Welcome back to Inside Your Ed - I hope you all had a good summer.

Just as the summer break was getting underway in late July, you may have missed a new report published by UNESCO, an agency of the United Nations, which investigated the use of education technology, or ed tech, around the world. 

The report’s findings were quite startling, as they discovered that “there is little robust evidence on digital technology’s added value in education [and] a lot of the evidence comes from those trying to sell it.” 

When budgets are so tight across the education system in England, schools, colleges and universities will be keen to ensure that any investments in ed tech are well spent, but UNESCO’s report suggests that this may be easier said than done. 

So why is there so little evidence on the impact of ed tech? Who should decide which ed tech products will have the greatest impact on learning – frontline educators, senior leaders, government ministers or the ed tech companies themselves? And does the hype around new innovations such as ChatGPT make it easier or harder to spot when something truly valuable does come along?  

Our guests today are Jodie Lopez, an ed tech consultant and former primary school teacher, and Tony Parkin, a freelance speaker, lecturer and writer on all things ed tech.

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