Over the weekend I watched, for the first time, Sophie Winkleman's speech at The ARC Conference in London this year. To be honest, I have seen some social media snippets of this speech but never the full 17mins. It's an extremely powerful and passionate speech about the dangers of edTech and generative AI in our classrooms. The speech clearly outlines many of the concerns I have had with the direction I believe we have been travelling with the use of digital technologies by our learners in the primary school, and with the looming spectre of generative AI hanging over the teaching profession. This was very much the reason for my letter I sent to the Welsh Education Minister back in August. If you are a teacher, a parent or anyone interested in the future of our young people, please take some time and watch the whole video.
Below are some quotes from Sophie's speech.
"The data from the last 15 years shows that as soon as devices entered the classroom, scores started plummeting around the world. Of course, that’s when social media exploded into children’s lives too. But social media, smartphones and EdTech are all fins and teeth of the same shark. The social media design features deemed harmful enough to restrict for children, the streaks, the daily rewards, the endless notifications, are the very same features found in EdTech apps. These are slot machine tactics, the same unpredictable reward which keeps an adult scrolling, now built into maths, languages and even reading apps. A reading app, has there ever been a more oxymoronic concept?"
“These features do not appear in educational products because they improve learning. They appear because they improve engagement, and engagement is what the business model requires.”
"Material read from a page in a book implants in the brain more profoundly than the exact same material read from a screen."
"(S)cans show the whole network of the brain lit up like a Christmas tree during handwriting and dark as a cellar during typing. The physical process of handwriting appears to trounce the ease of typing in every cognitive metric."
"Many tech giants send their own children to low-tech schools, aware that the most highly prized human capital in the coming era will be the ability to think deeply, knowledgeably and originally, to be the best of what a human can be, not a pale imitation of AI. This is a pattern worth keeping an eye on. A few years ago, I wrote an article based on a UNESCO report predicting that elite schools around the world would soon turn their back on screen-based learning and return to books, and the poorer children would be left with the digital slop. Sure enough, top schools like Winchester College are implementing a stringent paper-first policy, while Britain’s poorest children are given chatbot tutors.EdTech was meant to bridge the attainment gap, but it sadly seems to be doing the opposite."
"However many lectures you give teens on how to use AI responsibly, as an intellectual sparring partner rather than a second brain, the vast majority will choose the shortest route to get the damn essay done. This is a totally natural biological response. Teenagers will push boundaries and test adults’ credulity and fallibility. Why are we setting up so many of these learners to fail?"
"Tech consultant Emily Churkin agrees that the best preparation for a digital future is an analogue education. Churkin’s motto is “Tech Ed, not Ed Tech”, that is, learning how technology works in technology lessons, and back to books for everything else. Helpfully, most technology skills do not require an internet connection, safer and greener, what’s not to like?"
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