An Ed-Tech Tragedy?

A new book about experiences with educational technologies during the COVID-19 pandemic and the implications for the future of learning

An Ed-Tech Tragedy?

The COVID-19 pandemic pushed education from schools to educational technologies at a pace and scale with no historical precedent. For hundreds of millions of students formal learning became fully dependent on technology – whether internet-connected digital devices, televisions or radios.

An Ed-Tech Tragedy? examines the numerous adverse and unintended consequences of the shift to ed-tech. It documents how technology-first solutions left a global majority of learners behind and details the many ways education was diminished even when technology was available and worked as intended.

In unpacking what went wrong, the book extracts lessons and recommendations to ensure that technology facilitates, rather than subverts, efforts to ensure the universal provision of inclusive, equitable and human-centred public education.

An Ed-Tech Tragedy? tells the story of how thousands of schools, pupils, teachers and parents worldwide were suddenly thrust into predominantly technology-based education due as a consequence of the COVID-19 virus that was sweeping the globe.

UNESCO

Critical acclaim

The New York Times

Challenges views that digital technologies are synonymous with educational equality and progress.

The Financial Times

The most extensive examination of the global lockdown experience in education.

Evgeny Morozov, author

To date, the book represents the most detailed analysis of how the rhetoric of technological solutionism comes to shape both policy debates and specific action on the ground.

Farida Shaheed, UN Special Rapporteur on the right to education

Brings strong evidence of the detrimental impact of the digitalization of education on the right to education. Its forceful voice amplifies the chorus of voices opposing the digitalization of education as a replacement to on-site schooling with teachers.

Payal Arora, digital anthropologist and author

Groundbreaking and timely. Provides a crucial moral and intellectual compass to direct us away from the ed-tech solutionism that is causing unparalleled exclusion and is in process of untethering the right to education from that of schooling.

Arjun Appadurai, anthropologist and author

Boldly resisting the temptation to forget the lessons of the COVID years, this landmark work gives us a sober guide to where the new educational technologies can help us, and how they could lead us significantly astray.

Adam Alter, professor and author

Thorough, methodical and well-researched. The result is a nuanced assessment of the promises of ed-tech and where those promises fall short.

Diane Ravitch, historian and author

Wonderful and important. A warning that we ignore at our peril.

Justin Reich, professor and author

This book offers an important argument that educational technology was a force multiplier for inequality during the pandemic. … It will take many years to reckon with the consequences of the pandemic and this work will be essential in this endeavour.

Ben Williamson, professor and author

An immense achievement, and a hugely important critical intervention into debates about the future role of digital technologies in education.

Bede Sheppard, deputy director of children’s rights at Human Rights Watch

The analysis and recommendations detailed in 'An Ed-Tech Tragedy?' provide policymakers an opportunity to consider how to use technology within education to strengthen and enable – rather than endanger – the wide spectrum of children’s rights.

Beeban Kidron, member of the House of Lords and chair of 5Rights Foundation

Thoughtful, fair and frightening, this is a book that exposes the folly of outsourcing education provision on the shiny – and unsupported – promises of new technology rather than investing in the long-term health of buildings, teachers and families.

Dan Wagner, professor and author

Like the best histories, 'An Ed-Tech Tragedy?' shows us how we have arrived at our present moment, and how we can learn lessons from our past to achieve more equitable and inclusive futures.

Shafika Isaacs, founder and executive director of SchoolNet Africa

'An Ed-Tech Tragedy?' offers a sobering, incisive critical analysis of the global remote and digital learning response to the COVID-19 historical moment. It is courageous in its challenge of dominant commercialised ed-tech saviour narratives.

Sonia Livingstone, professor and leader of the UK Digital Futures Commission

It is indeed a tragedy that during a global emergency, big tech chose profit over children’s best interests and that governments failed in their commitment to human rights. This timely book sets out a clear path to avoid such problems in the future.

Audrey Watters, author and creator of Hack Education

What we see in these pages are the ways in which the pandemic and the embrace of digital education exacerbated many of the problems and inequalities that schools were already suffering from — historical problems and historical inequalities.

Neil Selwyn, professor and author

This unflinching analysis should be read by policymakers, IT executives and developers, school leaders, teachers, parents and anyone else in a position to ensure that we do not find ourselves enduring the same mistakes again.

Kishore Singh, former UN Special Rapporteur on the right to education

With refreshing exactness, 'An Ed-Tech Tragedy?' shows us how to chart a new course for education in digital age, safeguarding it as a human right and public good.

Michael Trucano, Global lead for innovation in education at the World Bank

While technologies new and old certainly have important roles to play in supporting teaching and learning, 'An Ed-Tech Tragedy?' reminds us that education remains a fundamentally human endeavour.

Rebecca Stromeyer, founder and CEO of eLearning Africa

In 'An Ed-Tech Tragedy?' UNESCO crafts a poignant narrative, unravelling the complexities of ed-tech’s seemingly promising allure during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Setting the scene

Organization

An Ed-Tech Tragedy? borrows the structure of a theatrical play to document and analyse the impacts and repercussions of the pivot from school-based education to remote distance learning with technology.

Act 1 details the ambition that often marked the initial transition from schools to ed-tech as the pandemic took hold.
Act 2 explains the many ways the promises of ed-tech were challenged when technology was deployed globally as a primary solution to maintain education during widespread and prolonged school closures. It reveals the harm and unintended consequences that resulted from endeavours to transition from in-person and school-based education to technology-reliant distance learning.
The Inter-Act questions dominant narratives emerging from the technology-centric experiences of the pandemic period.
Act 3 puts forward principles and recommendations to guide future efforts to leverage technology for education, while keeping schools and humans at the centre of teaching and learning.