When Cristina Heffernan says tech can help with feedback, I wonder what she means when she says "tech can't teach". She writes, "the pandemic illustrated quite clearly that edtech cannot teach our students on its own." It illustrated no such thing, because I don't think anybody tried anything like that. I think what she means is that not all teaching can be digitally mediated, that is, there must be an in-person component. But that's a very different statement. What was missing in digitally mediated instruction was precisely things like formative assessment - teachers tried to use videoconferencing to do 'remote learning' that consisted mostly of direct instruction. And yeah, that failed, not surprisingly. But if tech can provide the formative feedback (and I agree, it can) then there's no reason the teacher can't be remote. There's nothing about being there in person that's special. It's just a case here (I think) of an author saying something she knows the audience wants to hear so she can say something with which they might otherwise disagree.
Today: 0 Total: 95 [Direct link] [Share]
