Ed-tech is arriving ready or not.

Neil Selwyn (Monash U) and colleagues set out six challenges for schools in the 2020s.

* “new forms of digital in/exclusion”: “Those individuals who are well-resourced and have strong educational backgrounds are likely to benefit the most from digital education.”

* AI using platform economics: “artificial intelligence will increasingly become the engine of education, and student data the fuel”

* “divisions of learning across humans and machines”: “re-establish the value of formal education in an era of ubiquitous learning (by machines, from ‘our’ data)”

* IT corporates in education: “school systems will continue to be subject to major pushes for privatisation of the digital infrastructures”

* edtech in age of climate change: “planning future education technology use with a primary aim of ‘coping with finiteness’ ”

* finding alternatives: “educational technology designers taking time to think about who they are designing for, who their most vulnerable users are, and who their designs might harm as well as benefit.”

Neil Selwyn and ors, “What’s next for ed tech: critical hopes and concerns for the 2020s,” Learning, media and technology