440 align:middle line:84% She was like, cool, let's make a little QA testing company. 01:01:37.440 --> 01:01:39.010 align:middle line:90% And so she got a bunch of kids. 01:01:39.010 --> 01:01:42.278 align:middle line:84% She helped them interface with companies to do QA testing. 01:01:42.278 --> 01:01:44.820 align:middle line:84% They were called the Glitch Game Testers because the language 01:01:44.820 --> 01:01:47.940 align:middle line:84% that they used for bugs in that part of the world was glitch. 01:01:47.940 --> 01:01:51.010 align:middle line:84% And as kids got more engaged in this program, 01:01:51.010 --> 01:01:53.980 align:middle line:84% she would then help them like take AP computer science 01:01:53.980 --> 01:01:55.380 align:middle line:84% and stuff like that and translate 01:01:55.380 --> 01:01:56.980 align:middle line:90% into academic programming. 01:01:56.980 --> 01:02:00.840 align:middle line:84% But the idea was to find out what kids' entry points look 01:02:00.840 --> 01:02:04.365 align:middle line:84% like into these issues and try to build up from there. 01:02:04.365 --> 01:02:07.865 align:middle line:90% 01:02:07.865 --> 01:02:11.160 align:middle line:84% Similar, I think, this is like the heart of connected learning. 01:02:11.160 --> 01:02:13.350 align:middle line:84% How do you connect to the interests and identities 01:02:13.350 --> 01:02:14.170 align:middle line:90% of young people? 01:02:14.170 --> 01:02:16.503 align:middle line:84% I mean, part of what Scratch was doing with micro worlds 01:02:16.503 --> 01:02:18.420 align:middle line:84% is being like, who is intuitively 01:02:18.420 --> 01:02:21.180 align:middle line:84% interested in creative programming? 01:02:21.180 --> 01:02:22.900 align:middle line:90% Maybe not every kid. 01:02:22.900 --> 01:02:26.455 align:middle line:84% But what kinds of kids could we get with hip hop dance? 01:02:26.455 --> 01:02:28.330 align:middle line:84% What kinds of kids could we get with fashion? 01:02:28.330 --> 01:02:30.540 align:middle line:84% What kinds of kids could we get with stand-up comedy? 01:02:30.540 --> 01:02:34.260 align:middle line:84% How could we offer a broad array of interests that could draw 01:02:34.260 --> 01:02:38.790 align:middle line:90% people in to what we're doing? 01:02:38.790 --> 01:02:46.230 align:middle line:84% A study that I would love to do one day is to think about, 01:02:46.230 --> 01:02:49.710 align:middle line:84% how do edtech companies reduce cost 01:02:49.710 --> 01:02:52.620 align:middle line:84% in ways that disproportionately benefit those who are 01:02:52.620 --> 01:02:54.795 align:middle line:90% furthest from opportunities? 01:02:54.795 --> 01:02:56.670 align:middle line:84% A funny thing to think about is, what happens 01:02:56.670 --> 01:02:58.440 align:middle line:90% when you make something free? 01:02:58.440 --> 01:03:00.460 align:middle line:84% So MOOCs, for the most part, were free. 01:03:00.460 --> 01:03:02.350 align:middle line:84% OpenCourseWare, for the most part, is free. 01:03:02.350 --> 01:03:05.160 align:middle line:84% But those things probably disproportionately benefit 01:03:05.160 --> 01:03:05.867 align:middle line:90% the affluent. 01:03:05.867 --> 01:03:08.200 align:middle line:84% They're free things, but they're better for rich people. 01:03:08.200 --> 01:03:10.500 align:middle line:84% There's actually a whole sociology of this. 01:03:10.500 --> 01:03:13.980 align:middle line:84% It connects to swag bags at the Oscars and things like that. 01:03:13.980 --> 01:03:15.480 align:middle line:84% People are always giving rich people 01:03:15.480 --> 01:03:18.660 align:middle line:84% free stuff, which doesn't seem like it makes sense. 01:03:18.660 --> 01:03:20.730 align:middle line:84% But there are certain kinds of things-- 01:03:20.730 --> 01:03:23.910 align:middle line:84% Desmos is the bottom example here. 01:03:23.910 --> 01:03:27.870 align:middle line:84% The TI-83, 84 was a real barrier to mathematics 01:03:27.870 --> 01:03:29.610 align:middle line:90% learning for families. 01:03:29.610 --> 01:03:32.280 align:middle line:84% And Desmos reduced that cost to zero. 01:03:32.280 --> 01:03:34.925 align:middle line:84% Now $120, calculator is not a huge burden 01:03:34.925 --> 01:03:37.550 align:middle line:84% for an upper-class family, not a huge burden for a middle-class 01:03:37.550 --> 01:03:38.050 align:middle line:90% family. 01:03:38.050 --> 01:03:39.990 align:middle line:84% It's a big burden for a working-class family. 01:03:39.990 --> 01:03:44.180 align:middle line:84% And so you're saving money for the families for whom 01:03:44.180 --> 01:03:45.660 align:middle line:90% that barrier is most relevant. 01:03:45.660 --> 01:03:47.520 align:middle line:84% Another one of my favorite projects-- 01:03:47.520 --> 01:03:50.042 align:middle line:84% has anybody ever heard of OpenStax? 01:03:50.042 --> 01:03:51.500 align:middle line:84% They did this cool thing where they 01:03:51.500 --> 01:03:56.270 align:middle line:84% realized something like half of all higher education enrollments 01:03:56.270 --> 01:03:58.460 align:middle line:90% are in 20 classes. 01:03:58.460 --> 01:04:00.680 align:middle line:84% Just about everybody who's taking a college class 01:04:00.680 --> 01:04:02.720 align:middle line:84% this semester across the entire United States 01:04:02.720 --> 01:04:06.930 align:middle line:84% is taking sociology 101, pre-calc, macroeconomics, 01:04:06.930 --> 01:04:09.630 align:middle line:84% microeconomics, chemistry, US history, psychology, economics, 01:04:09.630 --> 01:04:11.022 align:middle line:90% algebra. 01:04:11.022 --> 01:04:13.235 align:middle line:84% I mean, there's a long tail of zillions and zillions 01:04:13.235 --> 01:04:15.360 align:middle line:84% of other classes that we offer in higher education, 01:04:15.360 --> 01:04:17.160 align:middle line:84% but almost everyone is in these 20 classes. 01:04:17.160 --> 01:04:20.090 align:middle line:84% They were like, let's just pay really smart people 01:04:20.090 --> 01:04:22.470 align:middle line:84% a bunch of money to write good textbooks 01:04:22.470 --> 01:04:24.560 align:middle line:84% and then give them away for free. 01:04:24.560 --> 01:04:26.310 align:middle line:84% So for somebody who's coming to MIT, 01:04:26.310 --> 01:04:28.560 align:middle line:84% and you're paying $50,000 a semester or whatever it is 01:04:28.560 --> 01:04:31.490 align:middle line:84% you're paying, $120 chemistry book is not a big deal. 01:04:31.490 --> 01:04:33.010 align:middle line:84% If you go to a community college, 01:04:33.010 --> 01:04:37.450 align:middle line:84% and the entire chemistry course costs you $120 to register for, 01:04:37.450 --> 01:04:39.740 align:middle line:90% $120 textbook is a huge deal. 01:04:39.740 --> 01:04:42.760 align:middle line:84% It's just doubled the cost of your credit hours of education 01:04:42.760 --> 01:04:43.810 align:middle line:90% in that class. 01:04:43.810 --> 01:04:47.240 align:middle line:84% So taking that $120 and bringing that to zero, 01:04:47.240 --> 01:04:48.680 align:middle line:90% that might really matter a lot. 01:04:48.680 --> 01:04:50.950 align:middle line:84% That could save people a meaningful amount 01:04:50.950 --> 01:04:52.690 align:middle line:84% of money that will help them advance in their community 01:04:52.690 --> 01:04:54.898 align:middle line:84% college education or other sorts of things like that. 01:04:54.898 --> 01:04:57.610 align:middle line:84% So this idea that you could look across the education system 01:04:57.610 --> 01:05:00.760 align:middle line:84% and be like, what are specific cost barriers 01:05:00.760 --> 01:05:02.680 align:middle line:84% to family that we we use technology 01:05:02.680 --> 01:05:04.990 align:middle line:84% to drive down those costs in ways 01:05:04.990 --> 01:05:06.700 align:middle line:84% that affluent people might benefit from 01:05:06.700 --> 01:05:09.790 align:middle line:84% but probably won't notice, but community college learners, 01:05:09.790 --> 01:05:12.040 align:middle line:84% lower-income, working-class families might really 01:05:12.040 --> 01:05:14.350 align:middle line:90% benefit from? 01:05:14.350 --> 01:05:17.200 align:middle line:84% A thing that we experimented with a lot 01:05:17.200 --> 01:05:21.003 align:middle line:84% was trying to target the needs of subgroups. 01:05:21.003 --> 01:05:22.420 align:middle line:84% Did I talk about these experiments 01:05:22.420 --> 01:05:23.837 align:middle line:84% when we talked about MOOCs, how we 01:05:23.837 --> 01:05:25.720 align:middle line:84% put all these little interventions 01:05:25.720 --> 01:05:27.580 align:middle line:84% in at the beginning of MOOC courses 01:05:27.580 --> 01:05:29.800 align:middle line:84% to get people to-- some nodding heads. 01:05:29.800 --> 01:05:31.230 align:middle line:90% It's in the books there. 01:05:31.230 --> 01:05:33.210 align:middle line:84% We designed a whole series of interventions 01:05:33.210 --> 01:05:35.862 align:middle line:84% that were trying to increase the sense of belonging 01:05:35.862 --> 01:05:37.320 align:middle line:84% or increase the sense of well-being 01:05:37.320 --> 01:05:39.420 align:middle line:84% from people who might perceive themselves as being 01:05:39.420 --> 01:05:42.240 align:middle line:90% from minority backgrounds. 01:05:42.240 --> 01:05:44.530 align:middle line:84% And we thought they worked for a while, 01:05:44.530 --> 01:05:47.230 align:middle line:84% and then we weren't sure that our interventions were working. 01:05:47.230 --> 01:05:49.105 align:middle line:84% But it's an interesting thing to think about. 01:05:49.105 --> 01:05:52.260 align:middle line:84% What kind of-- if you're trying to serve people from a wide 01:05:52.260 --> 01:05:54.950 align:middle line:84% range of backgrounds, and you know that some people from those 01:05:54.950 --> 01:05:57.450 align:middle line:84% backgrounds might not have the same level of support at home 01:05:57.450 --> 01:05:58.622 align:middle line:90% or might not have the same-- 01:05:58.622 --> 01:06:01.080 align:middle line:84% might experience stereotype threat or other kinds of things 01:06:01.080 --> 01:06:02.700 align:middle line:84% like that, what kinds of interventions 01:06:02.700 --> 01:06:05.420 align:middle line:84% could you design to address those needs? 01:06:05.420 --> 01:06:08.430 align:middle line:90% 01:06:08.430 --> 01:06:11.940 align:middle line:84% Another thing to think about is, where could you 01:06:11.940 --> 01:06:15.970 align:middle line:84% target supports across someone's educational trajectory? 01:06:15.970 --> 01:06:18.420 align:middle line:84% This is another sad story of things that we thought worked 01:06:18.420 --> 01:06:20.410 align:middle line:84% for a little while and probably don't. 01:06:20.410 --> 01:06:23.790 align:middle line:90% But still, the problem is real. 01:06:23.790 --> 01:06:27.190 align:middle line:84% Ben Castleman worked at this school in Providence called Met. 01:06:27.190 --> 01:06:29.690 align:middle line:84% And they were charter school, and they did a pretty good job 01:06:29.690 --> 01:06:30.930 align:middle line:90% getting kids into college. 01:06:30.930 --> 01:06:32.430 align:middle line:84% But one of the things they observed, 01:06:32.430 --> 01:06:34.520 align:middle line:84% which totally broke their heart, is 01:06:34.520 --> 01:06:38.370 align:middle line:84% that they would get kids into college, accepted to college, 01:06:38.370 --> 01:06:41.930 align:middle line:84% and then they wouldn't show up in the fall. 01:06:41.930 --> 01:06:45.093 align:middle line:84% You're part of four-year, 12-year educational system, 01:06:45.093 --> 01:06:47.510 align:middle line:84% which is trying to get kids into post-secondary education, 01:06:47.510 --> 01:06:48.457 align:middle line:90% and you succeed. 01:06:48.457 --> 01:06:49.790 align:middle line:90% They have an application letter. 01:06:49.790 --> 01:06:52.410 align:middle line:84% And some fraction of them don't arrive in the fall. 01:06:52.410 --> 01:06:55.950 align:middle line:84% They ended up calling that summer melt. 01:06:55.950 --> 01:06:59.270 align:middle line:84% And part of it is, if you are the first person in your family 01:06:59.270 --> 01:07:02.090 align:middle line:84% to go to college, then figuring out FAFSA, figuring out 01:07:02.090 --> 01:07:04.220 align:middle line:84% course enrollment, figuring out moving on campus-- 01:07:04.220 --> 01:07:06.320 align:middle line:84% if you come from a family where you're not 01:07:06.320 --> 01:07:08.070 align:middle line:84% first generation, your mom and your dad, 01:07:08.070 --> 01:07:09.800 align:middle line:84% just explain all that stuff to you and figure it out, 01:07:09.800 --> 01:07:11.030 align:middle line:90% and you get through it. 01:07:11.030 --> 01:07:13.280 align:middle line:84% But each of those obstacles-- and there 01:07:13.280 --> 01:07:15.030 align:middle line:84% are a few of them to showing up on campus. 01:07:15.030 --> 01:07:16.850 align:middle line:90% And each of those was enough. 01:07:16.850 --> 01:07:19.370 align:middle line:84% So they designed these technologies 01:07:19.370 --> 01:07:23.450 align:middle line:84% that basically sent little text message nudges to kids 01:07:23.450 --> 01:07:25.270 align:middle line:90% all throughout the summer. 01:07:25.270 --> 01:07:27.017 align:middle line:84% Have you figured out your financial aid? 01:07:27.017 --> 01:07:27.850 align:middle line:90% Have you registered? 01:07:27.850 --> 01:07:30.100 align:middle line:84% Have you-- other kinds of things like that. 01:07:30.100 --> 01:07:32.920 align:middle line:84% And for a little while, it looked like those nudges were 01:07:32.920 --> 01:07:35.510 align:middle line:84% working, and then people reproduced at larger scales, 01:07:35.510 --> 01:07:37.510 align:middle line:84% and this particular intervention doesn't seem 01:07:37.510 --> 01:07:40.210 align:middle line:90% like it's actually working. 01:07:40.210 --> 01:07:42.730 align:middle line:84% But it was at least a good idea of being 01:07:42.730 --> 01:07:46.390 align:middle line:84% like, let's think about people's educational trajectory 01:07:46.390 --> 01:07:47.950 align:middle line:84% from the transition points you have 01:07:47.950 --> 01:07:49.840 align:middle line:84% between middle school, and high school, and college, 01:07:49.840 --> 01:07:52.100 align:middle line:84% and post-secondary, and lifelong learning, and things like that, 01:07:52.100 --> 01:07:53.890 align:middle line:84% and where there might be transition 01:07:53.890 --> 01:07:56.620 align:middle line:84% points that affluent folks just breeze through, 01:07:56.620 --> 01:07:58.330 align:middle line:84% but folks from working-class families 01:07:58.330 --> 01:08:01.690 align:middle line:90% find more struggles with? 01:08:01.690 --> 01:08:06.220 align:middle line:84% Probably the biggest challenge that education technology has 01:08:06.220 --> 01:08:09.130 align:middle line:84% is, things that really work in education 01:08:09.130 --> 01:08:12.380 align:middle line:84% often are tailored to their particular context. 01:08:12.380 --> 01:08:15.040 align:middle line:84% But usually, what software developers are trying to do 01:08:15.040 --> 01:08:17.120 align:middle line:84% is build a thing that works anywhere. 01:08:17.120 --> 01:08:18.859 align:middle line:90% I mean, that's a real tension. 01:08:18.859 --> 01:08:20.470 align:middle line:90% That's a real problem. 01:08:20.470 --> 01:08:22.270 align:middle line:84% There's some cool examples of this. 01:08:22.270 --> 01:08:25.147 align:middle line:84% I think you could think of the Open edX platform 01:08:25.147 --> 01:08:26.689 align:middle line:84% as something kind of working on that. 01:08:26.689 --> 01:08:29.359 align:middle line:84% So there's one, big software platform, 01:08:29.359 --> 01:08:30.670 align:middle line:90% and there are a couple of-- 01:08:30.670 --> 01:08:33.710 align:middle line:84% edX is a big organization that offers MOOCs everywhere. 01:08:33.710 --> 01:08:37.810 align:middle line:84% But there are dozens of local MOOC operators 01:08:37.810 --> 01:08:40.340 align:middle line:84% that offer in their particular country, 01:08:40.340 --> 01:08:42.520 align:middle line:84% in their particular language, in topics 01:08:42.520 --> 01:08:45.760 align:middle line:84% that they think local folks will be interested in. 01:08:45.760 --> 01:08:48.880 align:middle line:84% One of them is Edraak, which is run by the Queen Rania 01:08:48.880 --> 01:08:53.319 align:middle line:84% Foundation, which focuses on offering Arabic language 01:08:53.319 --> 01:08:56.569 align:middle line:84% classes to folks in Jordan and areas surrounding Jordan. 01:08:56.569 --> 01:08:59.770 align:middle line:84% And you could just imagine, well, OK, so they can take edX. 01:08:59.770 --> 01:09:02.930 align:middle line:84% They can make sure it supports right to left reading in Arabic. 01:09:02.930 --> 01:09:05.109 align:middle line:84% They can do whatever else you need 01:09:05.109 --> 01:09:07.540 align:middle line:84% to make the Arabic interface work better, offer courses 01:09:07.540 --> 01:09:10.000 align:middle line:84% in Arabic, find out what people in the Arabic world 01:09:10.000 --> 01:09:11.859 align:middle line:90% would want to be able to do. 01:09:11.859 --> 01:09:15.740 align:middle line:84% And they're using the same base software as everyone else. 01:09:15.740 --> 01:09:18.220 align:middle line:84% But that software is customizable to serve 01:09:18.220 --> 01:09:20.609 align:middle line:90% particular notions and areas. 01:09:20.609 --> 01:09:23.790 align:middle line:90% 01:09:23.790 --> 01:09:26.670 align:middle line:84% And the idea is you might be able to apply 01:09:26.670 --> 01:09:31.500 align:middle line:84% all of these different kinds of thinking all across a project's 01:09:31.500 --> 01:09:33.029 align:middle line:90% life cycle. 01:09:33.029 --> 01:09:37.720 align:middle line:84% So as we were giving these talks to people who fund technologies, 01:09:37.720 --> 01:09:40.649 align:middle line:84% to venture capitalists, to philanthropists, to technology 01:09:40.649 --> 01:09:43.897 align:middle line:84% developers, to the big FAANG kind of companies that 01:09:43.897 --> 01:09:45.689 align:middle line:84% have publishers, who have a bunch of things 01:09:45.689 --> 01:09:48.450 align:middle line:84% underneath them, who are saying, what 01:09:48.450 --> 01:09:49.950 align:middle line:84% are all the strategies you might try 01:09:49.950 --> 01:09:54.330 align:middle line:84% when you're funding a company to get 01:09:54.330 --> 01:09:55.900 align:middle line:90% the right people at the table? 01:09:55.900 --> 01:09:59.970 align:middle line:84% Lots of times, when we fund education technologies, 01:09:59.970 --> 01:10:01.800 align:middle line:84% the only people who make those choices 01:10:01.800 --> 01:10:04.160 align:middle line:84% are affluent people who went to private school and stuff 01:10:04.160 --> 01:10:04.660 align:middle line:90% like that. 01:10:04.660 --> 01:10:07.118 align:middle line:84% How would you get more people from more diverse backgrounds 01:10:07.118 --> 01:10:08.050 align:middle line:90% to be able to do that? 01:10:08.050 --> 01:10:12.280 align:middle line:84% And so forth and so on through all of the different programs. 01:10:12.280 --> 01:10:15.105 align:middle line:84% So in some ways, it's disappointing 01:10:15.105 --> 01:10:16.480 align:middle line:84% that there aren't better answers. 01:10:16.480 --> 01:10:18.855 align:middle line:84% It would be nice to give a lecture like this and be like, 01:10:18.855 --> 01:10:21.890 align:middle line:84% we totally know what to do to make education more equitable. 01:10:21.890 --> 01:10:22.950 align:middle line:90% But we don't have that. 01:10:22.950 --> 01:10:25.740 align:middle line:84% But we have some really clear, I mean, in my mind, 01:10:25.740 --> 01:10:28.190 align:middle line:84% just definitive evidence that when people build education 01:10:28.190 --> 01:10:30.200 align:middle line:84% technologies, if they don't center 01:10:30.200 --> 01:10:31.980 align:middle line:84% the needs of marginalized communities, 01:10:31.980 --> 01:10:33.980 align:middle line:84% it will disproportionately benefit the affluent. 01:10:33.980 --> 01:10:36.110 align:middle line:84% You can pretty much guarantee that 01:10:36.110 --> 01:10:38.990 align:middle line:84% as an outcome for almost anything that comes along. 01:10:38.990 --> 01:10:41.060 align:middle line:84% And there's lots of interesting work to be done 01:10:41.060 --> 01:10:42.660 align:middle line:84% and things to explore to figure out, 01:10:42.660 --> 01:10:44.848 align:middle line:84% how could we learn more about being 01:10:44.848 --> 01:10:46.640 align:middle line:84% more intentional about building things that 01:10:46.640 --> 01:10:49.820 align:middle line:90% serve a diverse range of folks? 01:10:49.820 --> 01:10:52.410 align:middle line:90% And then so I won't see you-- 01:10:52.410 --> 01:10:54.320 align:middle line:84% I will see you each individually next week 01:10:54.320 --> 01:10:55.710 align:middle line:90% to talk about your projects. 01:10:55.710 --> 01:10:57.127 align:middle line:84% And then the following week, we'll 01:10:57.127 --> 01:11:02.660 align:middle line:84% talk about the next couple of as yet intractable dilemmas, 01:11:02.660 --> 01:11:05.180 align:middle line:84% the trap of routine assessment and the toxic power 01:11:05.180 --> 01:11:06.630 align:middle line:90% of data and experiments. 01:11:06.630 --> 01:11:08.070 align:middle line:84% So very nice to see you this week, 01:11:08.070 --> 01:11:12.140 align:middle line:84% and I look forward to seeing you individually next week. 01:11:12.140 --> 01:11:15.580 align:middle line:90% And enjoy your long weekend. 01:11:15.580 --> 01:11:21.000 align:middle line:90%