ABSTRACT
Technology has become an increasingly important element in contemporary education. Given the various overlapping, complementary, and potentially contradictory goals and priorities represented by businesses, schools, and academics interested in developing, evaluating, and implementing educational technology, there is a need to discuss, analyze, and assess the affordances and constraints, as well as the successes and challenges, that emerge when businesses try to integrate their products in public and private schools. This introductory chapter expands on this purpose, and provides an overview of research that served as the impetus for the book, as well as the three entities discussed: one large company that offers an online learning service for multiple academic subjects (e.g., psychology, forensic science, political science, algebra); one small company that develops and promotes a specific software to increase a particular grade-level skill (e.g., multiplication, spelling, reading comprehension, and discipline-specific vocabulary); and one startup organization—founded by university faculty—that develops specific products to engage students in a particular type of learning activity (e.g., annotation, collaboration, and critical thinking; coding and knowledge sharing). As such, this chapter prepares readers for the scenario-based vignettes that appear in subsequent chapters and which are used to examine the successes and pitfalls of company–school–research collaborations.
