The PC gave us computing power at home, the internet connected us, and mobile let us do it pretty much anywhere. Now generative AI lets us communicate with technology in our own language, using our own senses. But figuring it all out when you're living through it is a totally different story. Welcome to Leading the Shift.

a new podcast for Microsoft Azure. I'm your host, Susan Etlinger. In each episode, leaders will share what they're learning to help you navigate all this change with confidence. Please join us. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. WBUR Podcasts, Boston. This is On Point. I'm Meghna Chakrabarty.

Every year, American schools spend anywhere between $26 to $41 billion on education technology. That was before the pandemic, according to the nonprofit EdTech Evidence Exchange. So what we're talking about is the budget for your school-provided laptops and tablets, but also software and apps.

In fact, the e-learning market is expected to reach a whopping $170 billion by 2030, according to the market research store Research and Markets. Education technology promises to assist in things like administrative tasks, lessen teacher burden, even speed up assessments. For students, the edtech companies say their products will help kids and teens learn more and learn better. But...

Of course, for every claim, we have to ask, is there evidence? After all, student literacy and math scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a.k.a. the nation's report card, have remained relatively flat since 1971. Achievement has actually declined since 2020. And of course, that's pandemic school closure related. But at the same time, it's also when schools embraced ed tech even more to prop up remote learning.

So hundreds of billions of dollars, but for questionable benefit. However, technology is here to stay. It's become central to almost every aspect of our lives. So perhaps the more important question is, is there a better way to use tech in schools that will actually enhance student learning?

So let's start right in the classroom. And Katie Akeridge joins us. She's a 9th and 10th grade English language arts teacher in Athens, Georgia. Katie, welcome to On Point. Hi, thank you for having me. I mean, it's the middle of the school day right now. You're on a break, I hope. Yes, I'm in my prep period, coming at you live from my classroom. Okay, I appreciate using those critical prep minutes to be with us. So let me just quickly ask you,

EdTech, in your professional world, in your classroom, love, hate, or something in between? I would say love and hate. Technology in the classroom is definitely something that is a double-edged sword. So money spent putting technology in the hands of students, I think, is money well spent.

But the double-edged sword factor comes in when we ask ourselves how much can be digitized versus how much should be digitized and whether or not that digitization is doing anything to impact students' learning. Okay. So I want to note that we will talk about the differences, obviously, between high school learning and the use of technology and middle school and elementary school. It's all a huge spectrum. Right.

But give us some details. Like in your classes, first of all, when you teach 9th and 10th grade English language arts, what subjects within ELA are you teaching? It's just broad survey classes. So I teach fiction, nonfiction, and poetry and drama mainly. Okay.

And I have found that with the advent of technology in the classroom, in some respects, it does improve the experience of students in the classroom. And it makes education overall more accessible and more equitable. So an instance of this is like certain communication apps like the advent of Infinite Campus and Power School. So that

parents and students can continually check grades. You mentioned COVID in the introduction, and my school has been one-to-one with Chromebooks since COVID happened. So all students are provided a Chromebook by the district, and that certainly has made education more attainable, more accessible, and more equitable for all. Our curriculums are also starting to adapt to include more technology.

So when you walk into my classroom now, you're not going to see students just reading print texts. You're going to see students listening to podcasts, watching videos, even listening to songs or reading alternative texts like graphic novels or comic books.

And these type of curriculum changes are important because it reflects the type of text students are actually interested in. And they're also more accurate representations of the type of text students interact with every day.

Okay. I'm going to put a pin in what you just said about it reflects the kind of tech students are actually interested in. I promise you want to come back to that. But can you give me a little bit more detail? Like, so across, you know, one of your class periods, like what specific apps are kids using? How often? Like, give me some concrete examples.

So we are about to move in ninth grade. We're about to move into our Greek mythology unit. And our anchor text that I based that unit around is the Odyssey. Now, I know what you're thinking. Yes.

yawn. No, no, no, no, no. I think the exact opposite. I'm thrilled. My ninth graders might not agree with you, but they see this epic poem that was written thousands of years ago, and it's really hard for them to engage with a text like that.

So I will use supplemental materials. For example, there is an Apple podcast that discusses the events that happen in the Odyssey. And sometimes we'll lean on those podcasts to give students a different perspective on the events that have happened, to hear a different voice other than their teacher talking at them. And that's the type of learning that they're used to in their personal lives now.

I see. Okay. So I'm just going to say I love that you're reading The Odyssey. So this gets me back to that pin that I had put in what you said earlier here. I know that one of the most important things in getting kids to learn is, people say, to meet them where they are, right? To spark their interest and imagination. And I can see how tech tools help to do that. But on the other hand, I've also heard of examples where

And I'm not saying you're doing this, but, you know, teachers who are extremely overburdened and have to cover a lot of material because that's what they're told to do by their districts. You know, instead of instead of using tech to supplement, as you're talking about, a core text, what they might do is say, well, we're not going to read the core text. We're just going to listen to the podcast or look at this app that like does an animation of Odysseus trying to protect himself from the siren call.

And to me, that actually reduces the depth of student learning, right? Because the text of the Odyssey has a richness to it that is unique. And that's why it's been a core part of the Western canon for thousands of years. Right.

Right. And that you're completely correct in that. And using technology exclusively in the classroom, I think denigrates what students are actually learning. And it is kind of the antithesis of education, which is I think in this country, the purpose is to give students the tools to think freely and to make their own connections and to formulate individual thoughts. Right.

To that point about like the Odyssey and other very seminal texts in our canon, it's also a cultural connection as well. You know, we all remember reading texts like the Odyssey and Animal Farm and other books that

appear on curriculums frequently. And it's a way for us to connect as people, to connect as citizens if we have those seminal texts and an understanding of those seminal texts. So technology in the classroom to me is best used as a supplement and as a support, but not as an exclusive tool for pedagogy. Right. It's the how, right?

Yes. Okay. So we're also having this conversation, Katie, at a time where there's some growing pushback, right, from parents, from childhood development experts about technology, about screens in general. It's really complicated, right? There's pros and cons to everything. So here's one of our listeners. This is Lisa, who lives in California. And she tells us that the majority of her child's schoolwork is done on Chromebooks provided by the school.

It is nice because you can see the assignments. It's easy to tell when they're due. It's easy to tell when they have been completed. The problems they have is they don't have any way to filter this stuff. So most of the kids sit there and are on YouTube, and then they just switch back over when the teacher's not looking. And for any of the special needs kids or kids that have issues with attention, it just amplifies that.

I can see the kids fingers going alt tab, alt tab, alt tab right now. Oh, absolutely. Do you face that challenge?

Oh, every single day. And more than that, because I teach English, I face that added challenge of the big, scary AI writing. That has probably been the biggest hill to climb in the past two years with the advent of the accessibility of AI writing. I mean, these students, like AI, there's AI bots on their social media, like on Snapchat. So

No matter where they look in their personal or in their classroom lives, AI is being presented to them.

And it's such a new type of technology and it has advanced faster than I think education has been able to adapt and respond. So I don't know if there is a clear answer on how education will adapt to AI writing. There's a few tips and tricks that I use to identify it. I mean, it is pretty easy to identify a ninth grade writing from, you know, this collegiate diction and syntax that is all of a sudden being submitted.

But other times the area is very, very gray. And to that listener's point, it's not just AI. If we're doing everything on the Chromebooks, it is so easy for students to just open a new tab and start watching whatever YouTube they would like to watch. Well, YouTube's an interesting example because, I mean, one could argue, well, the district could just block YouTube from use on the Wi-Fi networks in school. But on the other hand...

There's some extraordinary education tools and channels on YouTube, which could be really useful for teachers. I only have you for another minute, Katie, and I also am still aware that you're in your prep period. But tell me, in terms of teacher autonomy in the classroom—

You know, have you been getting sort of edicts from the district saying you're going to have to use this app, you're going to have to use this tech? And if so, has there been the corresponding professional development that needs to be to happen to get effective use of these new tools in the classroom?

Right. Well, fortunately, in my context, I do have pretty good support from administration in the district. So, for example, I have autonomy to submit PO requests or purchase order requests if I would like to integrate or check out a new type of technology or an application online. We have had one platform kind of thrust onto us, and it is a testing platform. So we'll take standardized tests like the benchmarks to test.

show student growth or student data. And I do not really understand that platform. I've been using it for six years and I feel like every semester the platform itself updates and then all the buttons are in a different spot. But I'm fortunate enough to be in a district where I am provided support to try and at least step into those unknown waters. It sounds a lot like the business accounting platform that we have to use here. Katie,

Katie Akeridge, a 9th and 10th grade English language arts teacher in Athens, Georgia. Thank you so much for joining us today. Absolutely. Thank you for having me. Your students are lucky to have you. When we come back, we're going to talk more about the evidence or not of effectiveness of edtech. This is On Point.

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At Radiolab, we love nothing more than nerding out about science, neuroscience, chemistry. But, but, we do also like to get into other kinds of stories. Stories about policing, or politics, country music, hockey, sex.

Of bugs. Regardless of whether we're looking at science or not science, we bring a rigorous curiosity to get you the answers. And hopefully make you see the world anew. Radiolab, adventures on the edge of what we think we know. Wherever you get your podcasts. You're back with On Point. I'm Meghna Chakrabarty. And today we are talking about the tens of billions of dollars that schools across this country spend every year on ed tech. Everything from laptops to computers.

tablets, but perhaps more importantly, apps and programs, and how that was supercharged by the pandemic. So, of course, the question is, is it actually improving or increasing or enriching student learning as these ed tech companies progress?

We got a lot of feedback from on-point listeners out there who are parents. This is Emily, who listens from Maine. She's the proud parent of two boys. Her older son deals with dysgraphia. That's a learning disability that affects his ability to write fluently and accurately. When his middle school started providing Chromebooks and began to do a majority of the work on the Chromebooks, Emily was a little bit more of a dysgraphia person.

Emily says it completely changed her son's experience in the classroom. Him being able to use talk-to-text, and also as he's gotten older, typing rather than handwriting, was really a godsend. And this all came about, frankly, during the pandemic. And he just was at home, didn't know how to type.

and really struggling to express himself with his schoolwork and handwriting. So tech being a huge boon to Emily's son there.

On the other end of the extreme, here's Steve Dalton, who listens to the show from Winthrop, Massachusetts. He runs a private tutoring practice. Steve says his students, quote, universally despise these tools. A lot of the time, the work assigned is confusing. Questions will be marked as wrong for reasons that the students do not clearly understand. It's supposed to be a labor-saving device for the teachers, but what I find is that

It attempts to turn the learning process into something mechanical instead of something personal. And it creates the impression that learning is something primarily consisting of the memorization of a bunch of facts or being able to put the right things into a computer rather than an encounter with a person that can change your life and cause you to reorganize your priorities and care about what you're learning about. That's Steve Dalton who listens.

to On Point from Winthrop, Massachusetts. Well, joining us now is Antero Garcia. He's an associate professor in the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University, president-elect of the National Council of Teachers of English, and author of Good Reception, Teens, Teachers, and Mobile Media in a Los Angeles High School. Professor Garcia, welcome to On Point. ♪

Thanks, Magna. So you not only have worked in higher ed, I understand that you were also a public school teacher at one time as well. That's right. I was a teacher in Los Angeles for several years, English teacher. And can you remind me what years those were?

Yeah, so that was the mid-2000s, so probably from 2006 till 2012-ish, I think. Okay. So is there a way to describe then how much the use of technology has changed in American classrooms since you were teaching in L.A. about 20 years ago?

I think that's great. There's a shift in terms of an emphasis from hardware to software, I think. But largely, I would move, I think the wild thing to think about is during the time there as a teacher was when we saw the advent of the iPhone, we saw the kind of integration of smartphones in classrooms and the kind of probably what teachers think of as the nightmare scenario of all of the distraction, all of the tabbing over that was described in the earlier segment. And that

that has not changed in the decade and a half since I was in the classroom, right? This is largely the same landscape. And I think that is the confounding part of

of this conversation to me is this is the exact conversation around ed tech and distraction and young people and Steve's frustration around labor saving software that we've been having around these tools for the past decade and a half and that we've had around ed technology writ large for nearly a century at this point. Okay. So every time we have a conversation about education in America, I always feel like we're, um,

continuously falling short because it's so complicated, right? And that you have not only 50 different systems of education, you have thousands from county to county or district to district.

different age groups, and when it comes to technology, different purposes. So for the focus of this conversation, I want to set aside the tech and apps that can be used for, say, administrative purposes. Because I think those could be potentially extremely useful for teachers, for districts, for students, that kind of thing. So we'll put administravia off to the side.

Instead, I want to definitely focus on the apps that claim to enhance learning. Now, you heard teacher Katie Akeridge earlier in Athens, Georgia, talk about how she uses apps to enrich students' learning of the Odyssey. Really good example of how technology can supplement education.

But you recently wrote an article in the Stanford report. Actually, this was a couple of years ago where you say you want to be able to say that you think technologies are changing education for the better and that we need to invest more in them. But you just can't. Why?

Yeah. I think, you know, if this conversation is about, you know, the evidence for learning, I want us to take a step back and think through who's giving us that evidence, right? If you point, if we can point to the very fancy ed tech companies that are customizing learning, uh,

And they will point to why this work is important, what their algorithm does. And to some of the opening statistics that you shared, you started this program off with, right? We've spent hundreds of billions of dollars in this space. And for what feels like a kind of conversation. What we haven't spent the hundreds of billion dollars on are the teachers and the people who build up the caring relationships and classrooms everywhere.

every single day. And so, yes, I think there's some important accessibility components that we think about. I think that was one parent's remark around the ways that text-to-speech can support their student or their child. But what I really want to focus on is if we want to make meaningful connections around all of this work, we need to do that by investing in the role of teachers

Rather than so, you know, Steve framed this as labor saving work for teachers. I think that a lot of this technology is labor replacing teachers, right? This is a particularly arduous time to imagine being a teacher. So kudos to Katie and the amazing work that she's doing in her classroom. And we need more Katie's in the classroom who are invested in and supported to do this work rather than in the software that's doing it for them.

Well, let's try to find some way to better understand what we mean by learning. OK, sure. Because I guess this is another conundrum in education. Like, like, how do we measure student learning? And therefore, how would we measure the impact of these like apps, for example, on student learning? Yeah.

Yeah. So one way we can think about this, this is, you know, we talk about the nation's report card and we talk about assessment. We have pretty narrow definitions of what literacy acquisition and literacy learning looks like. Uh, but again, I think when we think about what does meaningful learning look like to me, it's, can I take an idea? Can I, you know, use express my free agency to communicate and explore and build upon that idea? Those are much harder things to assess. Uh,

But teachers are pretty good at doing that if we give them time and the holistic resources to build that over time. If it's purely filling in a multiple choice response and not getting a satisfactory explanation on why that is wrong and getting new assessment items that are customized to my own interests,

But we're going to see the quote unquote nation's report card dwindling time and time again. And unfortunately, you know, I think this is where educational policies that are about immediate responses to what assessment looks like is not going to reflect the kinds of values of what classrooms need right now. Well, so then tell me a little bit more then about, you know, if...

Let's look at the post-pandemic period, right? Because that's when so many more kids had technology become so much more a part of their learning experience. I mean, you could easily look at that and say, well, there's been a total failure, right, of ed tech because the outcomes have not been good. But on the other hand, is that a fair way to assess the impact of ed tech? Because there were so many concurrent other challenges that students were facing during the pandemic, during school closures and in the years after. Yeah.

Absolutely. I don't think that's a fair way to think about it. So one, one, so I will step back and say, one of the things that I do appreciate about technology, I'm not a complete Luddite who's, who's really grumpy about technology. One of the things that I do appreciate about it is, you know, for the most part, nearly every adolescent in America right now has access to some kind of, uh, digital wireless device connected to the internet. Uh, and, and in some ways, if we think expansively about what it means, we are probably one of the most, uh,

literate societies right now in terms of young people engaging in and reading multimodal texts every single day, recreationally, doing that for fun, right? That might be YouTube videos or TikToks. The kind of content might not be what parents want, but kids are reading and communicating and sharing and curating in incredibly powerful ways. And rather than building on that, what we've seen instead is schools building out these kinds of, you know, policies that ban cell phones and ban technology.

which we've essentially been kicking the bucket around for over a decade at this point. We haven't figured out meaningful ways to support kids in using these devices and instead essentially just try to ban them writ large as some kind of quick solution. But the places where we don't ban those devices are middle class jobs and spaces where affluent employed individuals are able to use their cell phones

at their own discretion, right? So I can be just like kids in classrooms right now and be on task and also maybe scroll over and look at my social media and maybe watch a YouTube video during lunch.

And those are essentially practices that we have not allowed young people to do in these classroom settings. Okay. I want to kind of do a little quick survey across different age bands. All right. And let's start with the K through five, because in a sense, in my opinion, as a parent, that one is much more straightforward. I just do not see in terms of my personal experience that.

Any screen-based tech having improved the quality of learning for little kids. That's interesting. So I will say I'm a dad of five-year-old twin daughters, and one is absolutely obsessed with her iPad, totally loves it.

And I will confess during busy times, her iPad helps keep her situated. It's mainly to watch princessy movies while doing something else. And my other daughter could care less about it, right? Mainly wants to draw and color. And at school, I think the one place where we saw really interesting uses of this were things like smart boards, which I think are kind of a laughingstock in the ed tech world now. But, you know, whiteboards that people could touch and manipulate. I think those are really useful for younger children, right? To kind of think through how to interact and touch and play with.

But in general, right, I think the kinds of one-to-one assessment practices that we've been talking about in the first segment, I totally agree. I don't think that, one, I don't think those are particularly useful in the elementary and kind of early childhood space. But I also don't think that's particularly useful when we have

caring individuals and adults in those classrooms anyways. I don't think there's ever going to be an algorithm or a program that's going to replace what teachers can do. Yeah. It's so interesting because we could think of 10,000 different examples that argue different points, right? Because, again, just in my own experience, I've spoken with teachers in the younger grades who are like, I hate these devices because the kids will, you know, they'll use the app that we've been told to use and basically they'll just tap their fingers on it.

until the app says they got the right answer. Now, is that learning? No. But on the other hand, what the apps and the tech allow teachers to do when they're very, very hard-pressed for time or they're overwhelmed with the number of students they have is – and this one's important. Does it effectively allow teachers to offer differentiated learning for kids at different levels within the same grade? Yeah.

Absolutely. But again, I mean, I think so. I want us to step back from that assumption. Right. The fact that teachers are pressed for time and overwhelmed by the kinds of demands that are placed upon them. Those are fixable things that we can fix with money and reinforcing the supports for the teaching for the teaching force writ large. Right. So, yes, absolutely.

Software might be a quick fix, but it is putting a bandaid on a longer issue of educational inequality that this country has been kicking down the can, kicking the can down the road for for nearly a century at this point. Right. And so rather than thinking about the diverse needs of all students and the ways that software can be a

quick fix, right? What are the ways where we can kind of do something more meaningful, right? This is the maybe the ghost of ed tech's past coming back to haunt us in this present moment. What are the ways where we can do something much more meaningful around what we do with teachers around these topics? Right. I'm Meghna Chakrabarty. This is On Point.

Well, we briefly talked about elementary school. Does it get more sort of complicated in middle and high school? And if it does, because I think the tools are much more aligned with what can benefit student learning.

But how do we get over this problem? Let me change the focus. How do we get over this problem of teachers not having enough support, for example, or time to really fully think through how to best integrate technology into their classrooms at the older ages? Sure.

So I'll say the thing that will probably scare administrators and parents and teachers in general all at the same time. And that is that the solution to using one-to-one customized devices in classrooms is the thing that is in probably every middle and high school student's pocket right now, right? Every kid has a cell phone. And instead of banning them, the

The best place for kids to learn how to meaningfully engage with these devices, to use them appropriately, to think about that is in schools, is in classrooms. That means a deep rethinking of how we think about educational technology policies in schools. But if we were to do that, this is a place where students have a customized learning portal, know the places where things are interesting. Yes, they might see content that they're not particularly supposed to be seeing during school time, but where else are you going to learn those practices?

Where else are you going to learn how to meaningfully engage and use your device as a civic portal rather than as purely a source of distraction when you get bored in classrooms? This feels like the biggest abdication of responsibility in terms of what school administration has set up over the past decade and a half is we've said, this is a problem in schools. We're just going to keep banning it over and over and over again. And then once you get out in the real world where you use your cell phone recreationally as part of your work time, we have we've offered no support. So we essentially have a bunch of adults like me

perhaps like you, Magna, who use our cell phones all the time in our working life. And we've never actually had a meaningful way of thinking about how to teach young people to do that as well. Agreed. Although I, I,

I will argue all sides of this issue because that's my job. But personally, I'm like a no cell phones in class kind of person. But see here, I have a lot of sympathy for schools, a huge amount of sympathy for schools, because there is a desperate, you know, there's always this push like our schools aren't doing well enough. Politically, people say that schools aren't doing well. They're not serving enough kids. There's consistent gaps.

And here comes this behemoth, this civilization changing behemoth of technology saying we can help you. There are major, major market forces here at play. And I was looking at there's a really interesting article that was quoted in The New York Times from the Journal of Economic Literature back in 2020.

And the authors there, they have this quote, the speed at which new technologies and intervention models are reaching the market has far outpaced the ability of policy researchers to keep up with evaluating them, let alone teachers and administrators from knowing if what they're putting in their classroom is effective. Right.

Yep. Yep. I think that's right. Again, though, I'd be worried. I'm worried less about the market, right? I'm worried about kids. I'm worried about childhood. I'm worried about young people having interests that they come out of classrooms and schools feeling highly creative and motivated to explore those topics. And so rather than having schools feel the force and pressures of markets and what are the kinds of

current tools that are being used in the business world, let's let kids explore what they're interested in. Again, sorry not to be really pedantic around this, but I think that feels like the really simple piece around this. There's a bunch of media literacy skills that we know are necessary, are important, are being kind of, I think,

overshadowed by the other kinds of topics around educational assessment. But we're in a country where we deeply need powerful curriculum about misinformation, disinformation, media literacy. And these are just not being the central focus around this conversation right now. Well, Professor Antero-Garcia, hang on for just a minute. There's a lot more to discuss about education technology in America's classrooms. And we'll do that in just a moment. This is On Point. On Point.

You're back with On Point. I'm Meghna Chakrabarty. We will get back to our conversation about education technology in American schools in just a second here. But since we are on the subject of education, I wanted to focus your attention on a series that we're working on for next month. It's about American politics.

boys and whether or not our schools are serving them, because according to just about every academic metric, there are growing gaps between boys and girls. And specifically, when thinking about black boys, they may be the least served right now in American schools. They graduate at lower rates. They have lower test scores, higher rates of special education. They're

suspended and expelled more often from schools. There are many, many reasons behind that, and we're looking for solutions. So we specifically want to hear...

from black families, if you're the parent of a black boy who's being educated in U.S. schools, or if you're a black man who's gone through schools here yourself, we want to hear your stories. What was your school experience? How does your son's school and teachers treat him? Let us know by the On Point VoxPop app. You can

Get it for wherever you get your apps. Put it on your smartphone. You can send us a really high-quality message that way or leave us a voicemail at 617-353-0683. This is for our series on boys, American boys and education coming up next month. All right, so back to ed tech. Let's listen to Nancy Lee in Madison, Wisconsin. She's a mother of two, and she tells us that after watching her kids rely on devices during the COVID pandemic—

She realized she much prefers traditional offline learning. It gets the kids off track. They get sucked into clicking around and spend a lot of time doing graphic design instead of actually focusing on content. They're bombarded with advertisements and there's just so many wasted hours scrunched over looking at a screen. So here's another one. This is Jennifer Zosch, a professor of human development and family studies at Penn State University Brandywine.

In 2022, she had a study that looked at 124 of the most popular ed apps, and she scored them out of 12 based on factors like active learning and engagement. There was no one making sure that those things were really educational. It was essentially something that app developers could check off, and that was what parents had to go by.

And basically, we just found that many, many apps scored pretty low. Even in paid apps, 50% of our sample scored in the lower quality range. And in fact, only seven apps or 6% earned a total score greater than eight.

So you really see that many, many of these apps were not doing what parents, I think, want them to do. So Professor Zosch saying that basically only 6% of the ed apps she tested were high quality.

Well, I'm joined today by Antero Garcia. He's an associate professor in the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University and president-elect of the National Council of Teachers of English. And Professor Garcia, I want to bring in another voice now. This is Adam Feil. He's director of professional learning and leadership at the nonprofit All4Ed and also former director of technology and media services at the Newton County School System in Georgia, where he also taught science.

high school science. Adam, welcome to On Point. Thank you for having me. So that bite there from Professor Zosch was very interesting to me because, you know, it's pretty grim, her assessment of ed apps in general. What can you tell us about the process by which some of these apps are decided on or brought into districts or schools? Is there any kind of vetting that usually happens?

There is. I think most places have some type of process, whether you're talking about the procurement process where you have the stakeholders involved, where you do have your superintendents, your curriculum directors, your technology directors, and teachers to pilot and go through some of these platforms.

uh but unfortunately there is this uh dark side of the game if you will where you do have vendors that know how to get around that system if you will and uh cozy up to the right person and kind of get into a district before that process so in some cases in some cases you have situations where the stage is already set for this vendor to already uh be the primary source that they're going to use in that system

And for the apps also, it seems like these days almost every app that you pay for works on a subscription model, right? Is that what's happening in edtech as well?

Oh, definitely. We're seeing that happening more and more. It's not you buy it, you own it. It's you renting the service. And with that being said, the schools, in some cases, aren't really holding those vendors accountable for what they have said this product is designed to do. If you're designed to get the desired outcome, how are you holding that vendor accountable for the outcome that they sold you that the product can do?

I mean, canceling your subscription would be my answer. Exactly. But to be honest, is it easy for schools to do that or hard?

You know, it's very challenging because ultimately, and not to make excuses, they're juggling a lot of different components. So when you look at a tech product that's supposed to do something, if we have it, we've been able to check that box off and move to what other fire we have to put out within the school system. And they've kicked that can down the road to whoever's responsible for that program. So if it's a science platform, okay, science people, you look through it and make sure it's good.

And at some point they just get to it where it's like, all right, well, we still need the platform. We haven't really had a chance to evaluate it. Let's just sign the purchase order and renew it again for next year. You said kick the can down the road. That's also an analogy that Professor Garcia has used in general about...

sort of the overall approach that education is taking to technology. I mean, earlier, the professor was talking about how these were the same kind of questions that were being asked when he was in the classroom 20 years ago. I mean, why do you think that we're still sort of grappling with some fundamentals about how to use tech in schools, Adam?

Well, I think it kind of goes back to something that Katie mentioned earlier. We really have not had the real hard conversations about changing what teaching and learning looks like and what our curriculum looks like as it relates to technology. Because really and truly, if you're going to use technology at a high level,

your curriculum should dictate the need for said technology. And our technology and our structural practices by and large haven't really changed across the board. And so teachers and educators are kind of shoehorning in technology to make it fit. In some cases, they're feeling pressure from these administrators that have spent countless dollars on said technology. So they're telling our educators, hey, figure out a way to make it work. So you do have your teachers who are figuring those things out. But I always look at technology as a great amplifier.

It's going to amplify those great practices, those teachers who already have those great connections. It's going to amplify that work. But if they're already struggling with classroom management and other things, it's just going to amplify those things that are already happening in the classroom. Yeah, amplify the good and the bad. I totally take your point on that. Professor Garcia, let me bring you back in here. I want to take a huge step back for a second because –

Because sometimes I see technology in education as a great red herring, almost. Because it does nothing wrong.

Absolutely nothing that I can see, and correct me if I'm wrong, to address the fundamental causes of disparate outcomes in American schools, right? Talking about poverty. We're talking about lack of access to opportunities. We're talking about, you know, funding. We're talking about the things that have always plagued American education and therefore plagued students in terms of, like, the opportunities they have to learn. And tech doesn't do a thing for that. So, I mean, to Adam's point...

We just sort of, that's the same hamster wheel over and over again. That's right. I mean, I would go one step further and add, not only does it not address these topics, but I actually think in many ways it exacerbates it, right? And so I'll offer two ways to think about that. So one is we can go back to the pandemic. I think that's kind of been a looming shadow in this conversation.

And during the pandemic, one of the metaphors some of my colleagues and I have written about is that, you know, this was the same storm, but weathered through different ships. Right. And so we had, you know, everybody was jumping on Zoom and Google Classroom in order to, you know, engage in this powerful transformational moment in education. And many kids, right, depending on socio political context, were zooming into classrooms where they were in a room with three or four other siblings, right, all trying to zoom in on

different classrooms at the same time, right? What an awful way to try to learn on top of the existing challenges, right? Another way to think about this is if we think of kind of ed tech policies where we're banning devices, we're essentially the only places where you learn those kinds of practices in working environments are in service level jobs, like working at McDonald's, right? Those are places where you're not allowed to have your cell phone out when you're serving customers.

Otherwise, right, we're essentially preparing kids through these ed tech policies for working class jobs, while other kinds of school contexts are essentially allowing kids to think about ways to thrive beyond this. And so...

You know, we have these kind of much more holistic classrooms that are offered for, you know, much wealthier young people and the relationships between technology vary vastly. And so it's not that the technology hasn't fixed, quote unquote, fixed these issues of divisive context of what's happening in America, but they've exacerbated it. Yeah, no, I completely take your point. I mean, and the disparities that were revealed by the pandemic were...

were and still continue to be shocking and dismaying. I remember we did a show about educational access during the pandemic, and we spoke to a mom who's, they did not have any internet access in their home. So he had a laptop given to him by the school, but the only way he could actually log into school while they were remote learning was to stand out on a street corner. Right.

and get the Wi-Fi out there on the street corner. So, okay, you mentioned that there's a socioeconomic problem

aspect to it here. That brings me, Professor Garcia and Adam, to an article that was actually printed in The New York Times back in 2018, so a long time ago, but I have never forgotten it. It was an article that talked to Silicon Valley executives about their personal use in their families about education and technology. And the takeaway from it was a lot of people making these very apps.

apps, making these very devices. Do not even let their own kids use them that often at home or even at school. Part of the article was about a great race to, you know, for Silicon Valley executives to get their kids into Waldorf schools where there's no tech at all. And one of the execs said something interesting. He said, you know, our job is to make using these apps and these devices as intuitive as possible. So we're not worried about that.

What we're worried about is do kids learn fundamentals that make them better thinkers? And to that point, there's a little clip here from Matthew Mendrick, who's a technologist and former executive at places like Uber, YouTube, and eBay. And in 2012, he and his wife, Elaine, spoke to CNN about why they're taking a no-tech approach with their children. If I go back to...

My education as a computer scientist, we didn't have computers in the classroom. We had algorithms and we had logic and we had textbooks. And we were working through that and really trying to understand the science behind the computer. Our homes are so filled with technology that they're going to be exposed. They're sponges. They soak it up.

But in the classroom, you need to be learning the basics. You want them interacting with their peers, learning how to get along with each other. So that was back in 2012. Adam Feil, what do you think about this? Some of them don't want it used in the classrooms where their kids are.

Yeah. And it's interesting that they said that because I'm also listening to that as they're coming from a place of privilege also, where she mentioned, oh, well, our kids will have this in the home and they'll see it all the time. That's not the reality for all students. As you mentioned, the student needing the laptop from the school and also being out on the corner to get internet access, I'm fairly sure that student won't see technology in their home all the time and it will not be ubiquitous with their life. So

So it's one of those things where it's a two Americas kind of conversation we still need to have with that, that not all students get access and get exposure. And unfortunately or fortunately, school is looked at as that equalizer to provide those opportunities for students to get access to.

to technology and learn the skills that some of their more affluent peers will not get. So they don't necessarily have that luxury to say, oh, we're going to put our technology down in school and do something different. Because if they do, they'll fall even further behind their peers. Well, we just have a couple of minutes left. And I want to end with some positive examples from both of you, if I could.

Because the big question is, like, how do we get this right? Tech is here to stay. I get that. I mean, Adam, do you have like an example of a successful implementation of an app in classrooms? Yeah.

Yeah, and what I've seen with those successes is districts really having the conversation ahead of time about what does success look like for implementation of this product. Is it we want our students to have more authentic writing behind this writing tool that we're using, more engaging writing, not necessarily tying it directly to a state assessment or a NAEP score, but

Looking and seeing are your students getting more involved in that tool? Are they more engaged in the classroom? Are their teachers really more confident in their instructional practices using those tools? Setting those indicators going in and those look fors are going to be key to having success and then being able to turn around and renew or continue to purchase whatever platform or products that you have.

So essentially setting up their own criteria and testing to see if those apps meet that criteria as you go along. Okay. And Professor Garcia, same question to you. What would a successful implementation look like?

You know, one of the words that Adam used earlier was amplify. And I think that's a really powerful use here to think about powerful tools, right? So some of the ways I've seen this really work is when we get to amplify what students are able to do. I did some research with kids on school buses, and they were able to measure the sound quality of, sorry, the level of sound quality.

on their bus, how loud it was in different parts of the bus and then different parts of their school bus journey and use that data to really get a new picture of what their school journey was like and the kinds of relationships that kids have. Similarly, I work with adults and young people who are labeled undocumented in this country and we use online tools to amplify their voices to try to reshift the narrative around what being undocumented looks like in the invisible costs.

I've worked with teachers across the country to place young people in conversation from different time zones, from different kinds of sociopolitical perspectives. And in doing that, you get these really kind of beautiful ways that young people are able to come together using digital tools, but to have human-centered conversations. And I think that's where the real success lies with these devices.

Well, Antero Garcia is associate professor in the Graduate School of Education at Stanford and president-elect of the National Council of Teachers of English, author of Good Reception, Teens, Teachers, and Mobile Media in a Los Angeles High School. Professor Garcia, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you. And Adam Feil, director of professional learning and leadership at the nonprofit All4Ed, joining us from Covington, Georgia. Adam, thank you so very much. Thanks for having me.

Well, in the last couple seconds we have in today's show, a total shifting of gears, using that pun intentionally, because...

We're going to do a show on NASCAR tomorrow because Michael Jordan, basketball legend, he's got a racing team called 2311, and they're suing NASCAR, alleging that the organization is a monopoly. So NASCAR fans, what do you think about that? Do you know about NASCAR's business practices and how they impact the sport? Do you think NASCAR is a monopoly? Let us know on the On Point Vox Pop app or call us.

at 617-353-0683. Looking for NASCAR fans for tomorrow's show. I'm Magna Chakrabarty. This is On Point.