PowerSchool says this about themselves:
As the leading provider of cloud-based software in K-12 education, we connect students, teachers, administrators, and parents with the shared goal of improving student outcomes.
Our mission is to power the education ecosystem with unified technology that helps educators and students realize their full potential in their own way. With more than two decades of experience delivering innovative, best-in-class education technology, we connect students, teachers, administrators, and parents, with the shared goal of improving student outcomes.
PowerSchool has a long list of apps under their platform, one of which is called Schoology …which is perhaps not the most imaginative name. But what kid wouldn’t want to learn on a platform called “PowerSchool”? Would Disney’s Marvel franchise ever want to buy out PowerSchool and give it a superhero name and trappings? Join the other Marvel entities in the Marvel universe?
The potentials for “Edutainment” remain generally untapped…but should educators want to really activate immersive learning environments and platforms, the example is out there for all to see and incorporate into learning and teaching MO.
Yes, the productions are very costly, but if the costs are spread out among the huge numbers of school districts in the US, the cost per student for effective learning systems should be doable. Current expenditures for education in the US, per student and in sum, is, along with healthcare, right there at the top of US expenditures. Surely in some universe that spending could be repurposed?
EdTech is increasingly capable; working out how the economics are sorted is still a mountain to climb, full of catch 22s. In a way, it’s similar to how government and NGOs attempt to step out of the circle of “can’t do it, because of some other component”. There are numerous programs for resetting those born into poverty and hopelessness, but nothing to date has approached the results needed. Where on the circle of needs does one start?
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As can be regularly noted, one thing that the US doesn’t lack, is brain power. We produce large numbers of advanced degree graduates every year. From the US Census:
From 2011 to 2021, the number of people age 25 and over whose highest degree was a master’s degree rose to 24.1 million, and the number of doctoral degree holders rose to 4.7 million, a 50.2% and 54.5% increase, respectively. About 14.3% of adults had an advanced degree in 2021, up from 10.9% in 2011.
Nearly 5 million doctorates, 24 million masters…that’s gotta add up to some serious mental capacity. Which is available, at least in part, to solve our educational, and sociological problems, if ideas can form the basis for change.
(one source says China has about 700K master degrees as of 2021, though we have heard for years that Chinese engineering students greatly outnumber the US, and China’s population is nearing 1.5 Billion, while US is “only” a bit more than 330 Million.)
Startups in the US have mostly found a rich environment for funding, (albeit during the pre current inflationary period). The profit motive and the market can produce viable solutions…often seemingly out of nowhere. Given our fecund environment for solutions, it doesn’t seem wild eyed blue sky optimism that EdTech for all kids can be solved in the not too distant future.
(It’s not rocket science. Oh wait, rocket science is being solved by the methods noted above.)