David Longman
January 2020
“The future is already here — it’s just not very evenly distributed.” (Attributed to William Gibson)
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?
Three recent and interesting papers about possible futures of edtech are listed below illustrating three different futures – each is possible, some are already emerging. (These articles are what Neil Selwyn and his colleagues describe as “social science fiction“.)
Two of the three articles (1 & 3) are open access and article 2 has been contributed by the authors.
To lighten the reading load a bit synopses of the articles have been provided. These are are reasonably accurate summaries of the main content while offering a lighter/quicker read (feedback welcome). Links to the origina papers are given and each paper is Open Access.
[Note added February 2025: The synopses for these papers were created without the use of an AI tool! }
- Paper: What’s next for Ed-Tech? Critical hopes and concerns for the 2020s.(Nov 2019a). Neil Selwyn et al (OA – click the PDF/EPub button for file)
- Paper: What might the school of 2030 be like? An exercise in social science fiction. (Nov 2019b) Neil Selwyn et al (OA – author copy)
- Paper: Students and society in the 2020s. Three future ‘histories’ of education and technology (July 2019) MacGilcrhist et al (OA – click button for file)