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What can we learn from Fitbit?
Stock in the company that makes the Fitbit activity tracker has dropped by 70% since the company’s IPO in June of 2015. We learned today that Fitbit plans to lay off 6% of its workforce.
This collapse in value has been driven, at least in part, by the research that is showing that wearable fitness trackers do very little to encourage fitness.
The downfall of the Fitbit seems, in hindsight, totally predictable.
Technical solutions are seldom adequate for solving difficult problems.
Yet, this foreordained collapse of the wearable craze failed to stop many of us from buying Fitibits and similar devices. Raise your hand (or write a comment) if you are someone (like me) who purchased (or was gifted) a wearable fitness tracker?
Do you still wear your Fitbit? I lost mine sometime while traveling for an educational technology conference. (I know, the irony). Nowadays, I still count steps - but do so with the (free) Fitbit iPhone app.
Are some of us in higher ed just as susceptible of falling for shiny new technologies so many of us were for the Fitbit? To ask that question is to answer it.
We think that if we just get virtual reality, or adaptive learning platforms, or mobile learning right - then we will finally address the issues of cost, quality, and access that plague postsecondary education.
Remember our excitement about Second Life? Personalized learning environments? Today we are enthralled by big data and analytics. Blockchain anyone?
The edtech world should come to grips with the reality that learning is very very difficult.
We should stipulate at every opportunity that the only good education involves educators. Well-paid, autonomous, secure, and highly esteemed educators.
We in edtech should be skeptical about our own bag of tricks. Modest in our ambitions. Circumspect in our actions.
Will we in edtech learn from the hype and the crash of the wearable fitness device industry?
Not likely.
