Published On: June 3rd, 2015|

The Atlantic – Kentaro Toyama

“Over the last decade, I’ve designed, studied, and taught educational technology in different parts of the world…Across all of those projects, a single, simple pattern held in every case. I call it technology’s “Law of Amplification”: Technology’s primary effect is to amplify human forces, so in education, technologies amplify whatever pedagogical capacity is already there…If educational inequality is the main issue, then no amount of digital technology will turn things around…Technology amplifies preexisting differences in wealth and achievement. Children with greater vocabularies get more out of Wikipedia. Students with behavioral challenges are more distracted by video games…what the U.S. education system needs above all isn’t more technology, but a deliberate allocation of high-quality adult supervision…”(more)