Edtech Cynicism

1. Lots of people will do small-scale innovative projects with no funding or resources, because they love trying new things and doing awesome stuff.
2. Some companies or institutions will “invent” or “discover” something that one or more of these people have been doing, and it will be branded as their own.
3. This branded “innovation” will become co-opted and corrupted, so that it doesn’t really do anything innovative, or anything other than building the reputation of the “innovators”.
4. People will hype the crap out of the “innovation” as The Future of Education, and The Saviour (or Disruption) of Universities, and present it at conferences and write papers and travel the presentation circuit explaining it to the masses.
5. The people from 1. will largely ignore the hype, shrug their shoulders, and continue doing awesome stuff because they enjoy doing awesome stuff.

Don’t like to repost practically a whole blog post, but Darcy Norman’s EdTech predictions for 2013 hit a chord!

Would add in the middle:

3b) People fail to realise why this innovation worked so well in the specific learning environment it was originally designed for in 1. and claim it works brilliantly for them when in reality it probably doesn’t.