I agree with the concerns associated with edtech and ai but despite the hard work of many educators the system was broken before the introduction to edtech and perhaps educators were searching for solutions to improve the system. Although technology is not the answer. Instead, centering students developmental needs often indirectly improves learning! Check out the research emerging on publically funded montessori. One of many researchers out of the university of Virginia is Angeline Stoll Lillard.
I see digital technology as a tool, and the outcome depends on how we use it. A child can research history, explore geography, learn a language, or create something — or spend hours scrolling social media, gaming, and watching brain rot on YouTube. That is why I support banning smartphones in schools and bringing back long-form reading. The real issue is not screen time alone, but whether children use technology consciously or allow it to fragment their attention. With endless scrolling and constant stimulation, reduced attention span and fragmented thinking may become typical for an entire generation.
I taught high school students for 28 years and witnessed the technology takedown and how administrators promoted it as a marketing strategy - the sad keeping-up-with-the-neighbors syndrome. This quote I agree with wholeheartedly:
“Administrators should take a year to stabilize and assess the situation, pausing all new tech adoption, performing a detailed tech audit, and conducting a cost-benefit analysis. Then the tech-reduction journey should begin, by demanding data, isolating tech to a lab or cart, formalizing opt-outs for families, giving teachers a no-tech veto, and “recentering” the teacher in the classroom—recognizing the power of that personal relationship with students.”
I used tech labs/carts as a way to focus and monitor tech activities ensuring students worked on a project in a given time frame. It worked well. Then we migrated to school issued iPads, then school issued laptops, then BYOD. How detrimental that progression was is now coming into view. There is on way to monitor and focus generalized computer usage by students.
I’d also point out that parents should find out where the money goes in their schools beyond the annual budget stats that any institution publishes. How much money does technology absorb? The findings may be surprising if they included hardware and software acquisitions, licenses, applications, security, repairs, salaries, etc. It can be staggering to see how much is spent on technology. There is no fair budget distribution with technology.
I often imagine what it would be like to teach students. I'd want to have a piece of face jewelry that prevents scanning my face. I'd probably enforce phones have to be hidden and turned off. That no transcribing devices are legally ok to be used during classes. But what would actually be possible to enforce? If it's not possible to demand, would I have to start every class explaining my reasoning to convince students to remain analog for the duration of the class?
As a former teacher and STEAM school administrator, I totally agree with all of this. When I took over my building, I immediately cut every ed-tech product my teachers were using because our student outcomes were terrible.
That said, I do believe that the purposeful use of technology, when leveraged to help kids solve authentic problems and engage in standards-aligned project-based learning, does support student learning. I also believe that students should have multiple ways to “show what they know." For one kiddo, that might mean demonstrating their learning about a historical event by creating a documentary in iMovie, while another kiddo creates a scene from that same event out of cardboard and explains it.
While I am fully supportive of getting rid of all ed-tech created by corporate giants (I did), I just hope that we don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Katherine Martinko: on allowing EdTech to encourage use of technologies such as AI allowing - nay encouraging - children's brains to atrophy as a result. She says "it’s an egregious abdication of responsibility to [make this choice] on behalf of children. In fact, I’d even go so far as to say it’s an act of deprivation and of profound neglect, to allow children’s education—which establishes a crucial cognitive foundation for the rest of their lives—to be handed off to digital tools." Thanks for shooting straight Katherine.
The province of Manitoba, where I live, is preparing to enact laws that will restrict the use of online tools and AI by minors. The premier has made it pretty clear already that he hates the stuff.
Great review. While we're all debating this, Norway just acted on it — last week they banned generative AI for grades 1–7, citing "cognitive offloading," kids outsourcing the thinking instead of building the ability themselves. They're even moving funding from tablets back to books. Their 2024 school phone ban already showed results: better grades, less bullying.
The "productive struggle" IS working something out before the answer arrives. That friction is the learning, and it's the first thing a screen removes. It's why we need to have kids "crack codes by hand" instead of handing them an app.
I heartily agree. I taught high school ELA and our department regularly fought off attempts to replace our printed stories and novels with screen readers.
That said, there is a place for technology: primarily finding sources during research (to print and read) and penultimate drafts of writing assignments (for revision, editing, and polishing).
I would also argue that there are other places that technology helps in a classroom where the individual teacher with 30 students at a time can’t: plugging the individual learning gaps students have in basic skills.
Nearly every teacher at the secondary level can relate to this. My favorite was the one student who called an apostrophe a “flying comma.” (I will never call it anything else, now!) He had no idea what it was for. In 11th grade.
But then another kid said, “yeah, what’s that mark called?” Most kids in the room laughed. But every one of them had gaps in their grammar, punctuation, or sentence construction skills.
Spending time teaching and practicing each skill at that point was necessary for some students, but a waste of time for others. The most valuable edtech programs I used in my class helped identify individual learning gaps and provided targeted instruction and practice. I would have fought equally hard to keep them!
I agree with the concerns associated with edtech and ai but despite the hard work of many educators the system was broken before the introduction to edtech and perhaps educators were searching for solutions to improve the system. Although technology is not the answer. Instead, centering students developmental needs often indirectly improves learning! Check out the research emerging on publically funded montessori. One of many researchers out of the university of Virginia is Angeline Stoll Lillard.
I see digital technology as a tool, and the outcome depends on how we use it. A child can research history, explore geography, learn a language, or create something — or spend hours scrolling social media, gaming, and watching brain rot on YouTube. That is why I support banning smartphones in schools and bringing back long-form reading. The real issue is not screen time alone, but whether children use technology consciously or allow it to fragment their attention. With endless scrolling and constant stimulation, reduced attention span and fragmented thinking may become typical for an entire generation.
I taught high school students for 28 years and witnessed the technology takedown and how administrators promoted it as a marketing strategy - the sad keeping-up-with-the-neighbors syndrome. This quote I agree with wholeheartedly:
“Administrators should take a year to stabilize and assess the situation, pausing all new tech adoption, performing a detailed tech audit, and conducting a cost-benefit analysis. Then the tech-reduction journey should begin, by demanding data, isolating tech to a lab or cart, formalizing opt-outs for families, giving teachers a no-tech veto, and “recentering” the teacher in the classroom—recognizing the power of that personal relationship with students.”
I used tech labs/carts as a way to focus and monitor tech activities ensuring students worked on a project in a given time frame. It worked well. Then we migrated to school issued iPads, then school issued laptops, then BYOD. How detrimental that progression was is now coming into view. There is on way to monitor and focus generalized computer usage by students.
I’d also point out that parents should find out where the money goes in their schools beyond the annual budget stats that any institution publishes. How much money does technology absorb? The findings may be surprising if they included hardware and software acquisitions, licenses, applications, security, repairs, salaries, etc. It can be staggering to see how much is spent on technology. There is no fair budget distribution with technology.
I often imagine what it would be like to teach students. I'd want to have a piece of face jewelry that prevents scanning my face. I'd probably enforce phones have to be hidden and turned off. That no transcribing devices are legally ok to be used during classes. But what would actually be possible to enforce? If it's not possible to demand, would I have to start every class explaining my reasoning to convince students to remain analog for the duration of the class?
As a former teacher and STEAM school administrator, I totally agree with all of this. When I took over my building, I immediately cut every ed-tech product my teachers were using because our student outcomes were terrible.
That said, I do believe that the purposeful use of technology, when leveraged to help kids solve authentic problems and engage in standards-aligned project-based learning, does support student learning. I also believe that students should have multiple ways to “show what they know." For one kiddo, that might mean demonstrating their learning about a historical event by creating a documentary in iMovie, while another kiddo creates a scene from that same event out of cardboard and explains it.
While I am fully supportive of getting rid of all ed-tech created by corporate giants (I did), I just hope that we don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Katherine Martinko: on allowing EdTech to encourage use of technologies such as AI allowing - nay encouraging - children's brains to atrophy as a result. She says "it’s an egregious abdication of responsibility to [make this choice] on behalf of children. In fact, I’d even go so far as to say it’s an act of deprivation and of profound neglect, to allow children’s education—which establishes a crucial cognitive foundation for the rest of their lives—to be handed off to digital tools." Thanks for shooting straight Katherine.
The province of Manitoba, where I live, is preparing to enact laws that will restrict the use of online tools and AI by minors. The premier has made it pretty clear already that he hates the stuff.
Great piece--I look forward to tracking down this book!
Great review. While we're all debating this, Norway just acted on it — last week they banned generative AI for grades 1–7, citing "cognitive offloading," kids outsourcing the thinking instead of building the ability themselves. They're even moving funding from tablets back to books. Their 2024 school phone ban already showed results: better grades, less bullying.
The "productive struggle" IS working something out before the answer arrives. That friction is the learning, and it's the first thing a screen removes. It's why we need to have kids "crack codes by hand" instead of handing them an app.
I heartily agree. I taught high school ELA and our department regularly fought off attempts to replace our printed stories and novels with screen readers.
That said, there is a place for technology: primarily finding sources during research (to print and read) and penultimate drafts of writing assignments (for revision, editing, and polishing).
I would also argue that there are other places that technology helps in a classroom where the individual teacher with 30 students at a time can’t: plugging the individual learning gaps students have in basic skills.
Nearly every teacher at the secondary level can relate to this. My favorite was the one student who called an apostrophe a “flying comma.” (I will never call it anything else, now!) He had no idea what it was for. In 11th grade.
But then another kid said, “yeah, what’s that mark called?” Most kids in the room laughed. But every one of them had gaps in their grammar, punctuation, or sentence construction skills.
Spending time teaching and practicing each skill at that point was necessary for some students, but a waste of time for others. The most valuable edtech programs I used in my class helped identify individual learning gaps and provided targeted instruction and practice. I would have fought equally hard to keep them!