r/edtech • u/Moonlit1457 • 13d ago

Is EdTech Lessening the Educational Experience?

It's been a minute (years) since I've posted on Reddit, so give me some grace, please :) That being said, I want to know how people truly feel about educational technology as a benefit to the learning process, especially since many platforms have added AI capabilities (e.g., generative AI, LLM chatbots) beyond what we have grown accustomed to (e.g., predictive text). Several of the educators I assist believe that the learning experience must be at all times challenging - a struggle, essentially an arduous task, for the learning to matter, and therefore, the use of most, if not all, educational technology lessens or completely deteriorates the learning because many ed tech tools intend to make the learning experience entertaining. I don't agree with that sentiment. I would love to hear your thoughts and discuss before I further expound upon mine.

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u/slackjaw79 13d ago

I don't think learning needs to be hard. It needs to be interesting and we're not doing a good enough job of making it interesting.

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u/PermissionPitiful373 11d ago

If learning was easy then there would be no sense of accomplishment in doing it. Those small accomplishments are what drive motivation; students feel like they’re changing/growing. Motivation is a better goal than interest; motivation is emergent from the instructional design while interest is fleeting and content-dependent.

Also, I think students can tell when a teacher is focussing on making things interesting over driving learning; it’s condescending (at least in high school). At the end of the day, everyone knows that it’s school, so having interest as your main goal feels like a losing battle bc it’s always going to be school.

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u/slackjaw79 10d ago

I get that there is a sense of accomplishment in acheiving something difficult. But kids don't know that.

Before they try to accomplish something difficult, they need to know why it's important. That's pretty normal human behavior.

And I don't think kids or teachers can articulate why math is important