About

Education is entering a new era of educational autonomy. It’s time we built our own tools.

The Problem: The "Black Box" of EdTech

For decades, academics have been stuck with a binary choice when it comes to digital tools in the classroom:

1. Buy off-the-shelf software: It’s often clunky, overpriced, and impossible to customize. If the simulation doesn't fit your learning goals, too bad.
2. Hire a developer: It requires grant money we don't have and time we can't spare.

As a result, brilliant pedagogical ideas die on the whiteboard because the barrier to implementation—writing code—is simply too high.

The Shift: Coding by "Vibe," Not Syntax

That barrier has just collapsed.

With the rise of Large Language Models (LLMs), we have entered the era of "Vibe Coding." This is the ability to build complex, functional web applications using natural language, logic, and subject matter expertise—without needing to memorize syntax or master a full tech stack.

If you can explain the logic underlying a problem, you can now explain it to an AI and have it build the tool for you.

What is Democratizing Technology in Education?

This site, Democratizing Technology, and the broader EduTool.org network, is a living laboratory for this transition.

We are a collective of academics, researchers, and educators who are tired of waiting for vendors to build what we need. We are using AI to become Software-Independent Academics.

Here, you will find:

• The Tools: Live, open-source examples of educational tools built entirely via AI prompting (like newsvendor.edutool.org and pollposition.edutool.org).
• The Playbooks: Detailed tutorials on how these were built. We share the prompts, the failures, and the "vibe checks" so you can replicate them.
• The Philosophy: Essays on how AI-assisted development changes the economics of teaching and research.

Who is this for?

• The Professor who wants a custom simulation for next week's lecture but has zero budget.
• The Student who has an idea to share with their fellow students and professors.
• The Teaching Assistant who wants to build a grading assistant to survive the semester.

Join the Network

We are building a future where the limit to educational innovation is your imagination, not your ability to write JavaScript.

If you are ready to stop buying software and start building it, welcome aboard.

About the Editor Enno Siemsen is a Professor of Operations and Information Management at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. They built their first educational app in a weekend using Codex, and haven't looked back since. They founded edutool.org to help other academics reclaim control over their digital classrooms.