We have yet another education-related “best of” list compiled by yet another newsmagazine whose relevance petered out early in this century.
Time Magazine presents the World’s Top EdTech Companies of 2024.
Ok, so what do you mean by “top”? How did you decide that these 250(!) companies that sell edtech products and services are the “best”?
The research project “World’s Top EdTech Companies 2024” is a comprehensive analysis conducted to identify the top performing EdTech companies in the United States. First, companies had to primarily focus on developing and providing educational technologies, products or services. Companies are awarded in one top-list as well as in eleven categories. The 250 companies with the highest score were awarded as “World’s Top EdTech Companies 2024”.
The ranking is built on two pillars: financial strength and industry impact. Statista1 gathered and scrutinized data from over 7,000 companies through desk research, online application forms and collaborations with other data and market intelligence companies. A company received scores in each of these dimensions, which were then combined into an overall score.
As with almost all these collections dealing with instructional technology, there is a huge piece missing in determining what companies and products are best: No one ever seems to ask if the products they sell actually work.
Do their devices and software actually help students learn? Or do they improve the teacher’s ability to help them learn? Where is the “pillar” that measures the impact of this stuff on kids?
I’m not going to bother with the details of this list in this post. There are many companies here I’ve never heard of2 and more than a few I do recognize that market products of questionable quality.
This article caught my attention because the annual ISTE conference (possibly the last) starts on Sunday. And the massive and ever expanding edtech expo will be the centerpiece of the meeting.
Many of the companies on Time’s list will likely be in Denver hawking their products as the solution to whatever problems your school might have. Some may even display a Time logo in their booth, proclaiming them to be one of the “best”.
I just hope that the teachers and administrators who wander those aisles are savvy enough to ask the sales people for evidence to back up their promises. Especially the question of whether they have solid research showing that their products actually benefit kids.
And not just that their company has outstanding financials and “industry impact”.
The picture, tracks for a funicular in Lisbon, Portugal, really has nothing to do with this post. Other than that the edtech business has been largely off track for most of my experience with it.
1. Statista is “a leading international provider of market and consumer data and rankings” and seems to have done all the work involved with assembling the list. Time simply published their results and, we assume, marketed the ad placements to go with it.
2. Which is probably not surprising since I don’t pay as close attention to the edtech business as I did when it was part of my job.