Surveillance and the edtech imaginary via the mundane stuff of schooling

The use of edtech in schools is growing, as is a critical edtech research agenda. This research, combined with student activism, helps us understand the problematic impact of edtech and the way in which these predictive and coercive surveillance technologies pose a threat to students and educators’ ability to live self-directed lives. This chapter considers the use of QR codes for a digital hall pass system in one high school during the COVID-19 pandemic as a way to examine how seemingly mundane uses of technologies can have a significant impact. Combining insights from critical edtech research with media literacy education can help us understand how we might resist the edtech imaginary and exercise a different relationship to technologies in our schools