Children's Tech, EdTech and Kids’ Expanded Experience

We often hear the terms “Children’s Tech” and “EdTech” being thrown around, but it’s not always clear what each is referring to—and the result is that people might find themselves discussing one when their partner in conversation is actually talking about something entirely different. Both terms are commonly used and may be confused for synonyms, but understanding their core differences and overlapping areas can help us to become more fluent in the subject.

EdTech

EdTech refers to educational technologies and solutions. It’s important to note that EdTech is not limited to products for kids. The EdTech field provides technological solutions that facilitate learning at different levels and for different purposes. It is catered to all ages—kids, teens and adults—and it is relevant for all sorts of environments—including home, school and work. Even those EdTech products that are designed for children’s learning are often geared towards their educators or caregivers and are not necessarily intended for the kids themselves. 

For some examples, see Coursera, Brilliant, Miro and more. 

Children’s Tech and Media

When we talk about children’s tech (or kids’ tech, in some circles), we refer to products designed for kids with an inherent technological component. These products can be anything from apps to tech toys. Discussions about children’s tech often include children’s media due to similarities in audience groups, mutual use patterns and themes, as well as potential dangers or threats. 

As you may have noticed, this description does not necessarily include any educational words. However, digital content for young audiences is frequently related to educational content, thinking skills and preparation for school/life. You may also see play-oriented products in this space. 

For some examples, please see Toca Boca, YouTube Kids, Minecraft, Avokiddo, as well as a multitude of TV shows, console games, books and more. 

EdTech for Kids 

While the two spaces are quite different from one another, they do begin to overlap when a designer seeks to create an EdTech product for kids in an effort to explicitly teach kids (or help learning to occur).  

While these products are especially designed for kids, they are also used by parents and educators/caregivers as a teaching tool and may not be only used by kids. Therefore, designing EdTech products for kids should include platforms for kids’ learning while also meeting the needs of teachers/parents/caregivers/school districts’ needs. For the above reason, many of these platforms usually contain a variety of different interfaces in the same product, tailor-made for each of the different user types’ nuanced needs. Good EdTech platforms promote better children’s learning, as well as support the overall educational system. 

Some examples of this include: BrainPop, KhanAcademy, Minecraft Education, Class Dojo, Matific, Storybird, Google Experiments, Osmo, Edoki Academy and more. 

In Summary—There is a lot in-between!

Adults focus too much attention on categories. It’s important to remember the following:

• EdTech is not necessarily for kids. So the next time you see an EdTech news story or a fancy chart, don’t automatically link it to children. 

• EdTech for the K-12 industry has many client types besides children, including teachers, schools and district management, parents and more. You can usually easily identify the major target audience by paying attention to whom the marketing message is geared. 

We treat EdTech products with a certain amount of expectations and discounts that we might not apply to other sectors where kids live. As a result, for example, children’s tech products are usually not given the same learning lense and EdTech for kids lacks true fun. EdTech for kids could profit from a creative flavor infusion coming from children’s media and casual genres while children’s tech could benefit from a more educational angle. In short: Children’s products should be educational and EdTech products should be fun. 

Kids learn, implicitly and explicitly, from every piece of content they touch. As such, we must handle children’s tech with the same weight and responsibility as we do with EdTech for kids. Though, not least important is cultivating our transmedia lense, seeing how all can be mixed and matched for children’s benefits. See Sonia Tiwari’s incredible work “Across and Beyond the Screens: Investigating Children’s Engagement with Educational Media and Related Activities.”

We can talk about each of these spaces individually or lap them together as though they are the same thing, but doing so misses the point. It’s necessary to view these different spaces from the expanded experience of the child.

When we look from a single dimentional perspective, we are at risk of missing out on the needs of our target audience: Kids. Everything that kids touch should be infused with the perspective of both spaces. We must leave the labels behind and think about what will help the children most, looking with a holistic eye at the expanded experience we are creating and how it meets kids in their journeys. 

I recommend consulting with experts and available resources as much as possible. But, the most important thing is this:

Ask the kids!