Dad to SF Tech Titans: Fix the EdTech Disaster

Dear SF Tech Titans (Marc Benioff, Ron Conway, Dick Costolo, Jack Dorsey, Drew Houston, Jeremy Stoppelman, Brian Chesky, Travis Kalanick, Don Mattrick, George Lucas, and honorary member, Larry Ellison), as well as other SF Bay Area technology leaders, Mayor Ed Lee, and Superintendent Richard Carranza -

I’m a current public school dad (three times over) in San Francisco, the global epicenter of technology.  And, I’m saddened by, and ashamed of, the approach to technology in our classrooms.

So, I am using this platform to implore all of you: Think bigger (your words, Mr. Benioff) and then, perhaps more important, make it happen (my words, Mr. Benioff)!  No excuses!

To level set, I appreciate that (almost) every parent at (almost) every school (public or private) has something to be annoyed by and/or to complain about, and so I know that my issue here is more substantial than some and much less significant than others.  Please, then, view this issue and this perspective in an absolute, not relative, sense.

That said, the current state of technology in San Francisco’s public schools is appalling.  There is no other word for it.  

According to, San Francisco Unified School District’s Master Plan, hundreds of teachers in San Francisco have no computer in their classrooms at all (seriously, none!), and more than 60% of all teachers have computers that are more than 4 years old.  Many of these computers run similarly out-of-date software.  How can we expect these people to adequately teach and train the future rock stars that you will need working at your companies?  

Moreover, fewer than half of teachers have LCD projectors, document cameras, or interactive whiteboards (and, I’m willing to bet that far fewer than 50% have access to the full suite of these technologies).  

As for WiFi / connectivity — SFUSD has no idea (literally - it has no count), though my experiences would suggest that our existing capacity is painfully insufficient.

And, that’s the good news; because, when looking at student access to technology, it is an unmitigated disaster.  The student:computer ratio was a paltry 5:1, in 2012, and a petrifying 8:1 for computers less than 5 years old.  With so few computers to go around — and (obviously relatedly) a student population that lacks the requisite computer skills — less than 25% of teachers in SFUSD reported giving weekly assignments that require use of technology.

In summary, then, SFUSD has woefully under-resourced classrooms / teachers; ancient technology; and, untrained students without access.

Unacceptable, inexcusable, and pathetic!

If your companies / employees were forced to operate under these conditions, you would have been fired long ago and/or your businesses would have gone to zero.

To be clear to you and anyone else reading this, I recognize that you and your companies are not at all to blame for this state of affairs — we have years of political and bureaucratic mismanagement, among other factors, to thank for that.  

At the same time, though, you and your employees do work here and live here and are valuable members of this community; and, it would benefit you and your employees greatly over the long-term to be surrounded by a well-educated, tech-ready population for years to come.

So, Mr. Benioff, I loudly and enthusiastically applaud your extremely generous gift (and I mean that sincerely) to San Francisco’s middle schools; however, the truth of the matter is that it barely addresses the most superficial of needs.

• iPads for teachers are a wonderful nice-to-have, but hardly a need-to-have, when the teachers that actually have computers are working on +5-year-old machines, running similarly out-of-date software that may be incompatible with current programs and/or accessory devices;
• iPads for 750 students has to be considered progress, but it is a mere drop in the bucket relative to the daily computing needs - and the potential output — of +12,000 (guesstimate) middle schoolers in SF;
• And, the promise of school-wide WiFi is encouraging, but a multi-year rollout of said technology is essentially bypassing the entire generation of current middle schoolers.

Fortunately, this is a readily fixable problem, especially with all of you on board!  Unlike the tragedies of homelessness, drug addiction, poverty, and/or crime, which are influenced by any number of ongoing and ever-changing socio-political factors, infusing SFUSD classrooms with technology is straightforward and easy, with a defined investment over a specific population.

And, you (Marc, Ron, Dick, Jack, etc.) are among a very small crowd to have the collective resources and wherewithal to change these dynamics almost overnight (literally)!

If you need a guide for possible next steps, let me offer a few:

• Outfit every teacher in SFUSD with a modern computer, LCD projector, document camera, and printer (for a visual point of reference as to what’s needed, look no further than one of your many office conference rooms);
• Install / upgrade WiFi networks at all SFUSD campuses to allow for high concentrations of always-on usage (again, look no further than the networks that run inside your own businesses, or are used at the conferences you love to host)
• Flood every middle and high school with a sufficient number of Chromebooks or Netbooks (or PCs or Macbooks, if you are so inclined) to bring the student:modern computer ratio down to 2:1;
• Train educators on “best practices” for integrating these technologies into their classrooms and curriculum; and,
• Donate the time of your infrastructure teams to support SFUSD’s already-stretched network / IT department.

Your companies, which are headquartered in San Francisco, set the world’s pace in technology and related services; I challenge all of you, individually and jointly, to focus that same vision, leadership, money, and resolve on the technology used by the teachers and students living in your own neighborhoods.

Make it happen.  Today.  Please!  Every child in San Francisco will be forever indebted to you for stepping up to the challenge — and, they may well repay the favor many times over as future leaders of your companies!

Sincerely,

Derek Brown

And The Survey Says... OUCH!

As it turns out, the advertisements on Facebook and Twitter really do suck (to use a technical term)!

That’s not just my opinion anymore; it’s the collective view of the respondents to One Blind Squirrel’s recent survey on the topic.  

To be very clear, there is absolutely no statistical significance to these data, which are based on fewer than 100 responses from people more like me than not (i.e., primarily friends and family, I believe); moreover, I’m not a statistician (far from it). That said, there is, in fact, an obvious thematic significance to these responses that I think is worth dissecting.

According to the collected data, users almost uniformly find advertisements on Facebook and Twitter both very annoying and effectively irrelevant, while rarely, if ever, transacting as a result of exposure to them. Charts 1-3 (below) show the averages from all applicable respondents.

Annoying.  Irrelevant.  No impact.  Ouch!

Moreover, heavier users and lighter users of each service seem similarly dissatisfied with the advertisements they see (see charts 4-6, which show the averages from all applicable respondents).  This is both surprising and worrisome, given the unique targeting capabilities these companies are supposed to have, based on the volumes of highly personal data to which they have access.  (As an aside, an interesting perspective on usage variances between Facebook and Twitter can be found in the Addendum at the end of this note).

Overall, these views are so damning in my mind that I almost wonder if advertisers on these platforms wouldn’t be better off just giving their “social” marketing budgets away at random, rather than paying for the privilege of potentially damaging their own brands and/or their relationships with their customers, with little, if any, new revenue as an offset.

And, yet, Facebook and Twitter dominate marketers’ “social” spending, generating an estimated $6-7 billion in advertising revenue this year.

This contrast is striking to me.

In a not-so-strange way, these dynamics remind me of Yahoo! circa 1996-2000.  At that time, the company’s dominance of the Web and status as a potential “kingmaker” allowed it to command huge sums of money from companies looking to “lock-up” its prime real estate.  Yahoo! certainly wasn’t the only game in town, but it was one of the biggest and had the aura of being the best.  As a result, the line of companies anxious to deliver sacks full of money to Yahoo! stretched from Sand Hill Road to Madison Avenue and beyond.

Unfortunately for those companies — and, ultimately, for Yahoo! — the deals didn’t work financially, with returns plummeting on marketing dollars invested.  Ad rates were (way) too high.  Paying customers delivered were (way) too low.  And, both revenue and profit generated were (way) too weak.

Over time, this recurring shortfall, coupled with a variety of meaningful exogenous factors, resulted in the .com “crash” of the early-aughts, with an enormous wave of .com meltdowns and downsizings and re-caps and re-orgs and shutdowns.

Hopefully, Facebook and Twitter avoid repeating history, by quickly improving the performance of, and receptivity to, the advertisements on their platforms, and/or by being certain to price these advertisements in line with the value delivered (perhaps Twitter’s timely acquisition of MoPub will prove a meaningful step in this direction?).

After all, imagine how much revenue these two “social” companies alone could generate if the advertisements on their platforms were just mediocre / tolerable and didn’t actually suck?!?!?!

ADDENDUM

As a byproduct of this survey, I noticed a fascinating trend in usage variances between users of Facebook and Twitter.

In short, a high number of respondents seem to use Facebook all the time, whereas a fairly low number seem to use Twitter all the time. Perhaps more eye-opening, though, is the fact that a relatively high number of respondents seem to never use Twitter, while only a handful say the same of Facebook (see chart 7).

Personally, I’m not shocked by this divergence, given my own issues with Twitter, speculation that user growth at Twitter has fallen short of plan, as well as Facebook’s reported numbers that highlight high levels of daily usage; nonetheless, it is still an enormous “yellow / orange-ish” flag that needs to be addressed quickly by Twitter’s leadership.