A witty analysis of the ed-tech tools used in the classroom written by Micah Blachman, a twelve-year-old tech blogger.

This remarkable individual addresses “all the K-12 Systems Administrators”

asking them to:

maybe think twice about the tools you’re paying thousands of dollars a year for. Are they the best options — not even from the students’ perspectives, but from the teachers’ perspectives?

He goes on to write:

What is the value add over Google Slides or another free tool? Do you need to pay for SMART Notebook, or is OpenBoard a better alternative (it is, and it’s free and open-source!)?

If my school switched to OpenBoard, they could save about a thousand dollars a year, and while many of my teachers have decades-old libraries of SMART Notebook files on their hard drives, they can be converted to work with OpenBoard, albeit with some buggy elements, and depending on the way it’s done, non-editable components.

OpenBoard is a European platform which is maintained by the Education Department of the canton of Geneva, in Switzerland, in collaboration with The University of Lausanne.

I sure hope this is what schools in the UK are using…

Micah goes on to write:

I don’t know what school was like before all of these tools, but I don’t necessarily feel like any of them really help me learn.

As opposed to my classmates, when studying for my math tests, I print out all the SMART Notebook files my teacher shares to go over, and when making creative assignments like posters, I do it by hand instead of turning to Canva.

A lot of times, these analog methods are completely ignored in favor of modern, technological approaches. Instead of teachers writing on the whiteboard or chalkboard, they’re sending their presentations to our computers, and we take notes on Google Docs.

It almost feels “over-engineered,” like Apple putting the guts of an iPhone into the Studio Display, their 27-inch monitor, to enable advanced camera, audio, and voice assistant features, that aren’t really necessary.

So maybe ed-tech isn’t all teachers and admins think it is, and some analog methods are truly the best methods. Plus, chalk is a lot cheaper than dozens of software licenses.

Can someone please put this kid in a room with Liz Kendall, Bridget Phillipson, Lisa Nandy and a blackboard for a couple of hours?

Maybe some of his common sense will catch.