AI is the latest induced-urgent-panic that Big Tech has been imposing on schools. I've been in the school ed biz for 3 decades and it's wave after wave of this: "ideas", technology, curriculum, all pushed down w/ urgency. So much more to write here about how their pressures work.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/23/business/schools-big-tech-google-microsoft.html
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@shriramk This brings up an interesting question for me, given your experience: what education tech from the last few decades, if any, has actually been useful? What do you wish you had when you started, if only it had existed at the time?
(I suppose DrRacket and other works from the PLT group might count, but work from outside that group would be more interesting in this context)
@jschuster The thing to understand is that almost every educational intervention has only a tiny benefit. When you look at effect sizes from studies, they're always small (if the study is credible). So "success" is a hard thing to come by the way *we* are used to (compiler got 25% faster!). You have to piece together a whole bunch of little bits — like a 1% compound interest. ↵
@jschuster Another problem is that adoption rates are tiny. High school teachers are too busy, college professors are too opinionated. People look to research not as a guide but as reassurance. If it matches their belief, see, it's great! If it doesn't, "that doesn't apply in my setting". You may even know some professors who are prone to saying such things. (-: ↵
@jschuster I think Bootstrap has been a true success, as a synecdoche: not only for itself, but it showed that integrated computing is not only feasible, it can be valuable, and indeed (our belief) it's *the only thing that can really work at scale* (while meeting our goals). People never considered that or dismissed that, and then 10-12 years later came around to the fact that we'd had it right all along. ↵
@jschuster Another problem is we're all tech-focused: we look for a tool or language or "one weird trick" that's going to make a difference. But education operates in a social sphere as much as anything else. If 90% of students hate a syntax, you won't succeed, no matter how brilliant you think your idea is. (And at some level, your idea is…not successful! 90% hate even the most basic entry point!) ↵
