The spotlight was bright on education technology during the early days of the pandemic in 2020, but the technology’s value didn’t come into focus for every teacher, experts say. Now, with that perspective, school districts and teachers are taking a new look at ed tech, opening a new future for tech in classrooms.

“People seem to be waking up to the reality that ed tech is no longer a separate category and that nearly everything students do has a technology component,” says Bart Epstein, CEO of the EdTech Evidence Exchange. “Accordingly, educators are demanding more information about which students are engaging with various tools — how frequently and successfully.”

Ryan Baker, a researcher at the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education, says that during the pandemic, school districts adopted pretty much anything they could. There were great platforms that contributed to a better learning experience for students while providing quality data for teachers, and poor platforms that Baker says were basically a waste of time, made for an unpleasant experience and provided no benefits for learning.

Because of this mass adoption, teachers had an opportunity to see a wealth of options and try some things they wouldn’t have before. And that means a big shift coming in 2022, as successful platforms will continue to see growth — even if not at the rate seen at the height of the pandemic  — while others will be cast aside. “A lot of the teachers who adopted something really quickly” during the pandemic “are de-adopting it really quickly,” Baker says. “The vendors who have high-quality offerings, their numbers aren’t dropping below where they were pre-pandemic.”

What does this mean for 2022?

Epstein says that while some districts are still spending stimulus money just to spend it instead of taking the time to research and evaluate their options, most have a better understanding of technology than they did before COVID-19 struck and are demanding information about the tools students use. Dan Carroll, former teacher and founder of Clever, a company that helps school districts integrate ed tech solutions, says that more than half the teachers he’s surveyed expect to continue using most of the new technology they’ve adopted. But the pandemic still left a giant learning loss hole across the country — and that’s where ed tech may focus.

Read the full article about education technology in 2022 by Tim Newcomb at The 74.