Technolandy

Day 134 (of 2025/26)  a Clippy by another name…

There’s something oddly familiar about the current moment in edtech. As Microsoft rolls out Microsoft Copilot across its ecosystem, I can’t help but think back to Clippy — that well-meaning paperclip that appeared when software became more complicated, not more intuitive. Clippy didn’t solve the problem. It hovered over it. And in some ways, Copilot risks doing the same thing at scale: helping us navigate systems we never stopped to rethink. Especially now that CoPilot is becoming considered the “new Explorer” aka a technology everybody knew about, but did not use… https://apple.news/AaZQS2vftRMmaX4gniwWZaw or https://www.pcworld.com/article/3043099/microsoft-copilot-is-the-new-internet-explorer.html

That tension feels even sharper as tools rise and fall faster than ever. The recent news around Sora being shuttered (or at least paused) https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3w3e467ewqo is a reminder that innovation isn’t the same as permanence. New tools arrive with fanfare, promise transformation, and sometimes disappear before we’ve even figured out what they were for. It’s not failure so much as churn — a constant shifting that makes it harder for educators to know what’s worth holding onto.

Which is why Chris Kennedy’s reflection on “steadiness as strategy” resonates https://cultureofyes.ca/2026/02/24/steadiness-as-strategy/. In a landscape obsessed with the next new thing, there’s something quietly radical about choosing what not to adopt. About resisting the gravitational pull of every shiny update. Because if everything is innovation, nothing is. And if we aren’t careful, we end up mistaking activity for progress.

Looking back, I wonder if one of the biggest missteps of the early 1:1 and BYOD era wasn’t what we added, but what we refused to let go of. We layered technology on top of existing practices like digital laminate. Essays became typed instead of handwritten. Presentations became slide decks instead of posters. But the underlying task often stayed the same. If the essay remains the primary currency of learning, technology doesn’t transform anything — it just types faster. And in the process, we sidestep richer, more authentic ways for students to show what they know: through image, audio, video, and forms we’re only beginning to take seriously.

So here we are, somewhere between Clippy and Copilot, between excitement and exhaustion. Maybe the real work of this moment isn’t adopting the next tool, but deciding what we’re finally ready to release. Letting go is harder than starting something new. But without it, innovation becomes decoration. And not every new tool is progress — especially if we’re still asking it to do the same old work.