Friday Follow Up
Google is the AI wildcard, ED muddles along, and a comprehensive view of higher ed funding in the US
Phil Hill
July 18, 2025
Was this forwarded to you by a friend? Sign up, and get your own copy of the news that matters sent to your inbox every week. Sign up for the On EdTech newsletter. Interested in additional analysis? Try with our 30-day free trial and Upgrade to the On EdTech+ newsletter.
Paris, Leeds, and Vegas down. Spokane to go.
AI Wildcard
In several conference and podcast discussions lately, I’ve brought up the point that there is a difference between Big Tech AI platforms / APIs / underlying LLMs and Big Tech products. And that the rapid development of Big Tech AI products can and likely will change the EdTech ecosystem.
Most LMS and other EdTech vendors integrate in Big Tech AI capabilities and deliver them to colleges and universities, but I think we’re missing part of the change going on with students and the nature of knowledge. Current EdTech usage still assumes that higher ed institutions deliver and somewhat control what tools will be used in an academic context, and that we need to do this appropriately.
But two AI products in particular are changing how students are already learning (or at least getting good grades on assignments). ChatGPT and NotebookLM. With the latter, it is so easy to summarize course content or even collaborative notes, and most educators appear to not understand the capabilities.
As an example, at the recent University of Leeds Online Learning Summit, Morgan was in a panel / workshop on the topic of costs of online education - how to understand it, how to lower it. After brief presentations from each panelist, there were active discussions at each table with notes collected in Padlet. To me, this felt like an active learning classroom experience, with a mix of content delivery and active discussions.
