As my colleague John Potter pointed out in response to the Google marketing, magic often refers to the ‘skill of misdirection,’ a certain sleight of hand that indicates to the audience to ‘Look at this magical stuff over here… (but don’t look at what’s happening over there).’ But ‘over there’ is precisely where educational attention needs to be directed, at the technical things, even the boring things like privacy policies and user agreements, that are reshaping teaching and learning in schools. Google may be opening up exciting new directions for schooling, but it may also be misdirecting education towards a future of ever-increasing automation and corporate control of the classroom.
Ben Williamson pulls the curtain back on the magic associated with Google’s new Google Classroom feature ‘Practice Set’, which provides adaptive learning technology. He discusses the underlying technical functionality and internal political conflicts.
Greg McVerry