I don’t know what Ed tech is specifically, but everything I’ve learnt over the last 15 years has been on YouTube and the internet in general. Guitar, programming, 3D modeling, welding, woodworking, CNC, paving, animal husbandry, koi breeding, gardening, fencing, botany, beekeeping and the list goes on and on.

I worked in ed tech.

It's easy to tout big learning gains when you have to build a tool that administrators will buy (substitute the non-educator buyer persona for your school/board/system here.) And for administrators to pay for something, you must design a tool with, you guessed it, numbers that go up.

Learning often doesn't work like that when what you want to teach, ultimately, is how to learn (assessment for learning / developing cross-curricular competencies / visible learning etc. etc.)

I left the industry, disenchanted—no, despondent. No one really cared about providing educators a great tools and great content designed around them and their learners.

Hey, you know what, instead of providing the best learning experiences possible, let's just teach our students how to use Google or Microsoft's Office Suite so little Jenny can get a head start on those TPS reports.

Yeah, I'm salty. AMA.