99: Quality-Check Your Tech: 6 Strategies

The Cult of Pedagogy Podcast

Jennifer Gonzalez

Education, Teaching, Instruction, Classroommanagement, Educationreform

4.8 • 2.4K Ratings

🗓️ 15 July 2018

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Is your tech tool doing the work you think it is? Or could it actually be widening the same gaps you're trying to close? In this episode we explore the problems that can arise when a tool isn't carefully scrutinized, then look at seven strategies educators can use to deeply assess a tool for its impact. My guest is Rupa Chandra Gupta, who is the founder of the ed tech company Sown to Grow.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is Jennifer Gonzalez welcoming you to Episode 99 of the Cult of Pedagogy Podcast.
0:05.6	In this episode we're going to look at seven ways you can quality check your educational tech.
0:22.9	In schools we use more tech tools every year.
0:26.8	We also have very little time to vet them for quality. Do the math and you have a formula
0:32.8	for some tech choices that may not be serving our students well or as equitably as they should be.
0:40.0	It's easy to dismiss this as no big deal. So what if we occasionally adopt something that isn't
0:45.6	the very best choice? The answer to that depends on a couple of factors. Are we spending a lot of money
0:52.2	on the tool? Is it going to replace other learning experiences? Will it be time consuming to adopt?
0:58.4	Are we expecting it to close gaps and provide remediation? If the answer to any of these is yes,
1:04.7	then it would definitely be a big deal if our chosen tool didn't actually do what we thought it did.
1:10.3	It would be an even bigger deal if that tool ended up widening the very gaps we were trying to close.
1:16.8	This is not to say that schools are just going about their tech decisions all willy nilly.
1:21.6	Surely everyone is acting in good faith. But when all the tools seem ideal,
1:27.3	when they all promise to solve some of our most persistent problems, it's pretty hard to figure out
1:32.3	which one to pick. What we need is a framework for making these decisions. A set of practices that
1:38.0	can help us determine which tool is really going to deliver on its promises. With this episode,
1:44.3	I hope to contribute something to that framework. I'll be talking with Rupa Shandra Gupta,
1:49.2	founder and CEO of SON2GRO, an online platform that helps students set and measure goals.
1:55.7	As a former school administrator in the head of an edtech company, Gupta has been both a consumer
2:01.2	and a producer of edtech. This has raised your awareness of the interplay between equity and technology.
2:07.7	Now she wants to hold herself and her peers to a higher standard when it comes to designing tools
2:13.0	that meet the needs of more students. Our conversation starts with an exploration of the problems
	...

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