The End of Choice? How Subscription Models Are Reshaping EdTech Use in the Classroom

As with most educators, just prior to the start of the new term, I spent some time going through and updating my resources to ensure they were current. At the start of the academic year, I run several new teacher inductions as part of this. I like to provide them with a toolkit of different approaches, which includes a mix of analogue and digital.  

 I am a big advocate of how digital technology can be used to enhance learning and engage learners, so not to overwhelm those who are new to teaching, I like to suggest just a few tools. 

I like to give them a choice and let them sign up for the ones they think will work best with their learners. To ensure I am not disadvantaging any of them, I like to make sure that all my suggested tools have a free account option available. This means they can try out a few different tools with their learners to see if they work as hoped. Then, if they want to access the wider features, they can choose one of the paid plans. 

However, over the past couple of years, I have noticed that the number of tools that have a free account option is decreasing. I understand the reason for this; software developers need to get a return on their investment and cover the cost of ongoing development. 

With the increasing use of AI-enriched features, the cost of development is bound to have gone up. From my perspective, if an edtech tool does what I need in either helping me to engage learners or providing useful functionality that adds value or saves me time, then I am happy to pay for a subscription. 

 As I looked through my list of go-to edtech tools, I was surprised to see how many were no longer offering an individual subscription option, or if they were, it was only available with barely any features and was there as a taster/ demo. 

As an example, if we look at what used to be my go-to tool Quizziz, which has recently been rebranded as Wayground, there is a free individual subscription option, but it has very limited functionality, and if you want more functionality, you have to ask your school or college to pay for a subscription. 

Or as is the case with Flip (Previously Flipgrid), they become an embedded feature within another subscription-based application, in their case being offered as part of Microsoft Teams for Education. 

 And this started to make me think, are we moving away from individual educators being able to pick and choose the edtech tools they want to use? 

Is the choice of tools to be determined by the education organisation you work for? 

And how will that impact the use of digital tools going forward? 

In the short term, there is still plenty of choice, with many digital tools available with a free or individual subscription. However, longer term and with the increased expectation from consumers that tools have in-built AI features, I could see more moving to an organisational subscription model as a way of ensuring a steady stream of income to cover the costs of development. 

So, what should schools and colleges do?

Well, speaking to some of the educators I know, their schools and colleges have already started to adjust their approach to the number of digital tools they suggest their staff use.

Instead of suggesting three or four different tools, they are now looking for one that is richly featured with lots of functionality.  In addition to that approach, the other thing that I think is worth doing is looking to maximise the tools your teachers have access to already.  For example, if your organisation has access to MS Office 365, it could generate activities in PowerPoint and MS Forms to add engagement. 

Here is my video tutorial on creating a quiz show question board 

Here is my video on creating a randomiser wheel