A great deal of energy and attention has been focused on using technology to automatically grade quizzes, to “capture” lectures, to make the most massive MOOC . . . to McDonaldize education. There is another path. Technology can humanize. It can augment, extend, and empower. There is real transformative power for students and instructors when they interact and build with these tools. The ability to make useful products, to unite the abstract and concrete, to compress action/feedback cycles, to allow for fluid and interactive presentation of data towards new and deeper understandings – this is where technology starts to matter.
— Tom Woodward, Aspirational vs Operational EdTech
A beautifully composed statement! This is what drives many in EdTech not to give up or surrender to corporate colonisation of the space. It’s the belief that people are what really matters.
Heart | Soul | Machine 
One reply on “Technology can humanize”
[…] We should want Educational Technology that addresses real problems, not manufacture new ones or answer a need we never, ever had. We should want EdTech that’s more authentic, more caring, more open and more free. Technology that humanises. […]