EdTech gets confusing.

Micah Blachman, a seventh-grader, candidly writes about the educational technology used at his school. Reading his insights brought back some memories of when technology like this was first introduced at my school. Now it’s been a while, almost two decades, actually, but I remember thinking surely things would get better in the future. It does not.

I wanted to add some commentary from my dated perspective in secondary school. I don’t think it’s particularly in-depth, and my memory is foggy at best, but it does provide a good comparison. I’d recommend reading Micah’s post first.

SMART boards. These interactive whiteboards began rolling out in waves over the years from the early to mid-2000’s, at least at my school. The first wave of classrooms to be equipped got a variant that could only be used with SMART’s own markers. The projector had to be on, the board had to be running, and you had to write using the markers that came with the board. Not every teacher seemed to get the memo, as using regular whiteboard markers stained the board, which couldn’t be erased easily. Whoops.

I remember some teachers liking the interactivity aspect of it all, while others hated it. Later classrooms got a seemingly newer model that could be used in conjunction with regular whiteboard markers. This was at a time when projectors in classrooms in themselves were pretty new; some still used the TV with the VHS player that would be wheeled into the room whenever a video had to be played.

Reading Micah’s post, I see the company has expanded their companion app, SMART Notebook, but after all these years, it seems the way teachers use it hasn’t changed much.

[SMART Notebook] lets them annotate slideshows and PDFs with a pen tool, and that’s all they use it for. It can actually do a lot more cool things, like hooking up to a SMART Document Camera to display on the screen, but of course my teachers only use the strangest features.

The SMART boards product seemed interesting at the time, but was never really useful. They’re the modern version of the document projector, but glitchy.

Microsoft Office. Office, not Microsoft 365, Office 365, or the Microsoft 365 Copilot app. Word, Excel, and PowerPoint were actual applications installed on Windows XP, then later Windows 7, that could operate without internet connectivity. I noticed Micah mentioned the use of Canva, Google Docs and Google Slides in his post, all of which treat offline use as secondary, requiring internet access to use and store files, unless exported, from my minimal use of these tools. Also, usage of Office was limited to the ICT class when we’d make our way to the computer room or during recess if you went to the library. They worked, we learnt the skills required to write essays, make presentations and calculate our expenses. We later got introduced to webdesign through Microsoft FrontPage, and to databases using Microsoft Access, now that was fun.

iSAMS. It wasn’t until sixth form, in my final years of secondary education, that the school onboarded to a modern student information system, iSAMs. Up until then, attendance was taken on a physical register and physically transported down to the office by a student each morning. Grades were manually entered somewhere, I presume, and parents received a physical report card every term. All this changed after the introduction of iSAMS; things became more digital, and we started seeing less paper. Reports were still on paper, but you could keep track of bulletins, grades and attendance through the online portal. As students, we didn’t see or notice the true impact of iSAMS, I assume it made the administrative work a lot easier behind the scenes.

Google Workspace. In my final year, our school introduced Google Workspace, and each student received a letter home with their very own email address under the school’s domain and the password 12345678. I’m not sure how that password was allowed, but I assure you, not everyone changed it. I don’t remember ever using the email for anything, but I do know that after I left, the school started using Google Classroom and issuing Chromebooks.

I think the biggest game-changer during my time in school was the introduction of the projector in every classroom, since this meant not having to rely on a single TV per floor and outdated videos on VHS (and sometimes DVD). Teachers and students could now collectively read through web pages on a particular topic, and watch educational videos from YouTube, if it wasn’t blocked on the school network.

For the longest time, YouTube was blocked by the school’s IT staff. I recall every teacher being somewhat vocal against the ban, and it was later lifted. I was never sure why it was blocked in the first place; the only people with constant access to the computers were staff, since students were always supervised during the ICT classes and in the library. Actually, we were occasionally allowed to play games on the computer if we finished early. That is to say, web games were allowed, but YouTube wasn’t. With anything that’s prohibited, there were workarounds. Micah points out a humorous one:

Using our school accounts, embedding a video onto a Google Slide also uses the YouTube Education site, so now everyone just watches videos on Google Slides.

It seems the EdTech space is a lot more convoluted than it was when I was in school, but then again, I think that’s the case with most corporate environments I’ve worked in and seen. So school does prepare you for the future in that respect.

Micah Blachman, a seventh-grader, writes about the educational technology used at his school. Reading his insights brought back some memories of when technology like this was first introduced at my school. Now it’s been a while, almost two decades, actually, but I remember thinking surely things would get better in the future. It does not.

I wanted to add some commentary from my dated perspective in secondary school. I don’t think it’s particularly in-depth, and my memory is foggy at best, but it does provide a good comparison. I’d recommend reading Micah’s post first.

SMART boards. These interactive whiteboards began rolling out in waves over the years from the early to mid-2000’s, at least at my school. The first wave of classrooms to be equipped got a variant that could only be used with SMART’s own markers. The projector had to be on, the board had to be running, and you had to write using the markers that came with the board. Not every teacher seemed to get the memo, as using regular whiteboard markers stained the board, which couldn’t be erased easily. Whoops.

I remember some teachers liking the interactivity aspect of it all, while others hated it. Later classrooms got a seemingly newer model that could be used in conjunction with regular whiteboard markers. This was at a time when projectors in classrooms in themselves were pretty new; some still used the TV with the VHS player that would be wheeled into the room whenever a video had to be played.

Reading Micah’s post, I see the company has expanded their companion app, SMART Notebook, but after all these years, it seems the way teachers use it hasn’t changed much.

[SMART Notebook] lets them annotate slideshows and PDFs with a pen tool, and that’s all they use it for. It can actually do a lot more cool things, like hooking up to a SMART Document Camera to display on the screen, but of course my teachers only use the strangest features.

The SMART boards product seemed interesting at the time, but was never really useful. They’re the modern version of the document projector, but glitchy.

Microsoft Office. Office, not Microsoft 365, Office 365, or the Microsoft 365 Copilot app. Word, Excel, and PowerPoint were actual applications installed on Windows XP, then later Windows 7, that could operate without internet connectivity. I noticed Micah mentioned the use of Canva, Google Docs and Google Slides in his post, all of which treat offline use as secondary, requiring internet access to use and store files, unless exported, from my minimal use of these tools. Also, usage of Office was limited to the ICT class when we’d make our way to the computer room or during recess if you went to the library. They worked, we learnt the skills required to write essays, make presentations and calculate our expenses. We later got introduced to webdesign through Microsoft FrontPage, and to databases using Microsoft Access, now that was fun.

iSAMS. It wasn’t until sixth form, in my final years of secondary education, that the school onboarded to a modern student information system, iSAMs. Up until then, attendance was taken on a physical register and physically transported down to the office by a student each morning. Grades were manually entered somewhere, I presume, and parents received a physical report card every term. All this changed after the introduction of iSAMS; things became more digital, and we started seeing less paper. Reports were still on paper, but you could keep track of bulletins, grades and attendance through the online portal. As students, we didn’t see or notice the true impact of iSAMS, I assume it made the administrative work a lot easier behind the scenes.

Google Workspace. In my final year, our school introduced Google Workspace, and each student received a letter home with their very own email address under the school’s domain and the password 12345678. I’m not sure how that password was allowed, but I assure you, not everyone changed it. I don’t remember ever using the email for anything, but I do know that after I left, the school started using Google Classroom and issuing Chromebooks.

I think the biggest game-changer during my time in school was the introduction of the projector in every classroom, since this meant not having to rely on a single TV per floor and outdated videos on VHS (and sometimes DVD). Teachers and students could now collectively read through web pages on a particular topic, and watch educational videos from YouTube, if it wasn’t blocked on the school network.

For the longest time, YouTube was blocked by the school’s IT staff. I recall every teacher being somewhat vocal against the ban, and it was later lifted. I was never sure why it was blocked in the first place; the only people with constant access to the computers were staff, since students were always supervised during the ICT classes and in the library. Actually, we were occasionally allowed to play games on the computer if we finished early. That is to say, web games were allowed, but YouTube wasn’t. With anything that’s prohibited, there were workarounds. Micah points out a humorous one:

Using our school accounts, embedding a video onto a Google Slide also uses the YouTube Education site, so now everyone just watches videos on Google Slides.

It seems the EdTech space is a lot more convoluted than it was when I was in school, but then again, I think that’s the case with most corporate environments I’ve worked in and seen. So school does prepare you for the future in that respect.