Professor Arathi Sriprakash (University of Oxford) wants us to reimagine edtech along radically different lines.   

What might digital education look like if it was based around principles of reparation, sovereignty, care and democratisation? 

Accompanying reference >>>  Sriprakash, A., Williamson, B., Facer, K., Pykett, J. & Valladares Celis, C. (2025) Sociodigital futures of education: reparations, sovereignty, care, and democratisation, Oxford Review of Education, 51:4, 561-578 

Philosopher Gene Flenady (Monash University) has strong reservations about the current push for GenAI into university teaching and learning. 

If we accept that ChatGPT is an ‘irresponsible bullshitter’ then why is it being welcomed into universities … and what can we do about it? 

Accompanying reference >>>  Flenady, G. & Sparrow, R. (2025). Cut the bullshit: why GenAI systems are neither collaborators nor tutors. Teaching in Higher Education, 1-10.

Niels Kerssens (Utrecht University) joins us to talk about the concept of 'platformisation' that came out of Utecht led by Jose Van Dijck in the 2010s and how this is now coming to bear on the classrooms and schools of 2025. 

We also talk about Niels’ new concept of ‘digital autonomy innovators’ and the growing demand for more collaborative and non-corporate forms of ed-tech.

Accompanying reference >>>  Kerssens, N. & van Es, K. (2025). Fostering autonomy in the digital classroom. in Governing the digital society. (pp. 227-244). Amsterdam University Press.

AI tools are now being sold with the promise of doing all sorts of routine tasks for teachers.

We talk to Brad Robinson (Texas State University) about one such tool – MagicSchool AI – and the growing temptation for teachers to let GenAI do their work for them.

Accompanying reference >>>  Robinson, B. & Leander, K. (2025). ‘I hope this email finds you well’: how synthetic affect circulates through MagicSchool AI. Learning, Media and Technology, 1-13

Why does education keep falling for techno-solutionism, despite the fact that technology does not seem to drastically improve education? 

Ezechiel Thibaud (The Education University of Hong Kong) guides us through the underpinning causes of techno-solutionism in education and stresses the need to better acknowledge the disappointments of digital education. 

Accompanying reference >>>  Thibaud, E. (2025). Reflections on techno-solutionism in education: Manifestations and causes. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 1-12.

Schools are increasingly reliant on data infrastructures and platforms – leading to the growing significance of various ‘intermediary actors’ now playing key roles in the governance of digital education. Sigrid Hartong (Helmut-Schmidt-University Hamburg) joins us to talk about this fast changing aspect of ed-tech. 

Accompanying reference >>>  Hartong, S., Geiss, M. &  Röhl, T. (2024).  Intermediaries and the digital transformation of schooling: an introduction.  Research in Education  120(1):3-13

The growth of deliberately misleading and false information is one of the big concerns of the 2020s. Professor Olof Sundin (Lund University) has been researching students’ (dis)information literacy since the early 2000s. He joins us to talk about the latest developments in this area – particularly the trend of now using AI to both produce *and* retrieve information. 

Accompanying reference >>> Haider, J. & Sundin, O. (2022). Paradoxes of media and information literacy: The crisis of information. Routledge

Where are universities going with digitisation and AI, and how does this fit with the views of staff and students? 

Dr. Magda Pischetola  (University of Copenhagen) talks about her recent research into university policymaking around GenAI, and a survey of university teachers’ desired digital futures. 

Accompanying reference >>>  Driessens, O. & Pischetola, M. (2024). Danish university policies on generative AI: Problems, assumptions and sustainability blind spots. MedieKultur: 40(76):31-52. 

Last year the Korean government announced its substantial commitment to AI and schools, launching an ‘AI Digital Textbook’ policy that promises to establish AI-driven customised learning across the education system. 

We are joined by Dr. Jina Ro (Sungkyunkwan University) to make sense of Korea’s recent ed-tech turn, and the wider motivations for investing so heavily in the promise of AI transforming traditional schooling. 

Accompanying reference >>>  Jina Ro (2025): Enforcing unwarranted optimism: critical frame analysis on educational digitalisation policies in South Korea, Learning, Media and Technology,doi.org/10.1080/17439884.2025.2462940

2022 saw a flurry of reports that the Danish Data Protection Agency was ordering schools to stop using Google products over the tech firm’s misuse of students’ personal data. 

We talk to Emilie Mørch Groth (Aarhus University) to see what has happened since, what this controversy tells us about the digital dependency of the modern welfare state, and the complexities of pushing back against Big Tech corporations. 

Accompanying reference >>>  Morgan Meaker (2022). A Danish city built Google into its schools—then banned it. Wired, 23rd September,  https://www.wired.com/story/denmark-google-schools-data/