On a recent evening in suburban Chicago, a group of parents, teachers and administrators gathered to talk about something that, until recently, rarely drew this level of public scrutiny: the role of technology in their schools.

The meeting was part of a three-session tech and learning focus group organized by Mary Jane (MJ) Warden, chief technology officer of Community Consolidated School District 15, in conjunction with the Teaching, Learning and Assessments Department.

The district, which serves 11,000 preK-8 students, spent the past several years — like so many others — adding digital tools. Now, with budgets tightening and concerns about screen time rising, it was time to take stock.

A re-examination of digital tools was already happening with curriculum reviews and tightening budgets after the pandemic. And then the screen time concerns arose.

Participants discussed everything from screen time to what district technology use looks like at home. Out of those conversations came something new: a “Portrait of a Digital Learner,” derived from the district’s Portrait of a Graduate, meant to develop clear expectations around what skills students need and, by extension, which technologies are worth keeping and how technology would be used by students toward positive learning outcomes.

“We’re trying to get much [clearer] about what this is going to address,” says Warden. “What do we need students to learn, and which tools will help us understand where they are?”

Across the country, district leaders are asking similar questions. After years of rapid expansion, many are now engaged in a quieter but more consequential phase: reassessing what stays, what goes and how to decide.

From Buying Tools To Proving Value

For much of the past decade, edtech decisions often began with the product. A new platform promised to boost engagement or personalize learning; districts piloted it, added it to an already crowded ecosystem and moved on.

That approach is no longer sustainable, says Erin Mote, CEO of InnovateEDU, a nonprofit focused on systems change in special education, talent development and data modernization in schools.

“We’re seeing a shift from ‘Does this look cool?’ to ‘Does this work?’” she says. “Districts have less money now; they have to be smarter.”

The end of pandemic-era federal funding has intensified that pressure. Technology leaders are now expected not only to manage infrastructure and compliance, but also to demonstrate what Mote calls a return on instructional impact.

In practice, that is changing how districts approach procurement. Instead of starting with vendor demos, many are beginning with specific learning needs.

“If you need to improve third-grade reading comprehension, you start there,” Mote says. “Then you ask: Which tool can move that needle?”

New Playbook For Evaluation

As districts rethink their approach, a more structured and more skeptical evaluation process is emerging.

One major shift is toward tracking actual usage. Platforms like ClassLink and Clever now give districts detailed analytics on which tools students and teachers are accessing, how often they’re used and, in some cases, how much time is spent in each application. That data has helped uncover what some leaders call “zombie licenses,” products that continue to be renewed despite minimal use.

At Joliet Public Schools in Illinois, technology leaders review usage data each spring alongside feedback from a districtwide technology committee.

“If we’re not getting usage or we have another product that does it better, we start asking hard questions,” says John Armstrong, chief officer for technology and innovation.

But usage alone is not enough. Districts are also weighing cost, redundancy and alignment with instructional goals.

During the pandemic, many schools layered new tools on top of existing ones. Now, leaders are working to simplify.

“We had so many products that teachers were going to four different places to run a lesson,” says Kelly Ronnebeck, associate superintendent for student achievement in East Moline School District 37 in Illinois. “We’re trying to get back to a slower, more intentional process.”

That often means replacing several standalone tools with a single platform that can do multiple jobs — even if it means giving up some features teachers value. In some cases, a newer system can replace several standalone tools at a lower cost but may not match each one’s individual strengths.

“It’s not always a perfect swap,” admits Armstrong. “Someone gives up something.”

At the same time, districts are placing greater emphasis on interoperability and data privacy. Tools must integrate with existing systems like learning management platforms and single sign-on tools, and vendors have to be willing to sign increasingly stringent data privacy agreements.

“If a company can’t meet those requirements, that’s a red flag right away,” says Phil Hintz, CTO of Niles Township District 219 in Illinois.

The Challenge Of Proving What Works

Even as districts adopt more rigorous processes, it remains stubbornly difficult to determine whether edtech tools actually improve learning.

“It’s such a huge challenge,” says Naomi Hupert, director of the Center for Children & Technology at the Education Development Center. “We see so much that doesn’t seem to make a difference but costs a lot of money.”

Part of the difficulty lies in the sheer breadth of what “edtech” encompasses, everything from learning management systems to specialized math platforms to communication tools. Each category has different goals, users and measures of success.

“It’s like asking whether ‘books’ work,” says Hupert. “It depends on the book, the context and how it’s used.”

District leaders have to piece together evidence from multiple sources: vendor-provided analytics, small pilot studies, teacher feedback and, occasionally, external research. But those data points don’t always align.

Jason Schmidt, director of technology in Oshkosh Area School District in Wisconsin, describes his approach as “trust but verify.”

“I know vendors are collecting tons of data, and they have to, but I still need to talk to teachers and understand how the tool is actually being used,” he says.

Even then, results can be uneven. A platform might show strong engagement overall but fail to support certain groups of students — or vice versa.

In Alexandria City Public Schools in Virginia, leaders are developing a formal framework to evaluate both edtech and nontech programs. But defining “value” has proven complex.

“It’s not just usage and cost,” says CIO Emily Dillard. In a district with a high number of English learners, some tools play a critical role for students who need targeted or specialized support.

“You might have a tool that isn’t working for most students — or takes time to show results — but for a small group, it’s the best thing we have. We have to think about what’s best for them, too,” says Dillard.

Building Systems for Quality

Recognizing these challenges, a growing coalition of organizations is working to create clearer signals of quality in the edtech marketplace.

Through the Edtech Quality Collaborative, 1EdTech, CAST, CoSN, Digital Promise, InnovateEDU, ISTE, and SETDA are developing a shared framework built around five indicators: safety, evidence, inclusivity, interoperability and usability.

The goal, says Korah Wiley, senior director of edtech R&D at Digital Promise, is to reduce the noise.

“Right now, there are a lot of certifications and labels, and it’s hard for districts to know what to trust,” says Wiley. “We want to brighten the signal of what quality looks like.”

The initiative includes a planned directory of vetted validators, an implementation guide for districts and a central hub to connect educators with high-quality tools. Leaders hope it will help districts make decisions more confidently and push developers to meet clearer standards.

“This is the cost of doing business in education,” says Mote. “If you want to be in classrooms, you need to be building evidence and demonstrating impact.”

What Happens When Tools Are Cut

For all the talk of frameworks and data, the hardest part of reassessment often comes when districts decide to let a tool go.

Those decisions can affect classroom routines, teacher preferences and even student outcomes. And they are rarely straightforward.

In some cases, tools are phased out because of cost or low usage. In others, they are replaced by more comprehensive platforms. Sometimes, they no longer align with district priorities.

But even when the rationale is clear, the transition can be difficult.

“Teachers build practices around these tools,” says Warden. “We have to be thoughtful about how we support them through change.”

Districts are increasingly pairing those decisions with professional development, clearer communication and, in some cases, community engagement. In Warden’s district, the focus groups that helped define the “Portrait of a Digital Learner” are also shaping how the district explains its choices to families.

“We want to be transparent about what we’re using and why,” she says.

A More Intentional Future

As districts move into this new phase, many leaders describe it as a reset that is forcing them to be more deliberate about how technology fits into teaching and learning.

That includes pushing back on broader narratives that treat all screen time as equal.

“There’s a big difference between passive consumption and purposeful edtech and we need to be clear about this,” says Mote.

It also requires clearer alignment between technology decisions and instructional goals. Without that, even the best tools can fall short.

“If you don’t know what you want teaching and learning to look like, it’s very hard to decide what tools you need,” says Keith Krueger, CEO of CoSN.

Back in District 15, Warden and her colleagues are trying to build that alignment. The conversations sparked by their focus groups are informing not just which tools they keep, but how they define success.

“We’re still digging out from COVID, when we had to move fast and add a lot. Now we have an opportunity to be more strategic.”

For district leaders across the country, that shift may be the most important change of all. The future of edtech, they suggest, will not be defined by the number of tools schools use, but by how thoughtfully they choose them.

Anthropic’s sudden move to suspend access to its newest AI models following a U.S. government directive has raised fresh questions across the global technology industry. In India, the decision has reignited a long-running debate over whether one of the world’s largest AI markets can afford to rely on technologies built and controlled elsewhere.

The announcement came late Friday, when Anthropic said it had received the U.S. government directive requiring it to suspend access to its recently launched Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models for all foreign nationals, including its own foreign national employees. The move came shortly after the company announced a partnership with Indian IT services giant Tata Consultancy Services to expand enterprise AI adoption in India, underlining how closely the country’s AI ambitions have become tied to technologies developed and governed in the U.S.

While the broader implications remain unclear, some reports said the initial security concerns were first reported to the government by Amazon CEO Andy Jassy. And The Information said the White House is unlikely to extend similar restrictions to other AI companies and is privately blaming Anthropic’s handling of alleged jailbreak vulnerabilities. Anthropic has disputed the government’s characterization and argued the action should not have been taken.

Regardless, the development has triggered debate among Indian founders, investors, and policy experts over whether the country should accelerate efforts to build domestic AI capabilities, deepen investment in open-source alternatives, or continue relying on a handful of U.S. frontier model providers. For some, the episode is a wake-up call on technological dependence. For others, it is a reminder that access to increasingly critical AI systems can be shaped by geopolitical decisions beyond India’s control.

India has become one of the most important markets for frontier AI companies. Anthropic and OpenAI have both described the South Asian nation as their second-largest market after the U.S., reflecting its growing importance in the global AI race. The companies have already set up their offices in India, expanded local hiring, partnerships, and enterprise initiatives in recent months, betting on India’s vast base of developers, startups, and businesses to accelerate adoption of their latest technologies.

For many in India’s technology sector, Anthropic’s Friday announcement was about more than just one AI company. It reopened questions about the country’s long-term AI strategy and whether India could afford to remain dependent on a small number of foreign frontier AI providers.

“It completely changes things,” said Aakrit Vaish, founder of Indian AI venture platform Activate, referring to Anthropic’s decision. “I think this materially changes the way all of us should be thinking about sovereign AI in India.”

Vaish told TechCrunch that he woke up on Saturday morning “shocked and confused” by the announcement and said it strengthened the case for developing domestic AI capabilities. He expects startups to increasingly turn to open-source models and plans to encourage companies in his portfolio to reduce their dependence on a small number of frontier AI providers.

For some founders, the bigger concern was what restrictions on frontier AI access could mean for competitiveness. Vijay Rayapati, co-founder and CEO of Atomicwork, told TechCrunch that the episode highlighted the risks facing startups whose teams span multiple countries if access to advanced AI systems increasingly becomes subject to geopolitical restrictions.

Atomicwork has around 25 employees in the U.S., though much of its product engineering team is based in Bengaluru, India.

“If your AI team is not made up entirely of U.S. citizens, you are at a competitive disadvantage,” Rayapati said, arguing that unequal access to frontier AI models could give some companies a significant edge over rivals.

The concern comes as parts of India’s tech sector are already grappling with questions about how AI could reshape the economics of global talent. This week, U.S. real estate technology company Opendoor shut its India office less than two years after expanding in the country, with CEO Kaz Nejatian citing a push to bring operational work closer to customers in the U.S. and a shift toward smaller AI-native teams.

While Opendoor did not specify how much of the decision was driven by AI-related efficiencies, the move added to a broader debate about how advances in AI could affect the future of global technology work and what that might mean for India’s position as an engineering talent hub.

Beyond Anthropic

In addition to startups and AI builders, the Anthropic episode also prompted a broader debate among India’s technology leaders about dependence on foreign AI infrastructure.

Sridhar Vembu, founder of Indian SaaS company Zoho, said the move showed that “technology is the ultimate weapon” and urged Indian organizations to increasingly embrace smaller and open-source models.

“What can our government do right now? Ensure that orgs in India embrace smaller models, both Indian and Chinese open source ones,” Vembu wrote on X.

Investor and former Infosys executive Mohandas Pai responded to Vembu on X, arguing that the development highlighted the need for a far more ambitious national AI strategy and calling on the government to substantially increase investments in AI, computing infrastructure, and deep technology.

“We are way behind and need a national mission to get going quickly,” Pai wrote, urging the government to create an annual ₹500 billion (about $5 billion) fund for AI and deep tech, alongside a ₹2 trillion (around $21 billion) credit guarantee program to support cloud infrastructure, hardware, and semiconductor development.

Pai’s proposal would dwarf India’s existing AI efforts. In 2024, New Delhi approved the IndiaAI Mission with an outlay of ₹103.72 billion (about $1.2 billion) over five years, aimed at expanding compute infrastructure, supporting startups, and developing indigenous AI capabilities.

Despite growing interest in AI and New Delhi’s push to develop domestic capabilities, India remains a relatively small player in frontier model development. Only a handful of startups are pursuing foundational AI models, including Sarvam, which released open-source models earlier this year. However, another high-profile AI startup, Krutrim, pivoted toward cloud and AI infrastructure services after initially positioning itself around foundational model development.

Much of India’s AI ecosystem has instead concentrated on applications and specialized models built on top of existing foundation models. Recent examples include Avataar AI, which launched a video-generation model earlier this week aimed at providing a lower-cost alternative to offerings from rivals including Google’s Veo, Kling, Luma, and Runway.

Not everyone agrees that the primary challenge is a lack of capital. Responding to Pai’s comments, Lightspeed partner Hemant Mohapatra argued that the biggest constraints to building globally competitive AI companies are talent, access to computing resources, and execution, rather than simply the size of investment commitments.

Mohapatra estimated that training a frontier AI model could cost anywhere from hundreds of millions to several billion dollars, depending on the approach, but said successful AI companies have historically scaled their capital requirements over time as adoption grew.

Yet for some policy observers, the implications extend well beyond AI startups or model providers.

Prasanto Roy, a New Delhi-based technology policy expert who advises multinational companies, said the episode would likely reinforce concerns within the Indian government about strategic autonomy, comparing it to the lesson many countries drew from Russia’s loss of access to SWIFT and other parts of the global financial system following its invasion of Ukraine.

He told TechCrunch that the move was likely to provoke a significant nationalist backlash in India and described it as a poorly considered decision by Washington, with consequences extending far beyond Anthropic itself.

“Even if this is corrected or reversed, the Anthropic episode shows there’s no such thing as a geopolitically neutral foreign LLM,” Roy said. “American AI models are bound to American geopolitics.”

Australia and Turkey will face off in a pivotal World Cup 2026 Group D clash at BC Place in Vancouver, Canada, with both sides eyeing a strong start in one of the tournament’s most open groups. Alongside the United States and Paraguay, both teams will believe qualification is a possibility, and so we can expect high intensity from the opening whistle.

Turkey head into the match as slight favourites thanks to their wealth of European talent. Vincenzo Montella’s side boasts exciting stars such as Arda Güler, Kenan Yildiz, and Kerem Aktürkoğlu, and arrives on the back of a five-match winning streak in competitive qualifiers.

Looking for the most recent Strands answer? Click here for our daily Strands hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections and Connections: Sports Edition puzzles.

If you have a British royal family obsession, like me, today’s NYT Strands puzzle will be a royal breeze. Some of the answers are difficult to unscramble, so if you need hints and answers, read on.

I go into depth about the rules for Strands in this story. 

If you’re looking for today’s Wordle, Connections and Mini Crossword answers, you can visit CNET’s NYT puzzle hints page.

Read more: NYT Connections Turns 1: These Are the 5 Toughest Puzzles So Far

Hint for today’s Strands puzzle

Today’s Strands theme is: Peer group

If that doesn’t help you, here’s a clue: Titles

Clue words to unlock in-game hints

Your goal is to find hidden words that fit the puzzle’s theme. If you’re stuck, find any words you can. Every time you find three words of four letters or more, Strands will reveal one of the theme words. These are the words I used to get those hints but any words of four or more letters that you find will work:

• SOUR, MARE, RANT, RANTS, DIRT, DIRTS, LEAR, COUNT, QUID, QUIDS

Answers for today’s Strands puzzle

These are the answers that tie into the theme. The goal of the puzzle is to find them all, including the spangram, a theme word that reaches from one side of the puzzle to the other. When you have all of them (I originally thought there were always eight but learned that the number can vary), every letter on the board will be used. Here are the nonspangram answers:

• EARL, LADY, DUCHESS, LORD, VISCOUNT, BARON, MARQUESS

Today’s Strands spangram

Today’s Strands spangram is NOBILITY. To find it, start with the N that is three letters to the right on the top row, and wind down.

This month saw the release of Vim Classic 8.3, the first stable version of a new long-term support fork of Vim maintained without generative AI tools. Linuxiac reports:

The release is based on Vim 8.2.0148 and includes selected bug fixes and patches backported from later upstream Vim releases. Vim Classic was first announced by [SourceHut’s CEO/founder] Drew DeVault in March 2026 after he objected to LLM-assisted development in Vim and Neovim. In his announcement, DeVault said he no longer wanted to use software developed with LLM assistance and introduced Vim Classic as a fork for users who want to continue using Vim without that involvement… Vim Classic follows Vim’s charityware model and continues to direct users toward Bram Moolenaar’s long-running support for children in Uganda. The release is distributed as a signed source tarball from SourceHut, while future important announcements are expected through the project’s mailing list.

“Vim is important to me…” DeVault wrote in March. (DeVault even tattooed “hjkl” on his right arm.) “[A]lmost every word I have ever committed to posterity, through this blog, in my code, all of the docs I’ve written, emails I’ve sent, and more, almost all of it has passed through Vim.”

But DeVault wrote that he also cares about AI’s impact on air pollution, fresh water supplies, global supply chains, and the working conditions of miners in African companies:
And at a moment when the climate demands immediate action to reduce our footprint on this planet, the AI boom is driving data centers to consume a full 1.5% of the world’s total energy production in order to eliminate jobs and replace them with a robot that lies… All this to enrich the few, centralize power, reduce competition, and underwrite an enormous bubble that, once it bursts, will ruin the lives of millions of the world’s poor and marginalized classes.

I don’t think it’s cute that someone vibe coded “battleship” in VimScript. I think it’s more important that we stop collectively pretending that we don’t understand how awful all of this is. I don’t want to use software which has slop in it. I do what I can to avoid it, and sadly even Vim now comes under scrutiny in that effort as both Vim and NeoVim are relying on LLMs to develop the software… To keep my conscience clear, and continue to enjoy the relationship I have with this amazing piece of software, I have forked Vim…

Since forking from this base, I have backported a handful of patches, most of which address CVEs discovered after this release, but others which address minor bug fixes. I also penned a handful of original patches which bring the codebase from this time up to snuff for building it on newer toolchains…

I invite you to use Vim Classic, if you feel the same way as me, and to maintain it with me, contributing the patches you need to support your own use cases.

A roundup of recent reviews published by Engadget.

Motorola Razr Ultra

AMD Radeon RX 9070 GRE

Devindra Hardawar for Engadget

Honor Magic V6

Daniel Cooper for Engadget

Marshall Milton ANC

James Trew for Engadget

Logitech Mobi Fold

Sam Rutherford for Engadget

2027 Rivian R2 first drive

Tim Stevens for Engadget

After WIRED reported last week that Meta’s smart glasses app contained code that would enable the company to activate face-recognition features on the devices, the company removed the code this week without commenting on why or whether it plans to add such functionality back into the app later. Another WIRED investigation this week found that xAI’s Grok is still hosting sexualized deepfakes, including “nudified” images and videos, of celebrities and at least one prominent US politician.

After limiting the release of its new Mythos-class AI model over concerns about its potential impacts on cybersecurity, Anthropic announced a model upgrade for partners in its limited-access group this week and launched a “safe” version of the model to the public with guardrails meant to keep the system from being used to fuel cyberattacks. Meanwhile, the United States Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency issued a new directive to federal agencies this week in reaction to new AI threats that includes a requirement to fix the most urgent software vulnerabilities in as little as three days.

As Europe looks to separate and insulate itself from US Big Tech, WIRED created a timeline that tracks all the ways EU governments, companies, and other organizations are moving away from US tech. A new open-source project dubbed Encrypted Spaces could be used to make countless mainstream collaboration apps more private and surveillance-resistant with end-to-end encryption. And illegal pharmacy and scam websites hijacked Spotify’s search rankings using fake podcasts, according to a new joint US Congressional report.

The 2026 World Cup is in full swing, and WIRED looked at the surveillance technologies, from anti-drone tech to face recognition, that are being used in US, Canadian, and Mexican stadiums. We also mapped every Flock license plate reader near a US World Cup stadium. More broadly, Amnesty International said this week that it has concluded fans in all three host countries—both local residents and visitors—face potential human rights violations as a result of the FIFA tournament.

The American Civil Liberties Union is suing two Florida police departments over its use of FACES, one of the longest-running face recognition tools in the US, after its alleged misuse led to the wrongful arrest of a Fort Myers man. Donald Trump, meanwhile, jeopardized the future of a key surveillance authority after selecting Bill Pulte, who’s been described as “deeply unqualified,” as the acting director of national intelligence. (Trump has since selected an alternative nominee for the permanent role.)

And there’s more. Each week, we round up the security and privacy news we didn’t cover in depth ourselves. Click the headlines to read the full stories. And stay safe out there.

As difficult as digital anonymity has become in the modern world, obtaining a phone number without revealing almost any identifying information—whether by buying a temporary burner phone or registering an account with a privacy-preserving phone carrier—has remained entirely legal in the US. Now the Federal Communications Commission wants to change that.

Late last month, the FCC released a proposal for a new rule that would implement know-your-customer requirements for cellular networks, requiring that cellular providers “at a minimum, obtain and retain the name, physical address, government issued identification number, and an alternate telephone number of any new and renewing customer before granting access to its services.” The proposal is described as a measure akin to money-laundering laws designed to make it more difficult for scammers to exploit the phone networks. But privacy advocates argue it also threatens a last conduit of anonymity for those seeking to evade phone surveillance—whether that’s journalists, whistleblowers, activists, or simply people seeking to avoid mass data collection in yet another facet of their communications.

With delivery by Father’s Day and a 90-day low price, you’ll want to grab Amazon’s weekend Mac mini deal before inventory runs out.

With increased demand for a headless machine to run AI agents and a budget-friendly price tag, Apple’s M4 Mac mini has been sold out for much of Q2 2026. But Amazon has the 16GB/512GB configuration back in stock, and it’s on sale for $769.99 (a $30 discount off retail).

Buy M4 Mac mini for $769.99

Now priced at a 90-day low, Amazon has repeatedly shown stock levels of 20 or fewer units left today, indicating stock is limited.

You can also find early Prime Day deals on dozens of Apple devices, including $299 iPads, $499 AirPods Max 2, and 2026 MacBook Airs from $949 in our early Prime Day Apple deals roundup.

Additional early Prime Day Apple deals

Nintendo is introducing a new account-history requirement for Switch 2 purchases in Japan to keep consoles away from resellers. The move targets the multi-language Nintendo Switch 2 sold through the official Japanese Nintendo Store, which scalpers have been buying in bulk because it can be bought for less in Japan and resold abroad.

The price difference explains why scalpers are interested. In Japan, the multi-language Switch 2 is considerably cheaper compared to some other markets. That gap gives resellers room to import units and mark them up overseas, especially while official stock remains limited. The Japan-exclusive model, which only supports Japanese text and characters, is not affected by the new rule.

Nintendo is using account history as a filter

Nintendo said on X that it had found multiple orders linked to suspected resale activity and temporarily paused sales of the multi-language model. When sales resume, buyers will need to meet stricter conditions. Their Nintendo Account must show at least 50 hours of playtime on the original Nintendo Switch by 11:59 PM on May 31, 2026. Playtime from demo titles and free software will not qualify.

The company is also limiting purchases to one console per Nintendo Account. That gives Nintendo a way to reduce repeat buying while making fresh accounts less useful for resellers.

Nintendo takes a page out of Valve’s playbook

The Switch 2 has become one of the most practical handheld gaming console options, especially after Valve’s Steam Deck price hike made PC handhelds a bigger expense for many buyers. Still, Nintendo’s console will not stay immune to higher pricing for long, with its own price increase expected soon.

Scalpers have been a thorn in the side of gamers for years. Valve faced a similar issue with the recent Steam Controller launch, where units quickly sold out and appeared on resale sites at inflated prices. Valve responded with a reservation queue, purchase-history checks, and a one-controller-per-account limit.

Nintendo is now applying a similar idea to the Switch 2. Fresh accounts will have a much harder time passing the check, which could reduce bulk buying through the Japanese store.