Education Technology Society

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 the time of COVID-19. Routledge

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 primary and secondary education: a systematic literature review. AI and Ethics, 1-19.

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 and artificial intelligence. Routledge.

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.  Postdigital Science & Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/s42438-025-00601-9

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 of Risk Regulation, doi:10.1017/err.2025.10039