The future of education technology after the arrival of ChatGPT

Most education technologies are adopted through a process of planning and procurement. By contrast, ChatGPT arrived. It entered schools without evaluation, assessment of risks and benefits, training for educators, or any other adoption steps that historically would have been considered indispensable to effective technology integration. Justin Reich and Jesse Dukes discuss the differences between adoption technologies and arrival technologies. The emergence of ubiquitous, individual mobile technologies owned by secondary and postsecondary students suggests that ChatGPT may be only the first in a parade of arrival technologies in the years ahead. A new theory of arrival technologies, grounded in the experiences of students, teachers, and school leaders managing the arrival of ChatGPT, may prove essential to the future of education technology practice, policy, and research.