Students Have to Work Hard to Learn — Technology That Removes the Hard Work Is Lying
In this video, Dr. Justin Baeder argues that learning is inherently effortful and that EdTech products promising to eliminate that effort are making false promises.
Key Takeaways
- Learning requires effort - There are no shortcuts to genuine understanding; difficulty is a feature of learning, not a bug
- EdTech can't remove the hard work - Products that promise effortless learning are selling something that doesn't exist
- Technology should support effort, not replace it - Good educational technology helps students work more effectively, not less
Transcript
The person who does the work is the only person learning.
That's a Harry Wong quote from a long time ago, and I think it explains the failure of EdTech.
It explains why students have to do work, probably with pencil and paper, and, you know, they can do that work on a device.
But if the device is there to make the work easy, to remove all of the effort, to give a rush of dopamine, then probably we're not going to see a lot of learning coming from that exercise because the student is not doing the hard work.
And I get that we want education to be interesting.
We should want learning to be interesting.
I think a lot of aspects of what we teach in school are inherently interesting.
Kids like learning stuff.
But if we send them the message that learning should always be easy and fun and should give you a rush of dopamine, then I think we're setting kids up to not succeed.
If they expect to be entertained in the classroom, the way they expect to be entertained when they play Nintendo or when they scroll on their phone, that expectation is never going to be met, right?
School cannot live up to that expectation and school cannot compete learning cannot compete something that is hard work cannot compete with something that is intended to be entertaining and i think we have to remember who all this is for right social media and electronics are for the profit of the companies that offer them education is for the student and if education is to be for the student and not for the profit of companies it has to be a situation where the student is doing the hard work, so the student does the learning.
So any technology that takes away the work from the student is probably going to reduce learning.
And I remain somewhat open-minded on this.
I think there are probably ways that technology can be used a little bit and can be used carefully with restraint.
But I think for the most part, everything that we have tried has gone in the wrong direction because it takes away that hard work that's actually what produces the learning for the student.
Let me know what you think.