Tech & Business Fantasies of Education

My talk at ASU+GSV 2024.

Hey - my talk from ASU+GSV just dropped.

The ASU+GSV organizers invited a bunch of us there to give 20-minute talks on a stage that was adjacent to all the AI edtech vendors. Naturally, I thought the appropriate thing to do in that context was criticize AI edtech vendors, specifically criticizing them for selling an image of classroom teaching and student learning that is pure fantasy.

Gratuitous meta-commentary: it might seem like my criticism is motivated by anger. It probably seems that way because I am angry. But my criticism is motivated much more by love—love of students and their ideas; love of math and its depth; love of teaching, a blend of relational and cognitive work that I have not found anywhere else in the world.

To illustrate: I was invited into a stranger’s classroom last week—Colleen McGeehan’s at Claremont Middle School in Oakland, CA. I watched McGeehan combine media like paper, computer, whiteboard, voice, gesture, and glance with her knowledge of pedagogy, math, and technology. She persuaded students who were convinced they knew nothing that they knew a lot and students convinced they knew just about everything that there was much more to know. She acknowledged value in every student’s contribution, something it was obvious she’d been doing all year based on the breadth of students who responded verbally to her open questions. Many teachers struggle to get verbal participation outside of a small group. Even without cold calling, McGeehan had verbal participation from over half the class in the first thirty minutes.

I love it. If you know what you’re watching, there’s nothing like it. Every student deserves that kind of teaching. Any equivalency between McGeehan’s work and the current possibilities of generative AI is false, yet the work of most AI edtech vendors is to persuade you either that there is an equivalency or that, low key hushed whisper, we couldn’t possibly provide excellent teachers to every student and the other students should be grateful for chatbots.

For as many people as I alienate with these critiques, I feel lucky to have found as many others who love students, math, and teaching in the same way, people who resonate on the same frequency, many of whom I now consider dear collaborators.

I’ll close with a few slides. You should click through to catch them in context, though.

What does the boat represent? And the wave?? I simply must watch the video to learn more about this symbolism!

Where is he going with this? I’ll watch the talk and find out.

The talk has memes? Hold my calls and clear my calendar!

Upcoming Presentations

• One more bump for my presentation in the greater Chicago area next Tuesday: Creating Mathworlds that Students Love to Visit and Hate to Leave

• I’m on a panel next week for Grantmakers in Education discussing classroom technology: The Future of Math — Innovations in Classroom Technology. The panel is absolutely stacked. Can’t miss.