The quest for profit at all costs often goes with descent into pure stupidity as this story highlights
The extent of learning loss was closely correlated to the amount of time that students had spent doing remote learning, on a screen, rather than receiving direct instruction, and here companies were offering more screen-based instruction as the remedy. Few of the companies on hand were proposing to replace the classroom experience entirely with virtual instruction, but to the degree that their offerings recalled the year-plus of Zoom school, it could be a bit awkward. “A lot of people don’t like us, because we can do remote-school stuff,” said Michael Linacre, a salesperson for StarBoard Solution, before demonstrating one of the cool things a StarBoard whiteboard could do: He jotted 1+2= with his finger and up popped 3. “There’s a mixed feeling about that now.”
The great remote-school experiment was recently concluded and for most it did not work so great. But there is not much opportunity to turn a profit doing in-person, classroom instruction stuff. I had always found it confusing that schools were doubling down on electronic formats at the cost of distraction instead of requiring kids to submit hand-written submissions. It is no surprise that more technology offerings are popping up. The teachers were treated poorly to begin with and the pandemic made their lot much worse. No surprise they want out now so the bot teacher may be the only kind of teacher public schools can afford in the future
.. A large share of the vendors on hand were themselves former educators who had left the classroom for jobs with tech companies, where they could still feel like they were involved in education, but without the stresses of the classroom and often with higher pay. One former first grade teacher who had made this transition herself two years ago said she had seen the trend accelerate among her colleagues during the pandemic, when the challenges of juggling hybrid online and in-person instruction and managing students who were struggling with learning loss and delayed socialization had made jobs in ed tech seem especially alluring.
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