Technology Didn’t Transform These Classrooms. Relationships Did. - EdTech Magazine

Cloud has changed where technology lives, APIs changed how technology connects, and platform engineering changed how capabilities can be assembled. Software increasingly became a service rather than an installation, storage became abundant, connectivity became easier and the technical justification for placing every piece of data, process and functionality inside a single organisational application began to disappear. But our behaviours did not change at the same pace. We continued to buy systems when what we increasingly needed were capabilities, continued to replace applications when what we often needed was better access to the data, and continued to write requirements as though every organisation needed its own bespoke version of eligibility checking, referral management, appointment booking, consent, messaging, evidence sharing, workflow and reporting. We carried procurement practices, governance models and assumptions about ownership from a world in which the application had to be the centre of everything into one in which it no longer does.