Focus Areas
EdTech
EdTech refers to the use of digital tools, platforms, and systems to enhance teaching, learning, and educational administration.
How can EdTech be an issue?
EdTech’s integration into education systems risks exacerbating inequalities and undermining public education as a human right.
Key challenges include:
Commercialisation: Private EdTech companies increasingly shape education priorities, prioritising profit and other private interests over public good and deepening market-driven inequities. It often fosters dependence on a few corporate technologies in public education systems and tends to homogenise educational processes, when learning should be relevant and adapted to the context of learners and their communities.
Teachers’ autonomy: Technologies may displace teacher-led instruction, reducing educators’ agency and marginalising their expertise.
Digital divide: Unequal access to devices, internet, and digital literacy entrenches disparities, excluding rural, low-income, and marginalized learners. It also reinforces social norms and stereotypes, usually reproducing gender discrimination and racism.
Data privacy: Platforms collect sensitive student data, exposing learners to corporate surveillance and misuse.
Digital Technologies in Education: Reflections from Latin America and the Caribbean
The Latin American Campaign for the Right to Education (CLADE) highlights successful initiatives where public schools in Brazil, Mexico, Spain and the United States of America integrated free, open-source digital tools (e.g., Linux-based platforms, community-developed apps) into pedagogy. These projects:
Reduced dependency on corporate EdTech products, safeguarding public control over education.
Empowered teachers to adapt technologies to local contexts, fostering critical thinking and collaborative learning.
Key Resources on EdTech
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GCE's Key Priorities on Digital Learning Informed by Strategic Plan 2023-2027
Author(s): Global Campaign for Education (GCE)
Language(s): English
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From the Margins to the Center: Youth Informing the FUTURES OF EDUCATION
Author(s): ASPBAE
Language(s): English
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"On Edtech, the public good, and democracy"
Author(s): David Edwards
Language(s): English
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Commercialisation and privatisation in/of education in the context of Covid-19
Author(s): Ben Williamson & Anna Hogan
Language(s): English
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Teaching with Tech: The Role of Education Unions in Shaping the Future
Author(s): Education International (EI)
Language(s): English
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Governance of digitalization of education: reflections from Latin America and the Caribbean. Executive Summary
Author(s): CLADE
Language(s): Spanish
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Governance of the digitalization of education: reflections from Latin America and the Caribbean
Author(s): CLADE
Language(s): Spanish
