T. Philip Nichols is an assistant professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at Baylor University. Antero Garcia is associate professor of education at Stanford University. The original article appeared in Ed Source, May 8, 2022.

The recent news that billionaire Elon Musk plans to purchase Twitter shows how abruptly even widely used technology companies can be bought, sold, altered or shut down at the whims of their owners. This ought to concern educators, parents and students: Such instabilities don’t just affect social media giants, but any commercial platform — including those that have, over the past decade, become vital infrastructures for the everyday operation of public schools.

Even before the pandemic accelerated schools’ adoption of third-party platforms for virtual learning, teachers already relied on such technologies to share assignments (Google Classroom), manage student behavior(ClassDojo),monitor school devices (GoGuardian), assess learning (Kahoot), communicate with families(SeeSaw),