David Longman, January 2020, for MirandaNet
“The future is already here — it’s just not very evenly distributed.” (Attributed to William Gibson)
[Update March 2025: I have republished this MirandaLink material which I created in 2020 in order to return to a discussion with TPEA/ITTE colleagues about the future direction of EdTech.
The turn of a decade is a convenient calendar moment in which to consider what is to come, to look ahead to consider how educational technology (edtech) might develop during the coming decade.
Here are some possible questions for discussion:
- How will edtech develop during the coming 10-15 years?
- How will the provision and ‘delivery’ of education change (if at all)?
- Perhaps, most importantly, how can we influence the direction of edtech as the future unfolds?
To frame our thinking a little below I link to three recent and interesting papers about possible futures of edtech.
There are different futures to consider, each is possible, some are already emerging. (These articles are what Neil Selwyn and his colleagues describe as “social science fiction“.)
Two articles (1 & 3) are open access. Article 2 has been contributed by the author(s).
Aiming to lighten the reading load a bit, I have added three synopses of the articles. I hope they are reasonably accurate summaries of the main content while offering a lighter/quicker read and a convenient method for commment on the major ideas. The papers on which the synopses based are available from this site:
Synopsis 1: What’s next for EdTech? Paper: Selwyn et al. (2019a). What’s next for Ed-Tech? Critical hopes and concerns for the 2020s. (Open Access)
Synopsis 2: The school of 2030 – social science fiction. Paper: Selwyn et al. (2019b). What might the school of 2030 be like? An exercise in social science fiction. (Author copy)
Synopsis 3: Three future histories. Paper: MacGilcrhist et al. (July 2019). Students and society in the 2020s. Three future ‘histories’ of education and technology (Open Access)