Facebook Seems to Be Adding Video-Course Features. For Edtech, That Raises Old Fears. — from edsurge.com by Daniel Mollenkamp
Excerpts:
The tech giant Meta, widely known under its previous name Facebook, seems to be eyeing a way to allow users to offer video classes.
Since at least last year, Meta has experimented with Facebook Classes, a program designed to make online instruction through its platform smoother. A consultant recently noticed a company announcement about the features in the U.K. version of the platform and shared a screenshot on Twitter.
New! Facebook Classes for Events
‘Classes’ is new event type which can be selected when creating a new online event on Facebook.
It aims to make it easier to instruct and discover a class on Facebook pic.twitter.com/L0BvBuTXkM
— Matt Navarra (@MattNavarra) January 21, 2021
The company did not respond to questions about the program. But recent reports have speculated that the company could “bootstrap an online course ecosystem.”
Meta’s learning offering could be most trouble for other tech behemoths like Google Classroom and Microsoft Teams, according to some speculations.
Either way, Meta’s possible entrance into the market plays into a long-standing fear of big tech in the edtech industry.