Cross-posted to Hack Education

I wouldn’t say these are all the stories about education technology we were told this year. But these are the ones I decided to analyze:

• Education Technology and Fake News
• Education Technology, Betsy DeVos, and the Innovation Gospel
• Education Technology and the Business of Student Debt
• Education Technology and the Power of Platforms
• The Weaponization of Education Data
• Education’s Online Futures
• Education Technology and the Future of Academic Freedom
• “Robots Are Coming For Your Jobs”
• “Robots Are Coming For Your Children”
• Education Technology and the New Behaviorism
• The Business of “Ed-Tech Trends”

In addition to these eleven articles, I wrote a bunch of supplemental pieces, mostly trying to fill in some of the gaps in the storytelling:

• The Other Stories We Were Told (in 2017) about Education Technology and “Fake News”
• The Other Stories We Were Told (in 2017) about Betsy DeVos and the Innovation Gospel
• The Other Stories We Were Told (in 2017) about Paying for College
• The Other Stories We Were Told (in 2017) about Platforms
• The Other Stories We Were Told (in 2017) about Personalization
• The Other Stories We Were Told (in 2017) about Education, Technology, and Immigration
• The Other Stories We Were Told (in 2017) about Education, Algorithms, and Data
• The Other Stories We Were Told (in 2017) about Online Education
• The Other Stories We Were Told (in 2017) about “Free Speech” and Education Technology
• The Other Stories We Were Told (in 2017) about For-Profit Higher Ed
• The Other Stories We Were Told (in 2017) about the Future of “Skills Training” and the Future of Work
• The Other Stories We Were Told (in 2017) about Robots
• The Other Stories We Were Told (in 2017) about Brains, Behaviorism, and Social-Emotional Learning
• The Other Stories We Were Told (in 2017) about Ed-Tech Globally
• The Other Stories We Were Told (in 2017) about the Business of Ed-Tech

I also wrote about the investors and corporations funding each of these powerful storylines (or at least, funding the new ed-tech companies associated with them):

• Who’s Funding (Information) Literacy Startups (in 2017)?
• Who’s Funding Student Loan and Financial Aid Startups (in 2017)?
• How the Technology Giants Are Funding Education (in 2017)
• Who’s Funding Learning Management Systems (in 2017)?
• Who’s Funding Education Analytics (in 2017)?
• Who’s Funding Online Education (in 2017)?
• Who’s Funding Learn-to-Code Companies (in 2017)?
• Who’s Funding “Skills Training” Companies (in 2017)?
• Who’s Funding Job Recruitment and Job Placement Companies (in 2017)?
• Who’s Funding Tutoring Companies (in 2017)?
• Who’s Funding “Social and Emotional Learning” Companies (in 2017)?
• Who Did the Gates Foundation Fund in 2017?

This was the eighth time undertaking this year-end project, and it was, by far, the most difficult one yet. In part, 2017 was just a very bad year. A bad year for the politics of education. A bad year for the politics of technology. A busy year, full of bad education technology. There were many ed-tech storylines to follow, almost all of them dystopian. In part too, this project is just a lot of work, as there’s a ton of writing and as (I hope) there’s some big thinking as well.

This undertaking would not be possible without the scholarship of many other writers and thinkers. (So credit where credit is due.) And it certainly would not be possible without the financial and moral support of readers. Thank you everyone who read and shared my work this year.

Except for the haters. Don’t @ me.