EdTech

“The consequences for today’s children are extremely significant as they are being datafied from pre-birth”

Access to digital technology, the internet and multitude of online learning tools is something that our learners are growig up with. Yet, how much do our pre-schools and schools, staff, students, parents, whānau and communities know about the long-term impacts that digital access and online data collection have on the lives of rangatahi and tamariki.

We recently hosted an online panel of experts to discuss the issues facing learners within and outside of schools arising from the digital learning environment and data collection happening in the platforms, apps and sites used. Our panellists were:

Anjela Webster, Founder, Generation Online  
Brent Carey, CEO, Netsafe
Dr. Caroline Keen, Founder, Sociodigital Research  
Rick Shera, Partner, Lowndes Jordan 

‍Watch the discussion and get in touch to learn more.

Imagine scanning your fingerprint just to go to the loo at #school 🧐

☝️ A high school in #Sydney implemented this to find #students vandalising toilets.

🏫 This shows how easily #biometric #technology can be introduced at #schools – should #parents be concerned?

We present eight new speculative scenarios for the future of higher education teaching:

Extinction-era universities 
AI academy
The universal university
Extreme unbundling
Justice-driven innovation
Return to the ivory tower
The university of ennui
Enhanced enhancement

For this episode we examine the presence of EdTech in schools, looking at how we judge whether the tech ‘works’ or not. We explore what makes for good evidence, why contextual use is significant, and how school CPD, infrastructure development, and staff capacity building are vital to making the most of the tools at our disposal.

"If you prepare and train teachers, EdTech deployment will almost always go well. If you don't, it will almost always be a disaster" (24 min into podcast)

Market valuations of #EdTech firms are tumbling after the investment frenzy of the pandemic, with the emphasis shifting from "growth at all costs" to profitability

"There was a lot of investment activity in the past 2-3 years from people outside of education, driven by naive assumptions on just how quickly and how simply education would change in the long-term"

Venture capital helped take #EdTech to "an entirely different stratosphere in 2020 and 2021, as the demand for remote learning skyrocketed. As demand grew, so did investor appetite".

But this massive boost in EdTech investment "forced an overspending and overhiring spree that now requires a correction", and VC-backed EdTech firms are cutting back hard.