Edu-Teching the Mickey? The coming backlash and how to avoid overcorrecting.

High above the equator, in the heights of the stratosphere, the wind has been blowing west for months. Strong winds wending their way through the skies have been so consistent that they seem inevitable, for why would the wind reverse itself? And yet it will and it does and at some point next year a change will be heralded and off the winds will go to the east.

Two articles last week arrived as harbingers of a similar change, as the zeitgeist in parts of our education system moves from starry-eyed joy at the progress of educational technology to deep scepticism fueled by the experience of its broken promises. I think they are both worth reading and I found myself in agreement with much of what they said:

The Battle of the Books

The Neuroscientist Taking on Screens in Schools

What, then, am I doing with my life running Elemental, a small EduTech startup providing music curriculum support to secondary schools? I absolutely agree with the articles that EduTech has disappointed and am equally convinced that much online ‘learning’ is really activity masquerading as education.

The main point that doesn’t appear in these articles is that paper-based homework is just as capable of being rubbish in its worst manifestations. EduTech is being compared with the perfect manifestation of an alternative and actually, in deciding between online and offline homework, the wrong questions are being asked.

First, let's turn to teacher workload. Reading these articles you get the impression that there is some alternative world out there where compliance-checking and marking are not crushing burdens on music teachers. Compliance-checking of paper homework in your one 50-55 minute lesson does not exist in a vacuum. It is taking time away from something else, be it setting up instruments, giving feedback or building good class relationships through good teaching. Marking this paper homework, for a music teacher with twelve KS3 classes and a full timetable, brings invidious decisions. Add KS3 weekly marking. Lose either dinner at home with your family or the school’s choir, band and orchestra rehearsals. Make your choice, Sophie.

My own experience of attempting online homework pre-Elemental was questions on Google Forms. The pass rates were excellent, compliance was superb and yet the implied competence in classwork was often missing. I never managed to find out how but a low-resistance, low-learning path was out there and students, like water, were taking it. Of course they were. They’re human. Effort is to be conserved, spent judiciously on the things that matter most to us and it is from this starting point that I come to what I believe is the right question. What are the features of homework that moves the dial?

1) Learning should be effortful.

This does not mean it should be boring. I do not imagine the legions of gym bunnies out there in the world find their lives dull. It should take concentration, it should require the brain to eat its share of calories, it should gain significance in our ape biology because it is worth expending energy on.

I can do no better than point to resistance training. No resistance, no training.

2) Students should only be thinking about the target learning.

I’ve long been an admirer of cognitive psychologist Daniel Willingham (along with huge swathes of England’s teachers) and one of his key principles:

Memory is the residue of thought

After a false start completely misapplying his findings in 2011, I’ve had more success in holding onto this as my teaching career progressed. A poster about the life of Bach? The students are more likely to be thinking about design than they are about his contribution to music and musical meaning. An EduTech platform in which students answer questions on the treble clef to score strikes in ten-pin bowling? An insane waste of attention.

How does this pan out in my own work on Elemental? First of all there is the fact that musical homework needs sound and sound needs to be delivered and what are you going to do? Have a parade of professional musicians walk through the living room so you can isolate the sound of a tuba, a tabla and an oud for your timbral memory? Contemporary technology can deliver these examples, it can do so seamlessly and it can highlight the conceptual boundaries with non-examples. If the tasks can also be targeted and effortful, then in this instance EduTech can deliver on its promise.

Homework on Elemental also appears to be effortful. Accuracy on the platform, for Y11, runs at about 58-60% and many students homework attempts are not passing the muster on their first try. The promised reward to encourage them to try again? The prospect of greater musical understanding and a teacher who is delighted with their efforts. These will be enough, or they will not, but they are not fake proxies.

Elemental, in contrast to some tech, appears to be a genuine proxy. Our recent case studies have shown that accuracy in the Elemental platform correlates with outcomes in the GCSE written paper. You can see that set out here:

The information we are giving students and teachers is therefore real, musical information. They are listening to music, thinking about music and, as memory is the residue of thought, remembering the conceptual links that teachers want them to remember.

It is these teachers, of course, who are the central players in music education. Teachers are those whose art can motivate and inspire, explain and improve, cajole and develop and bring it all together in a great education. The Elemental platform is really here to make that easier. The platform can:

• Provide musical examples
• Support their explanation in sound and in score
• Reinforce that explanation in homework
• Strengthen student understanding of musical concepts
• Show teachers where their students are
• Identify concepts that have not yet landed
• And Elemental can, as it happens, also provide homework that is entirely paper-based for all parts of the platform.

No aspect of this involves diminishing the central role of the teacher, the relationships and the beauty of the lived subject. If the platform is successful then it should, in fact, give more time for relationships to build and music to be made. That is a promise that should not be overlooked as the coming backlash against bad EduTech sweeps all before it.