What is EdTech?

 

Let’s start with a broad definition of education technology: When Jan Comenius was using vernacular medium and illustrations to teach a foreign language in the Seventeenth century (his Gate of the Tongue unlocked came out in 1631), he was using the new technology of print and an educational idea (learning through illustrated textbooks) to create a new form of education. 

However, such a definition of technology would also narrow down what we could call Education Technology (Edtech, as it is fashionably called). Contemporary Edtech is a catch-all phrase for any technology used within the educational context. Duolingo, which employs an app to offer a new, gamified, approach to language learning, will be clubbed together with some boring classroom management software in the same category. Instead, it makes more sense to define education technology to include such applications of scientific knowledge to further educational goals, rather than any piece of machinery or code (thus excluding, for example, WiFi from the list, though it is a sophisticated technology and often used in educational settings).  

One could argue that the context defines whether something should be called EdTech or not. Therefore, Wifi in a coffee shop isn’t EdTech, but it is in a classroom. But this would be too confusing when a migrant sits down in a coffee shop to study for an examination. In our definition, for something to qualify as EdTech, the underlying educational idea should have shaped the deployment of technology, and not just some available technology being used for an educational purpose (such as WiFi in a coffee shop). 

The investors in EdTech, however, don’t talk about educational ideas. They are keener on buzzwords, or ‘snake oil’ as Princeton’s Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor would call it. Rightly, they are calling to limit the unrestrained deployment of technology (more specifically, AI) in sectors such as education and healthcare, where bad ideas can have long-lasting consequences.  

One should also be mindful that technology is not neutral – its deployment affects what gets encouraged (and what’s discouraged). Portable music means less books in the underground and coffee shop WiFi may indeed lead to less conversation. Therefore, when talking about EdTech, it is a perfectly sensible question to ask: What’s the educational idea? 

Boulevard of broken dreams 

This would be a tough question for most EdTech providers to answer. Most EdTech focuses on one key idea: How to create more engaging content? They express this rather old idea – Comenius’ - in revolutionary terms. They show photos of classrooms from the last century in a cartoonish variant, claiming nothing has really changed, and the magic potion of some computer code would change everything. However, if we consider what they aim to do, they are as much part of the same old as they claim traditional education, focused on content, to be. 

Of course, the medium is the message and the type of tools employed creates a new educational model. This content-serving EdTech personalises’ - make content available to each user at their own pace, and preferred form (video, text, whatever). The EdTech entrepreneurs, after trying for 400 years, found the gap in Comenius’ method: Everyone had to read the same textbook! Essentially, they are just transplanting the ideas of modern retail into education, and calling it a revolution. 

They have, therefore, failed. MOOCs, after great fanfare, became higher education’s equivalent of Edsel. Educational content on demand isn’t really education – that is more media business (Netflix, anyone?) than what a university does. All the sophisticated analytics, clever gamification, beautifully crafted virtual worlds and variously calibrated ‘blends’, therefore, failed to manifest themselves in learning and outcomes, and, as it is recently transpiring, in investor returns. 

What’s education about? 

Educational practice, in the meantime, has come a long way. The newspapers may portray the universities as ivory towers and Professors as fundamentalists, but the university remains one of the most successful of the modern institutions. In fact, the centrality of content in the process of education has been challenged in many universities and new forms of learning engagement have been tried. Co-operative education, first attempted at Northeastern University, but then across North America and increasingly in other parts of the world, is one such example. But the case study method, integrated apprenticeships, internships, business incubation are also some other examples which show that the universities are not just shops trying to sell personalised content-wares, but innovating a variety of engagement methods instead. 

If one aggregates the most interesting higher education ideas, the contrast with EdTech themes would be clear. The focus is on socialisation of action, rather than personalisation of content. The focus has irreversibly shifted from mastery of content, defined by individual learners with their books (and screens, if we must), to productive participation in the economy and the society (both in its phenomenal and virtual forms). Partly, this shift itself is a result of technological change. Books are no longer bound to their physical form and contextual knowledge is available ‘on-demand’ (rather than to be found through long-drawn study and research).  

Seen separately, the two trends may represent a paradox. The content technologies have changed the role of content in education, whereas education technologies have unquestioningly accepted the role of content in education in its outdated form. However, this is not a paradox but an inevitable result of growing an educational model out of existing technologies rather than constructing a new educational model by taking advantage of technology. Comenius’ innovation was not about employing print technology in education, but to employ vernacular and illustrations in language learning, for which the print technology was a convenient enabler. 

To arrive at where we started 

Educationally-informed EdTech, therefore, should not start from a la carte technology, but with a clearly stated educational goal. For e1133, the goal is to prepare graduates who will be able to employ emerging and future technologies for socially-desirable outcomes. Much of this work will not be done alone, but as a member of many shape-shifting collectives, through thinking, participation, decision-making and participation. The starting point for us, therefore, is not with co-pilots or virtual worlds, but with frameworks of action and employ techniques that can facilitate this tangibly, manageably and transparently. EdTech, for us, is, and would always be, education-first.

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