What have we learned about the forces that shape education?
As we enter a new year, there’s still plenty of growing up to do for the edtech community. Technology can create just as many problems as it solves, and 2017 found educators, entrepreneurs, writers and researchers wrestling with inequities around who can afford to use learning tools—and who gets funding to build them. Left unchecked, writes futurist Bryan Alexander, “putatively equitable technologies actually reinstate social inequalities.”
But education technology also made some positive breakthroughs for learners and their instructors. Online communication, argues Level Up Village CEO Amy McCooe, will continue to build community in ways that “broaden our horizons in terms of how we relate to each other across geographies and cultures.” Deeper collaboration, adds author Jeffrey Selingo, will be how people and institutions adapt to a seemingly blistering pace of change.
Perhaps what we need most is balance, advises educator Laurie Guyon to her colleagues, students and the broader education community.
Below we’ve invited some of the edtech community’s most seasoned champions and sharpest critics to share on lessons learned in 2017, and what’s in store ahead. We kick off this guide with eight reflections; more will be added through the first week of the new year.
We know you have as many thoughts as we do on what the next year will bring in education technology. We want to hear them, and invite you to also reflect. Tweet your musings to us @EdSurge with the hashtag #edtech2018.
