Congratulations to Dr Eamon Costello who was recently elected as president of the Irish Learning Technology Association (ILTA). ILTA is a voluntary professional association of 1800 professional innovators, researchers, practitioners, and policymakers across the Irish education sector (primary, secondary, and tertiary), as well as government and industry stakeholders and has been running for over 25 years.

The first job on Dr Costello’s inbox will be helping chair its upcoming annual conference:

• What: EdTech 25

• Where: The South East Technological University, Waterford

• When: May 29th – 30th

• Why: Be a part of the convivial conversion of a key professional network

• How: Submit proposal by April 23rd https://ilta.ie/edtech-2025/

“Are we there yet?” The hereness and not-yetness of AI and educational technology

AI is not going away but although it is well and truly here we may still ask: “Are we there yet?”

The Irish learning technology sector has certainly responded via for example N-TUTORR and SATLE funded initiatives; AI literacy courses and programmes; guidelines from the National Forum for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education; the National Academic Integrity Network and The AI Advisory Council; and a wide array of policies and responses to the challenges posed have been developed (and redeveloped) by educational institutions big and small.

In seeking to explain this phenomenon, GenAI has been posited as a type of “arrival” rather than “adoption” technology, one that we must adapt to rather than consciously adopt or integrate (Klopfer et al, 2024). But although this framing might describe how quickly it appeared, (everywhere all at once), it does not fully account for the differentiated, context-specific, intentional and agentic responses that educators have offered.

“Are we there yet?” could also be translated as: is this as good as it gets? We may ask if have we reached a waypoint at which to assess and appraise maturity in the GenAI cycle and those of other emerging technologies and ideas such as microcredentials, AR/VR/MR etc.

And are our values as good as they get? If so, will we defend, treasure and sustain particular educational goods such as diversity, equity and inclusion?

For this and much, much more we warmly invite learning technologists, practitioners, teachers, researchers, students, leaders and learners to come together to embrace the messiness of these questions and share in the not-yetness of our responses (Collier & Ross, 2017) at the Irish Learning Technology Association’s annual and epic EdTech conference. 

Under the auspices of our 2025 host SETU, The South East Technological University, you are invited to Ireland’s oldest city of Waterford to hear a fantastic range of talks, including from keynote speaker Professor Jenn Ross of Edinburgh University.

We look forward to seeing you and please consider submitting a proposal from March 12th: https://ilta.ie/

References:

Collier, A., & Ross, J. (2017). For whom, and for what? Not-yetness and thinking beyond open content. Open Praxis, 9(1), 7-16. http://doi.org/10.5944/openpraxis.9.1.406

Klopfer, E., Reich, J., Abelson, H., & Breazeal, C. (2024). Generative AI and K-12 education: An MIT perspective.