The Next Wave for Technology

Over the past 25 years, multiple waves of education technology and innovation have slowly washed into America’s schools and colleges. Along the way, innovators have often over-promised and under-delivered, causing many smart people to wonder if we’re now in a frothy bubble of irrational exuberance, most eloquently summarized by Audrey Watters in Hack Education, who worries that “education technology [merely] serves as a ’Trojan Horse’ of sorts, carrying… the ideology of Silicon Valley [into public schools].”

Working as an entrepreneur, executive, philanthropist and investor over the past few decades, at some of the very organizations Watters bemoans, I’ve had a unique vantage point for observing numerous successes, failures and—most importantly—long-term trends that make me optimistic about the next wave of education innovation.

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