Although publication of my “Top Ed-Tech Trends” series happens in December, it’s truly a year-round project. As we're about halfway through 2017, I'm already starting to think about what I'm going to write about in those articles.

I’ve penned a couple of stories so far on “trends to watch” – or rather, short research notes that might help me down the road when I write my year-end analysis:

• Trend to Watch: Automated Parenting
• Trend to Watch: Job Placement
• Trend to Watch: Fidget Spinners
• Trend to Watch: Social-Emotional Learning (Algorithms)
• Trend to Watch: Ed-Tech Procurement-as-a-Service

Not all of these (and perhaps none of these) will make it into my “top ten.”. Indeed these "trends to watch" are in addition to topics I’ve covered in previous years that continue to be relevant:

• The Business of Student Loans
• Privacy and Information Security
• For-Profit Higher Education
• Personalization
• Social Media and Campus Free Speech

But so far this year, the overarching trend I’m seeing in ed-tech is “fake news” – that is, calls for better “digital literacy,” calls to rethink “digital literacy,” and then the completely made-up bullshit appearing regularly in ed-tech companies’ press releases and ed-tech publications’ churnalism.