[disqard]

The breathless fanboyism in this piece really hurts it, and made me unable to read through to the end.

If this were written 10 years ago, when MOOCs were the poster child for "technology will solve everything including thoroughly non-technology-centric human problems", it might be forgivable. Right now, this is kinda like evangelizing Zuckerberg's "Metaverse", in a 100% serious vein. If it were written a different way, I might have mistaken it for satire.

With no discussion of prior failures in Education Technology, with not even a nod to the challenges that permeate any meaningful progress in this space, the writing came across like it was a "39 minute write", not a "39 minute read".

For those interested in a more balanced and nuanced take, I urge you to skim some posts from Kentaro Toyama's blog:

https://ict4djester.org/

[enjoyyourlife]

With regards to the MOOCs prediction, it is true that most education has switched online

[disqard]

You might technically be correct, but that doesn't change the fact that "the Godfather of MOOCs" called it "a lousy product":

> “We were on the front pages of newspapers and magazines, and at the same time, I was realizing, we don’t educate people as others wished, or as I wished. We have a lousy product,” Thrun tells me. “It was a painful moment.” Turns out he doesn’t even like the term MOOC.

https://www.fastcompany.com/3021473/udacity-sebastian-thrun-...

[tablespoon]

> With regards to the MOOCs prediction, it is true that most education has switched online

That's just half of the MOOC (Massive Open Online Courses) equation. Also, from what I read, almost everyone hates even that.

[rjkeck2]

Who am I fanboying?

[disqard]

You deserve an answer, and I apologize if my tone was overly harsh. There is always a human at the other end of everything...

So, your article reads like an "X is great" piece that fails to mention all of the previous times the same sentiment was spouted and shown to not be true, because something human-centric was missing from the techno-centric solution X.

This same sentiment "the future of education is X" has been espoused with X ∈ {radio, television, internet, MOOCs, AR/VR/metaverse, ...} yet it keeps eluding us, and I don't think I can articulate it better than the former director of Microsoft Research Asia:

http://edutechdebate.org/ict-in-schools/there-are-no-technol...

Here is your unsexy QotD:

"Quality primary and secondary education is a multi-year commitment whose single bottleneck is the sustained motivation of the student to climb an intellectual Everest. Though children are naturally curious, they nevertheless require ongoing guidance and encouragement to persevere in the ascent. Caring supervision from human teachers, parents, and mentors is the only known way of generating motivation for the hours of a school day, to say nothing of eight to twelve school years."

The one-sided way you wrote your post fails to mention anything of the other dimensions that would have to be tackled by modern media in order to succeed where others have failed (another comment here mentioned Postman's "Amused to Death", and I recommend it to you as well). You omit discussion of any weaknesses inherent in these media (and how to possibly tackle them). If you even outlined these aspects, it would really strengthen your essay as something valuable to read and learn from.

I hope the above was somewhat more constructive and actionable feedback than my initial (admittedly harsh) comment.

[rjkeck2]

This is super helpful context and great feedback on my writing in general. I tend to paint almost all of my articles in a fully positive light (mainly due to that being my personality) but I absolutely understand how that could lead to a one-sided piece that doesn’t capture the full picture. The title on here definitely didn’t do me any favors either. In the actual article, it reads “virtual learning != zoom lectures” but HN doesn’t allow special characters in titles so here we are…

But truly, I appreciate the follow-up and will work on adding some counterpoints / historical context to future posts.