Week 3 – How bridge Academy and other actors such as NGO’s make Edtech market
Introduction
I see edtech as a tool in which the Bridge Academy and other actors such as NGO’s (example is jwl.org )is using to achieve their aim especially in the education sector,they rely so much on it for their existence and achieving their aims, no wonder they are totally out in making market for this edtech market, one may just wonder if this edtech they are making market for is solely what they need for there success
Making the edtech market – the Bridge Academy as a guide
The bridge academy and other actors such as NGO’S make Edtech market by claiming that Edtech is a solution provider, taking up the case of bridge academy which has a “mission of knowledge for all, and plan to educate 10,000,000 children across a dozen countries by 2025”.( BIA 2016), their main objective is to reach a larger number of people, giving them quality education
To me they have two major objectives behind their actions, the first is to help the less privileged people in the part of the world that has a high poverty level such as Africa and Asia, to have access to quality education, this is very good , it is creating support for the world, while their second reason just like any other business man or woman is to make profit, it is in this bid to make profit that they are cutting down the cost of running a school, and that is where Edtech comes into play.
I have the opportunity to interview a parent whose two boys attend the bridge academy at iyana ipaja , Lagos State, Nigeria, it’s a populated area and many of the people around there are low income to average income earners, the bridge school in the environment is a welcome idea, it’s like a breath of fresh air, the major staff in the school are the manager and the teacher ( they do not have headteacher, assistant headteacher, head of department and so on), she told me they pay into an account that is generated for the child alone, they pay a fee of twenty six thousand naira ,(Nigeria currency) and the fee include some books which will be given to the children, (this is very cheap compared to other schools in the area) all their activities are computerized , the teacher only needs to carry it out, this forms exactly how Bridge Academy make market for Edtech,in Curtis B.Riep article on making market for low cost schooling, he highlited two main points which is the devices and the investment, the devices is the one that solely rest on Edtech, it is “representing the systematic arrangement of various objects,tools and technologies” (Reip, 2017)
The device include smartphones, tablet e-readers, even GPS and pricing systems ,all these are used so effectively to deliver prepared lesson, organise assessment, billing even payment and with the enormous investment notable people such as Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg ,world Bank and others are making into the bridge Academy project it gives an enormous boost and market for edtech.
Edtech is so much embraced because it not only make the students global students that can compete with there mates all over the world ( because they use a unified system) they are also using it to reduce the cost of running the school, no wonder Curtis Reip in his article noted that professional teachers are not employed since there is a laid down plan to follow, it’s like whoever can operate the tab can as well be a teacher, but they forgot something that the children they are teaching are not robots, for goodness sake they are not programmed, the instructions can be programmed but those it is being delivered to are human beings, that reminds me of what one of the parents of bridge school that I interviewed told me, she said sometimes last year many parents withdrew their children because in her words ” the teachers are not good enough” and her basis of such assumption is that a child that is not doing well in bridge when taken to another school starts doing better, so the teachers are not doing well, although she noted that now things have changed because they now have new teachers and that brought my attention to the bridge’s techagogy – “a technology – directed form of pedagogy in which instruction is led by machines” (Riep 2017), if it is fantastically good enough on it’s own I don’t think any child should fail or be left behind, but in their calculations they’ve forgotten that fingers are not equal and children don’t learn at the same pace, in the bid to cut cost some vital things are removed too that can help children understand better.
I am of the opinion that Edtech should be used a long with professionals that can really deliver and help to achieve the required changes in the life of the children.
Conclusion
In Curtis Reips article he did not mention how bridge academy managed the peculiarity of each environment where the school is located when it comes to co-curricular activities with Edtech, except if they are only concerned with the students academics and it is not possible to make so much progress in this academics without other activities that is not academic in the school, especially at the nursery and primary level.
Perhaps all those other ones are left at the discretion of the manager, because the bridge parent told me that the school do organize activities like cultural day in which the students come to school wearing there traditional attires and also come with their local dishes to school, this is aim at letting the children know more about their roots, They also organize Christmas party and other things but she noted that they pay cash for these other things and not in the generated child’s account.
The bridge Academy and other actors make edtech market with the effective and efficient use of different types of technology devices,these makes the demand for edtech to increase, but all these actors should be more realistic when it comes to the use of edtech.
Reference list
Curtis B. Riep (2017) Making markets for low-cost schooling: the devices
and investments behind Bridge International Academies, Globalisation, Societies and
Education, 15:3, 352-366, DOI: 10.1080/14767724.2017.1330139
Bridge International Academies. 2016. “About.” Accessed 22 January 2016. http://www.bridgeinternationalacademies.
com/company/about/.
Good work Olubukola. I see improvement here on each of these first three posts. Well done.
Thesis statement: this is a strong thesis statement, but perhaps you could break it up a bit into separate, formatted sentences to make it all the more impactful.
‘ I see edtech as a tool in which the Bridge Academy and other actors such as NGO’s (example is jwl.org )is using to achieve their aim especially in the education sector,they rely so much on it for their existence and achieving their aims, no wonder they are totally out in making market for this edtech market, one may just wonder if this edtech they are making market for is solely what they need for there success’
I think the point you are arguing is that these organisations are organised around edtech, so they need markets to be viable in that organisation, but there is little proof that edtech is what is needed in these contexts. That is a good strong position to take so I encourage that kind of statement going forward for each of these posts.
In terms of discourse (or how these edtech companies present their organising logic, there is such a thing as discursive closure, which means that the discourses are arranged in such a way that a freedom to act independently is severely constrained. Alternative futures are closed down, which is particularly damaging for those contexts with specific needs (perhaps Nigeria?). I highly recommend this article if you can spare the time: Markham, A. (2021). The limits of the imaginary: Challenges to intervening in future speculations of memory, data, and algorithms. New media & society, 23(2), 382-405. Something to consider for future work on the programme. So edtech is necessary, it improves education, and anyone who doesn’t support that is discursively shut out of the discussion.
You make good points regarding the role of the teacher in Bridge International Academies (BIA) that I think the Biesta (2020) reading could help support. Despite the warm reception in the communities that you note, how does BIA account for socialisation or subjectification or even allowing the teacher the simplest of departures from the established programmed curriculum in answer to the most basic of statements from a student: “I don’t understand’. What freedom do these teachers have in response to that? None, in the sort of techagogy being proposed by BIA. So good discussion there and hopefully something to continue exploring: what is the role of the teacher in all these edtech imaginaries? An imaginary is the presentation of a particular reality or future (which may or may not be real). Edtech companies have theirs; formal educational systems have their own. That is why that discussion in Week 1 is so important: what is the purpose of education? Different actors have different responses to that.
See this article from two tutors on the programme that spells this out in a bit more detail:
Williamson, B., & Komljenovic, J. (2023). Investing in imagined digital futures: the techno-financial ‘futuring’of edtech investors in higher education. Critical Studies in Education, 64(3), 234-249.
You note the role that professional teachers potentially have on this process:
‘I am of the opinion that Edtech should be used a long with professionals that can really deliver and help to achieve the required changes in the life of the children.
Agreed and that professionalism suggests a few things. First, teachers have some subject matter expertise. Second, teachers know how to teach (learning theory, pedagogy). Third, teachers are critical and creative practitioners: they are able to orchestrate learning when needed, departing and returning to the curriculum as necessary. BIA doesn’t fully embrace this presentation of teaching.
Formatting: I know the blog technology can be a bit tricky to work with in terms of formatting, but see if you can work a bit on capitalisation (Bridge International Academies, etc.) and sentence fragments or run-on sentences. This is a minor point to be sure but I don’t want anything to detract from the strong critical voice beginning to emerge in these posts!
Literature: you drew on some good literature to support your position as well as explicitly drawing on the source(s) that were used that week in the course (Riper, 2017). That way you are building from the course, expanding into other literature, and ultimately applying that to the Nigerian context (which you are doing so this is just more encouragement to keep going!).
Just as a reminder, we use Harvard referencing system on the course and this resource should help: https://www.citethemrightonline.com/category-list?docid=CTRHarvard. For the blog you can hyperlink sources in the body of the post and put the sources at the end as a sort of references list. For the final essay for the course, this will be more formalised but the blog is meant to be a bit more conversational. Just a reminder not a critique in any way!
Good work Olubukola!
Thank you so much for the encouraging feedback sir, I appreciate,I will definitely improve, I appreciate your support .