Before You Say Yes: An Evaluative Framework for Ed-Tech That Builds Human Capacity

Every school leader knows the moment: a teacher's request or a vendor's pitch to add one more app to a list no one is tracking or evaluating against shared criteria. How do you know whether that yes will build human capacity in students or replace it? New edtech, including mixed reality and AI, has outpaced most schools' ability to evaluate it, and every yes must now be discerning, defensible and explainable to teachers, parents, boards and superintendents. This session gives school leaders, edtech specialists and teachers a research-grounded framework, refined by experienced K-12 leaders, that distinguishes technology designed to build human capacity from technology designed to substitute for it or simply entertain. Apply the framework to a real decision you face and leave with a worksheet of questions for any technology decision, a worked example for your own context and language for sharing your reasoning, shifting decision-making from ad hoc to coherent and defensible.