Education Technology Society

Learning analytics dashboards and metrics are an increasing presence in higher education.  We talk to Hannes Hautz (University of Innsbruck) about his research on students’ mixed reactions to learning analytics, and how we can ensure more equitable and reflective use of student data.  Recommended reading >>>  Hautz, H. & Lipp, S. (2026). Algorithmic governmentality and student subject...

Schools now make extensive use of social media for communication and self-promotion.    We talk to Tiffani Apps (University of Wollongong) about the data justice implications of school social media feeds, and how rights-based approaches can help schools engage with platforms in less harmful ways.   Recommended reading >>> Apps, T., Beckman, K., Pawlicka, N. & Kidson, P. (2025). The na...

GenAI is changing the way that schools and universities think about student assessment.  We talk to Thomas Corbin (Deakin University) about the future of the written essay in the era of AI, and how we need to rediscover the original spirit of essays as exploratory engagements with thinking.  Recommended reading >>> Corbin, T., Walton, J., Bannister, P. & Deranty, J. (2026). On the ess...

How can students and teachers be supported to get the most out of living with digital tech?  Prof. Louise Mifsud (Oslo Met) is leading a new project supporting students’ critical digital literacy.  We talk about the need to foster students’ ‘digital empowerment’, and the challenge of carrying out digital literacy projects in school systems facing growing calls to get screens out of classrooms.  Ac...

The environmental harms associated with our tech use are becoming increasingly apparent ... so how should the ed-tech community be responding?  Colm O’Neill (South East Technological University) talks about the need to rethink ed-tech in light of its environmental costs, and introduces the intriguing alternative of ‘perma-computing’.  Accompanying reference >>> O’Neill, C. (2026).  EdTech...

Education and technology in the US is currently mired in the volatile politics of the second Trump administration.  Dr. Morgan Anderson (University of Northern Iowa) reflects on the state of EdTech in the US in 2026, and highlights emerging issues that need our urgent attention.  Accompanying reference >>> Anderson, M. (2022). Public education in the digital age: neoliberalism, EdTech, an...

The COVID-19 pandemic was a significant turning-point in the history of ed-tech.  Mark West (UNESCO) argues that we should look back on COVID remote schooling as an ‘Ed-Tech tragedy’, and use our pandemic experiences to develop radically different visions of digital education.  Accompanying reference >>> West, M. (2025). An Ed-Tech tragedy? Educational technologies and school closures in...

There is growing talk about ‘AI ethics’ in education.  We talk to Michał Wieczorek (University College Dublin) about how to think about tech ethics in a philosophically-grounded manner, and how much of the current push for AI in education is ethically questionable.  Accompanying reference >>> Wieczorek, M., Hosseini, M., & Gordijn, B. (2025). Unpacking the ethics of using AI in primar...

Carlo Perrotta (University of Oxford) was researching GenAI in education long before it hit the headlines.  We talk about the latest hype around ‘Agentic AI’ and whether this is genuinely a game-changer or simply a desperate attempt to sustain the GenAI hype bubble.  Accompanying reference >>>  Perrotta, C.  (2024). Plug-and-play education: Knowledge and learning in the age of platforms a...

Efforts are growing in many countries to get devices out of classrooms and push for a general ‘de-digitisation’ of education.   Ingrid Forsler (Södertörn University) talks about recent developments in Sweden and how we can make sense of this growing turn against digital education.   Accompanying reference >>>  Forlser, I. et al.   (2025).  Hijacking the digital backlash in education .  Po...

We talk with legal expert Liane Colonna (Stockholm University) about the EU ‘AI Act’ and what it means for the use of AI in education.  To what extent can we rely on regulation to enforce safer and more beneficial forms of AI use in education?   Accompanying reference >>>  Colonna, L. (2025). Artificial Intelligence in Education (AIED): Towards More Effective Regulation . European Journal...

Professor Arathi Sriprakash (University of Oxford) wants us to reimagine edtech along radically different lines.    What might digital education look like if it was based around principles of reparation, sovereignty, care and democratisation?  Accompanying reference >>>  Sriprakash, A., Williamson, B., Facer, K., Pykett, J. & Valladares Celis, C. (2025) Sociodigital futures of educati...

Philosopher Gene Flenady (Monash University) has strong reservations about the current push for GenAI into university teaching and learning.  If we accept that ChatGPT is an ‘irresponsible bullshitter’ then why is it being welcomed into universities … and what can we do about it?  Accompanying reference >>>  Flenady, G. & Sparrow, R. (2025). Cut the bullshit: why GenAI systems are nei...

Niels Kerssens (Utrecht University) joins us to talk about the concept of 'platformisation' that came out of Utecht led by Jose Van Dijck in the 2010s and how this is now coming to bear on the classrooms and schools of 2025.  We also talk about Niels’ new concept of ‘digital autonomy innovators’ and the growing demand for more collaborative and non-corporate forms of ed-tech. Accompanyin...

AI tools are now being sold with the promise of doing all sorts of routine tasks for teachers. We talk to Brad Robinson (Texas State University) about one such tool – MagicSchool AI – and the growing temptation for teachers to let GenAI do their work for them. Accompanying reference >>>   Robinson, B. & Leander, K. (2025). ‘I hope this email finds you well’: how synthetic affect circu...

Why does education keep falling for techno-solutionism, despite the fact that technology does not seem to drastically improve education?  Ezechiel Thibaud (The Education University of Hong Kong) guides us through the underpinning causes of techno-solutionism in education and stresses the need to better acknowledge the disappointments of digital education.  Accompanying reference >>>   Thi...

Schools are increasingly reliant on data infrastructures and platforms – leading to the growing significance of various ‘intermediary actors’ now playing key roles in the governance of digital education. Sigrid Hartong (Helmut-Schmidt-University Hamburg) joins us to talk about this fast changing aspect of ed-tech.  Accompanying reference >>>   Hartong, S., Geiss, M. &  Röhl, T. (2024)...

The growth of deliberately misleading and false information is one of the big concerns of the 2020s. Professor Olof Sundin (Lund University) has been researching students’ (dis)information literacy since the early 2000s. He joins us to talk about the latest developments in this area – particularly the trend of now using AI to both produce *and* retrieve information.  Accompanying reference >&gt...

Where are universities going with digitisation and AI, and how does this fit with the views of staff and students?  Dr. Magda Pischetola  (University of Copenhagen) talks about her recent research into university policymaking around GenAI, and a survey of university teachers’ desired digital futures.  Accompanying reference >>>   Driessens, O. & Pischetola, M. (2024). Danish universit...

Last year the Korean government announced its substantial commitment to AI and schools, launching an ‘AI Digital Textbook’ policy that promises to establish AI-driven customised learning across the education system.  We are joined by Dr. Jina Ro (Sungkyunkwan University) to make sense of Korea’s recent ed-tech turn, and the wider motivations for investing so heavily in the promise of AI transformi...

2022 saw a flurry of reports that the Danish Data Protection Agency was ordering schools to stop using Google products over the tech firm’s misuse of students’ personal data.  We talk to Emilie Mørch Groth (Aarhus University) to see what has happened since, what this controversy tells us about the digital dependency of the modern welfare state, and the complexities of pushing back against Big Tech...

On the face of it, digital technologies are now integral to university teaching and learning. But to what extent have things actually changed … and are these changes  wholly positive?  Cathrine Tømte (University of Agder) talks about the impacts of digitisation on Norwegian universities, and why teachers and students should perhaps be joining forces to push for radically different technologies.  A...

Platforms are now an almost ubiquitous feature of schools. We talk with Lucas Cone (University of Copenhagen) about his work around teachers’ everyday engagements with platforms – in particular the benefits of using affect theory to make sense of teachers’ affiliations and relationships with these clearly problematic technologies.    Accompanying reference >>>   Lucas Cone (2024) Subscrib...

There is growing interest in critical studies of education and technology. But what does it mean to be ‘critical’ of edtech, and how can this work genuinely make a difference in the world?  Felicitas Macgilchrist (Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg) talks about the need to look beyond claims of transformation and novelty, drawing attention to marginalised forms of edtech, and the power of ra...

Academics are increasingly looking to make an impact on policymakers, but critical ed-tech research often seems to fall on deaf ears.  In this episode Dr. Cristóbal Cobo – currently a senior ed-tech specialist at a major international organization – talks about the types of evidence that get most attention in policy circles, and some approaches that might help critical researchers get their messag...