Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Problem with Education Technology (Hint: It's Not the Technology)
    The Problem with Education Technology (Hint: It's Not the Technology)
    The Problem with Education Technology (Hint: It's Not the Technology)
    Ebook67 pages1 hour

    The Problem with Education Technology (Hint: It's Not the Technology)

    By Ben Fink and Robin Brown

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Education is in crisis—at least, so we hear. And at the center of this crisis is technology. New technologies like computer-based classroom instruction, online K–12 schools, MOOCs (massive open online courses), and automated essay scoring may be our last great hope—or the greatest threat we have ever faced.

    In The Problem with Education Technology, Ben Fink and Robin Brown look behind the hype to explain the problems—and potential—of these technologies. Focusing on the case of automated essay scoring, they explain the technology, how it works, and what it does and doesn’t do. They explain its origins, its evolution (both in the classroom and in our culture), and the controversy that surrounds it. Most significantly, they expose the real problem—the complicity of teachers and curriculum-builders in creating an education system so mechanical that machines can in fact often replace humans—and how teachers, students, and other citizens can work together to solve it.

    Offering a new perspective on the change that educators can hope, organize, and lobby for, The Problem with Education Technology challenges teachers and activists on “our side,” even as it provides new evidence to counter the profit-making, labor-saving logics that drive the current push for technology in the classroom.


    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherUtah State University Press
    Release dateFeb 1, 2016
    ISBN9781607324478
    The Problem with Education Technology (Hint: It's Not the Technology)

    Read more from Ben Fink

    Related to The Problem with Education Technology (Hint

    Related ebooks

    Composition & Creative Writing For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Learning Online

      Apr 21, 2020

      THROUGH TIMES OF SOCIAL DISTANCING AND ISOLATION, LEARNING CAN BE A CONSTANT COMPANION. THE ONLINE RESOURCE SKILLSHARE PROVIDES ACCESS TO VIDEO LESSONS ACROSS SEVEN DISCIPLINES, INCLUDING INTERIOR DESIGN, PHOTOGRAPHY, FILM, BUSINESS, AND WRITING. USE

      1 min read

    • Article

      Teachers On The Front Line Of Quality Education

      Feb 3, 2021

      THE Covid-19 pandemic has underscored the importance of the role of teachers in not only delivering an equitable, high-quality education to South Africa’s schoolchildren, but also in providing social-emotional support and critical life skills to lear

      2 min read

    • Article

      The Teacher-Shortage Myth

      Sep 13, 2017

      The Teacher-Shortage Myth
      3 min read

    • Article

      The College Essay Is Dead

      Dec 6, 2022

      The College Essay Is Dead
      6 min read

    • Article

      Why Science Needs Diversity

      Feb 15, 2023

      created by Nautilus’ marketing team For the month of February, the Nautilus Marketing Team will feature interviews with organizations and institutions working to increase opportunities for young Black people to imagine and succeed in STEM career path

      5 min read

    • Article

      The Notion That Education Is The Enemy

      Aug 21, 2019

      You'd think it would be the one thing we could all agree upon. Life grows ever more complex. Planetary overheating threatens a future of floods, food shortages and mass migration. We carry supercomputers in our pockets. Robots are taking our jobs. So

      2 min read

    • Article

      Who Will Design the Future?

      Aug 1, 2019

      Ada Lovelace was an English mathematician who lived in the first half of the 19th century. (She was also the daughter of the poet Lord Byron, who invited Mary Shelley to his house in Geneva for a weekend of merriment and a challenge to write a ghost

      17 min read

    • Article

      Terminal Velocity

      Jun 4, 2019

      Terminal Velocity
      9 min read

    • Article

      The End of Scantron Tests

      Sep 19, 2023

      The End of Scantron Tests
      6 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Problem with Education Technology (Hint

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      The Problem with Education Technology (Hint - Ben Fink

      Technology)

      The Problem with Education Technology

      (Hint: It’s Not the Technology)

      Ben Fink

      Robin Brown

      Utah State University Press

      Logan

      © 2016 by University Press of Colorado

      Published by Utah State University Press

      An imprint of University Press of Colorado

      5589 Arapahoe Avenue, Suite 206C

      Boulder, Colorado 80303

      USU Press Current Arguments in Composition

      The University Press of Colorado is a proud member of The Association of American University Presses.

      The University Press of Colorado is a cooperative publishing enterprise supported in part, by Adams State University, Colorado State University, Fort Lewis College, Metropolitan State University of Denver, Regis University, University of Colorado, University of Northern Colorado, Utah State University, and Western State Colorado University.

      All rights reserved

      ISBN 978-160732-446-1 (pbk)

      ISBN 978-160732-447-8 (ebook)

      DOI: 10.7330/9781607324478

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Names: Fink, Ben, 1984– | Brown, Robin, 1944 May 22–

      Title: The problem with education technology : (hint—it’s not the technology) / Ben Fink, Robin Brown.

      Description: Logan : Utah State University Press, [2015] | Includes bibliographical references.

      Identifiers: LCCN 2015012982 | ISBN 9781607324461 (pbk.) | ISBN 9781607324478 (ebook)

      Subjects: LCSH: Examinations—United States—Scoring—Data processing. | Grading and marking (Students)—United States—Data processing. | Educational tests and measurements—United States—Data processing. | Educational technology—United States.

      Classification: LCC LB3060.83 .F55 2015 | DDC 371.33—dc23

      LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015012982

      Contents

      Teachers vs. Technology—Round One, Fight!

      The Fight over Computer Grading (Started before Computer Grading)

      How the Technology Works

      The Technology’s Expertise (Is No More Limited than That of Its Human Counterparts)

      The Enduring Lure of Labor-Saving Devices

      (How) Do Labor-Saving Devices Work?

      Faking It: Why Rich Kids Can Do It, and Poor Kids Can’t

      The Matter with MOOCs

      The Problem with Papers

      What They Get Right (and We Get Wrong)

      Why They’re Still Wrong

      What We Can Do about It

      Notes

      About the Authors

      The Problem with Education Technology

      (Hint: It’s Not the Technology)

      Teachers vs. Technology—Round One, Fight!

      In today’s society, college is ambiguous. We need it to live, but we also need it to love. . . . Teaching assistants are paid an excessive amount of money. The average teaching assistant makes six times as much money as college presidents. In addvition, they often receive a plethora of extra benefits such as private jets, vacations in the south seas, a staring roles in motion pictures. Moreover, in the Dickens novel Great Expectation, Pip makes his fortune by being a teaching assistant.¹

      It was our last day at the 2012 Conference of College Composition and Communication (CCCC) in St. Louis, the biggest annual gathering of college writing teachers in the country. We were done with our own presentation, and we could eat only so many ribs in a day . . . so we were looking through the conference program to see what else was on offer . . . when a full-page listing caught our eye. It was for a Special Session. Something particularly Big and Important. This Special Session, the program told us, would be a vigorous but civil debate on Automated Essay Scoring (AES), the technology that lets computers score writing assignments.

      We were intrigued. When an academic conference has to specify that an event will be civil, you know something’s up.

      The ballroom was vast and long. There were about two hundred seats facing a long table and a giant PowerPoint screen. At one end of the table sat Paul Deane and Chaitanya Ramineini, researchers from Education Technology Services (ETS): the College Board, the minds behind standardized tests like the SAT, GRE, and AP exams, and—along with their for-profit colleagues Pearson and Vantage—the loudest promoters of AES. They were here today to present their newest innovation: the e-Rater® Scoring Engine, a computer program that—according to an impressive set of studies—can score a student essay with the reliability of a human.

      At the other end of the table sat Les Perelman, the longtime (now emeritus) Director of Undergraduate Writing at MIT—and the best-publicized crusader against AES. He authored the first paragraph of this section, which he fed, along with another page-and-a-half of similar drivel, into e-Rater®. And it got

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1