What a turn the world of edtech has taken.
A few years ago, I went to the mosh pit/networking event/edtech love fest called ASU+GSV and had the same feeling I always have. This kinda sucks. It seems so far away from the real people and issues in schools. But since I lead PowerMyLearning, an edtech nonprofit, I figured I might as well make the best of it. BTW, one year, making the best of it meant walking out and taking a pedicab to a Padres game by myself.
How the tides have turned. The winds have shifted. Or, in the words of the immortal bard, “the wheel is come full circle.”
Three years ago, the edtech world was riding a wave of interest and investment driven by pandemic shutdowns and virtual schooling. Two years ago, the introduction of powerful AI tools ensured that every solution at ASU+GSV featured a chatbot chatting away with googly-eyed students. And then, earlier this year—kaboom! It all started falling apart. There were protesters, chanting and waving signs about the negative impact of edtech and computer screens on their kids.
When things fall apart, sometimes it happens slowly and methodically, and sometimes it happens very, very quickly. Truth is, if you’d asked me a year ago whether those protesters would have any impact on the sensibilities or bottom lines of the people running ASU+GSV, major edtech companies, venture and private equity investors, or the philanthropic sector, I would have said no.
There was one other time I confidently said no. A friend of mine, knowing that I ran a company focused on the Science of Reading (SOR), asked if Lucy Calkins would ever lose her vile grip on American reading instruction. “Maybe after I’m dead,” I said.
I was wrong then. I would have been wrong a year ago about the impact of the edtech backlash.
What’s remarkable is the similarity between the ingredients of that seismic educational event and this one. It says something truly important about how the locus of educational power has shifted. Back in the day, all the power lay in the hands of education reformers funded by philanthropists with a focus on federal policy. Now, it’s bloggers, prolific media-savvy researchers, and, most importantly, parents targeting the school, district, and state levels.
The foot soldiers of the SOR movement were parents distressed that their kids, especially kids with dyslexia, couldn’t read. The foot soldiers of the anti-screen movement are parents worried about the impact of education technology on the academic, social, and emotional well-being of their children. Add in the negative perception of AI, and suddenly things fall apart very, very quickly.
That’s where you get strict limits on screen time, like what the board of our nation’s second-largest district, LAUSD, just approved. Those came about through the advocacy of an entirely new organization called Schools Beyond Screens. This type of grassroots organizing, building on research by the author Jonathan Haidt, Substack writer Emily Cherkin, and others, has caused thousands of parents to opt their children out of using school-issued devices, spurred multiple screen-time bills in states across our nation, and potentially contributed to major edtech companies losing district contracts. All of this is part of a larger cultural moment where the villain of the latest Toy Story movie is basically a mesmerizing iPad.
It’s quite a switcheroo for me. Not only do I lead an edtech nonprofit, but I started my career in special education, where assistive technology has changed the lives of millions of students with disabilities. I was profoundly influenced by David Rose, founder of the Center for Applied Special Technology (CAST), and by CAST’s Universal Design for Learning guidelines.
Earlier this year, I co-authored an EdSource column with Abbas Manjee, co-founder and Chief Academic Officer of Kiddom, using the classrooms of the Starship Enterprise as a metaphor for balancing screens and AI with student engagement, discourse, excitement, and play.
In that piece, we note that in Star Trek, AI and tech are always present but never guiding the student experience. Going back to my question that opened this piece, there’s not a chatbot to be found.
In upcoming pieces on LinkedIn, I’ll draw on my experience working in schools and districts, in education advocacy, and in running education companies to dig into what this cultural and political moment could and should mean for the future of edtech and AI in schools and classrooms.