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Silicon Valley Courts Brand-Name Teachers, Raising Ethics Issues (nytimes.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: One of the tech-savviest teachers in the United States teaches third grade here at Mapleton Elementary, a public school with about 100 students in the sparsely populated plains west of Fargo. Her name is Kayla Delzer. Her third graders adore her. She teaches them to post daily on the class Twitter and Instagram accounts she set up. She remodeled her classroom based on Starbucks. And she uses apps like Seesaw, a student portfolio platform where teachers and parents may view and comment on a child's schoolwork. Ms. Delzer also has a second calling. She is a schoolteacher with her own brand, Top Dog Teaching. Education start-ups like Seesaw give her their premium classroom technology as well as swag like T-shirts or freebies for the teachers who attend her workshops. She agrees to use their products in her classroom and give the companies feedback. And she recommends their wares to thousands of teachers who follow her on social media. "I will embed it in my brand every day," Ms. Delzer said of Seesaw. "I get to make it better." Ms. Delzer is a member of a growing tribe of teacher influencers, many of whom promote classroom technology. They attract notice through their blogs, social media accounts and conference talks. And they are cultivated not only by start-ups like Seesaw, but by giants like Amazon, Apple, Google and Microsoft, to influence which tools are used to teach American schoolchildren.
Need to check how well they are being "cultivated". It's not cheap renovating a classroom into a starbucks and sticking screens in front of their faces. Need to make sure the "cultivation" is going well.
It's right there in the summary. Cult.
This is a teacher, I DO NOT WANT my kids to be evne near. She is not teaching. Texting and Blogging is not teaching. She is creating zombies.
Give aa teacher that shows how real world works. How to REALLY sivle puzzles (problems). Get pumped about biology or physics or math.
Who can write 140 character note... is crap.
i can see why this appeals to teachers. It's been a fact of life that many teachers - even in reasonably good schools - end up spending a fair bit of their own money purchasing supplies on a regular basis. The lure of someone providing what the school district can't (or won't) is compelling.
But, on the other hand, this is concerning. These companies ultimately aren't interested in making the best choices for students - they're motivated to sell as much of their product as possible. Plus, based on what I've seen of various popular online "influencers" in many fields... they're not necessarily good at their jobs, they're just really motivated to self-promote and are good at talking (like the old traveling salesmen who peddled snake oil). These guys are likely just parroting whatever their patrons want them to say.
"Teachers have really responded well to feeling like they are being listened to," said Carl Sjogreen, a co-founder of Seesaw.
I fear this is all there is to it - the feeling as if they're being listened to, but with no actual listening happening behind it.
#DeleteChrome
She teaches them to post daily on the class Twitter and Instagram accounts she set up.
Let me translate that for you:
She indoctrinates them to provide free personalized information to marketers, corporations, and governments, and brainwashes them into believing that 'sharing' (i.e. not preserving your very much human RIGHT to privacy) is 'normal' and 'natural' and that 'hiding things' (i.e. 'exercising your right to privacy') is WRONG and BAD.
These kids will grow up, even more so than Millennials, to believe that anyone who doesn't have so-called 'social media' accounts, and doesn't share everything about their day-to-day lives with the entire WORLD, must either be suffering from a mental illness, or is some sort of criminal.