Category Archives: Uncategorized
Enclouding education
Cloud computing underpins the contemporary digital landscape of online services and platforms. In education, cloud systems make it possible for many educational technologies to function and scale, and are increasingly present in institutions as back-end infrastructure for running digital services … Continue reading
How Amazon operates in education
Ben Williamson, Kalervo N. Gulson, Carlo Perrotta and Kevin Witzenberger The global ‘big tech’ company Amazon is increasing its reach and power across a range of industries and sectors, including education. In a new paper for the special symposium ‘Platform … Continue reading
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Tagged amazon, amazon web services, API, education technology, governance, infrastructures, platforms
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New biological realities in the genetics of education
The recent publication of a study of the genetics of educational attainment is once again raising questions and controversies about the potential use of biological information to inform education policy and practice. In the BioEduDataSci project, funded by the Leverhulme … Continue reading
Google magic
Google has announced the latest in a sequence of upgrades to its popular online learning platform Google Classroom, and it’s all about injecting more artificial intelligence into schools. Classroom was popular with teachers all around the world before Covid-19, but … Continue reading
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Tagged artificial intelligence, automation, education, google
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PISA for machine learners
The common narrative of the future of education is that artificial intelligence and robotization will transform how people work, with changing labour markets requiring schools to focus on developing new skills. This version of the future is reflected in influential … Continue reading
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Tagged AIed, artificial intelligence, education policy, OECD
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Counting learning losses
The idea that young people have ‘lost learning’ as a result of disruptions to their education during the Covid-19 pandemic has become accepted as common knowledge. ‘Learning loss’ is the subject of numerous large-scale studies, features prominently in the media, … Continue reading
Nudging assets
The acquisition of the global education platform Blackboard by Anthology has brought the mundane Learning Management System back to attention. While full details of the deal remain to be seen, and it won’t be closed until the end of the … Continue reading
New biological data and knowledge in education
Novel sources of data about the biological processes involved in learning are beginning to surface in research on education. As the sciences of the human body have been transformed by advances in computing power and data analysis, researchers have begun … Continue reading
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Tagged behaviour genetics, big data, data, data analytics, emotion AI, sociogenomics
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Breaking open the black box of edtech brokers
Mathias Decuypere and Ben Williamson A new kind of organization has appeared on the education technology landscape. Education technology ‘brokers’ are organizations that operate between the commercial edtech industry and state schools, providing guidance and evidence on edtech procurement and … Continue reading
Valuing futures
Ben Williamson The future of education in universities is currently being reimagined by a range of organizations including businesses, technology startups, sector agencies, and financial firms. In particular, new ways of imagining the future of education are now tangled up … Continue reading
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Tagged edtech, index investing, investment, sociotechnical imaginaries, venture capital
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code acts in education 