Over the past few months, Audrey Watters, Dan Meyer, and Keith
Devlin have been critical of Silicon Valley, edtech startups,
and iPad textbooks which hope to “disrupt” education. In my
opinion, the real stumbling block to meaningful change is
students’ formal reasoning skills – analytical thinking that
cannot be cultivated by pausing and rewinding video or playing
Math Blasters. Here are my 5 points: - Many of our students are
transitioning from concrete to formal reasoning. - A significant
barrier to learning for understanding is students’ own formal
reasoning skills. - Formal reasoning skills (and thus learning
for understanding) can be developing when instruction is
structured around the Learning Cycle. - Silicon Valley and
edtech startups have been focusing on (often inappropriately)
just a small fraction of the learning cycle. - My Challenge to
Silicon Valley: Help students learn for understanding by
innovating around the rest of the learning cycle. 1. Many of our
students are transitioning from concrete