Perhaps no other journalist is closer to the center of the current reckoning over education technology than the New York Times’ Natasha Singer, the technology reporter who’s been covering edtech for years now and has a new book coming out next month on the topic.
You may recall some of her recent work on schools that have put Chromebooks back in carts and parents’ successful efforts to rein in edtech, as well as her recent appearance on The Daily podcast to talk about the perils and promise of AI in schools.
In this new interview, Singer — who officially writes for the business section of the Times — describes how technology companies make schools feel like their kids are going to be left behind if they don’t have the latest gadget or app — often without much hard evidence of effectiveness.
“It feels like collective amnesia to me that each time there’s a new big tech hype cycle in school, we have to get the latest tool into the classroom,” says Singer.
“I think journalists also have collective amnesia sometimes.”
Watch the interview or read the transcript above (or on YouTube).
Listen to the conversation on Spotify or Apple.
As you’ll see, Singer compares covering edtech to covering medical device companies selling products to doctors and hospitals.
And she urges everyone to think carefully about the language and the messages that the tech companies are using — which is often full of presumptions and speculation.
It’s clear to Singer that many parents have become extremely concerned about the manner and extent of edtech adoption.
“The scale at which parents are now voicing their concerns and reaching out to their school boards and their principals and their legislators and to journalists like me and many others, I’ve never seen this response on this kind of scale before.”
But at the same time, Singer calls on skeptical parents and others to focus on benefits to kids, not simplistic metrics like screentime. She reminds us that districts and school vary enormously in how much tech kids are getting. And she thinks that some edtech is promising.
You can follow Singer on Twitter/X @natashanyt. Her new book “CODING KIDS: Big Tech’s Battle to Remake Public Schools” is coming out in September. Her NYT stories appear here.
Previously from The Grade
How edtech lost its inevitability
Education reporting in the age of AI (with Omidyar Fellow Lee Gaines)
We’ve ‘lost the plot’ on edtech (with tech reporter Taylor Lorenz)
The case for i-Ready (with Ty Holmes)
Why so many parents hate AI right now (with NYT opinion writer Jessica Grose)
How one reporter latched onto the edtech backlash (with NBC’s Tyler Kingkade)
In defense of education technology (with former EdSurge editor Tony Wan)
Why are schools awash in YouTube? (with the WSJ’s Shalini Ramachandran)
Education, technology, & the media (roundup of previous coverage)
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