The classrooms going digital: edtech that actually sticks

Donated tablets and smartboards have a way of ending up locked in the bursar’s store. The schools getting real value from technology started somewhere less photogenic: a single subject, a teacher who wanted it, and a plan for what to do when the power or the network failed.

We looked at digital projects that survived past their launch term. The ones that stuck were modest and owned by teachers rather than vendors, a maths department using adaptive practice, a science block running simulations a rural lab could never stage, a results dashboard that let a head spot a sliding class in week three. The lesson is that edtech is a teaching decision, not a procurement one.