EdTech Futures

Why Now?

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March 1, 2025

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¶ 2 Leave a comment on paragraph 2 0 David Longman, March 2025

¶ 3 Leave a comment on paragraph 3 0 Away back in 2019/20 just about at the same time that Covid-19 struck the world and we were obliged to remain in quarantine, there was an emerging topic in the world of organisations and enterprise under the general label ‘Agenda 2020+’. Quite honestly I really can’t remember much about it now, except that it was a turn-of-the-decade moment and there was some sort of ‘zeitgeist’ about how the 21st Century was running on, how 2030 did not seem so far away, and how ‘things’ were not really 21st Century ready! We needed to rethink. What sort of future should we aim for in social work, education, health and social security? That sort of thing. Covid of course had a seismic effect and that whole moment of thinking about how things might change just evaporated in the immediate and frightening preoccupation with avoiding death.

¶ 4 Leave a comment on paragraph 4 0 At that time I was working for MirandaNet running its website and I was asked to create something interesting on the topic of Agenda 2020+. The materials assembled here are what I produced back then but of course Covid pretty much shut down any interest in the future of 2030 while we all got on with managing an unpredictable 2020. 2021 was about as far ahead as we dared think about or plan for. 

¶ 5 Leave a comment on paragraph 5 0 However, here we are in 2025 and questions about our social future remain – in TPEA’s case it’s the future of  EdTech that is at stake – and 2030 is almost here! So here are those materials created in 2020 now republished in more or less the same layout as before although this time using a modified form of WordPress that might enable some sharing of ideas and opinions about where EdTech might be headed (see the Welcome page above for a sense of what this modified WordPress offers).

¶ 6 Leave a comment on paragraph 6 0 To state the obvious, EdTech faces something of a crisis as a new wave of  computational technologies – so-called AI – spreads relentlessly across the educational landscape. Perhaps it is game-changing. Perhaps it is not. Whereas the fear of death-by-plague that shut us down in 2020 Education today and EdTech in particular faces a new existential challenge, one which we do not yet fully comprehend or control. Keep this in mind when we think about the future of EdTech while looking back, “reculer pour mieux sauter”.¹

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1. Arthur Koestler, 1964, The Act of Creation. Huchinson.