I was one of the official reviewers for a global edtech competition. I reviewed 200+ proposals of edtech companies/start ups from literally every corner of the globe (mostly US and India). And the one parameter on which most of these companies were marked consistently poor was "equity".
In the equity section, most of the edtech companies were like:
"The app is totally free of cost"
"Anyone and everyone can access the platform."
"The tool is created to help students from different backgrounds get a standard learning experience"
"The platform is student's background agnostic"
"The tool is designed to be inclusive for every child" (doesn't explain how)
Moreover, there were tools that actually did have equitable features (I could figure out by reading other sections in the proposal) but still the same wasn't adequately mentioned in the equity section.
Equity is not just about an app that any student can access freely from any corner of the world from playstore/appstore. Equity is not about being "background agnostic". In fact, equity is about recognizing that you can't have a standard learning experience.
Equity is about what extra efforts you took in building your platform/tool so that students of different abilities, students from different backgrounds and students with differential access to resources can make use of that tool to its full potential.
Equity is about the child, not about the app !
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