I’ve spent the past six years learning about the landscape of EdTech: the use of digital tools in and for school. Even though I spent twelve years in the classroom myself (2003-2015), I have become increasingly aware that my classroom experience was vastly different from what is currently happening in schools.
In fact, unless you are a current or very recently retired teacher (like the past two years), or you work directly with school-aged children, few people have a clear understanding about what’s going on in (most) K-12 classrooms in America today.
I don’t mean that as a criticism; it’s an observation.
While we’ve been (understandably) distracted by very real challenges like a pandemic and politics, EdTech companies have captured schools. And they have swept many well-meaning educators and administrators into their net in the process.
Over the past six years, I have spoken to countless parents, friends, educators, lawyers, philanthropists, school administrators, speech pathologists, occupational therapists, developmental scientists, mental health experts, policymakers, and, of course, students, about EdTech. I’ve also witnessed the increased use of EdTech products in my own children’s education (and resisted and opted out when and where I could).
Here is where I stand on EdTech: What we’re doing to children in schools by providing them EdTech products is harming children, their futures, and their humanity.
There are a few who understand the seriousness of this moment. Yes, there are leaders who are starting to pay attention (Jon Haidt and Mike Bloomberg). And of course, there are my friends and allies who have been learning and fighting alongside me the past six years.
But the ones who stand the most to lose by doubling down on EdTech are the ones who aren’t really listening. Perhaps they feel caught between pressures– being an administrator is no easy task, I know. Perhaps they truly don’t understand the scope of the problem. But at this point in time– I don’t know how it isn’t visible to them.
And I might actually amend that previous paragraph– the adults will be fine. The people who are making decisions about whether to give five-year-olds iPads or Chromebooks had analog childhoods, played with 3-D toys and friends, and spent time outdoors.
It is children who have the most to lose:
Young children are seeing pornography on school-issued computers. A developing brain cannot unsee– nor understand– such graphic imagery. This will forever change them.
Middle school students are writing their essays with Chat GPT– available to them in their school-provided suite of EdTech tools. Districts say that students need access to this “transformative” technology. What is “transformative” about this magic homework machine is that children are “transforming” from thinking critically to letting a machine think– and do– for them. That’s not learning.
Elementary school students are watching YouTube for hours per day– during the school day. I have heard this multiple times. And those hours do not include the average of 7.5 hours per day that 8-18 year olds in America currently spend on screens.
High school students in phone-free schools (something I whole-heartedly support) have simply switched their texting and social media surfing to their school laptops or use Google Sheets to insert links that work around school safety controls, and no, the “filters” that schools use don’t catch it all or prevent it. Teens know what a VPN is.
Being an educator means also always being a student. It’s a privilege to continue to learn. So I have six lessons that I hope adults can try and learn to grasp the seriousness of this moment.
Lesson #1: EdTech propaganda is working on school leaders. I hear teachers and administrators repeat EdTech marketing terms ad nauseum: “transformative,” “efficient,” “personalized learning,” “closing the digital divide,” and “AI is our friend.”
Yet they forget (or do not know) that teachers are the most transformative tool in the classroom; that “efficiency” is for machines and technology, not toddlers and teens. “Personalized learning” was a hot topic in my early teaching career over twenty years ago– well before EdTech bastardized it. It simply means meeting each child where she is and serving those needs…something that a gifted teacher knows how to do. And the “new” digital divide is actually socioeconomic– no longer in America is the “digital divide” about providing technology to children who don’t have access to it. Today, it is privileged families who are restricting and limiting it and students of color and low-income families whose time on screens exceeds those of their privileged peers. Seeking “equity” today is now about reducing time on screens; not providing it in the first place. AI and ChatGPT are seen as “amazing” tools– “children should be using them.”
I vehemently disagree: children can learn about safe sex and drugs and alcohol without using them.
Lesson #2: Teachers are on different pages about EdTech. In fact, there is a growing divide. In my conversations with educators I have observed two very different schools of thought. In the first camp I hear: “EdTech is amazing, makes my life easier, and is what kids are used to anyway.” In the second group I hear: “EdTech is destroying the joy of learning, making my life as a teacher much harder, and exposing children to content that is completely inappropriate.”
The problem is, for the first camp, they’re also echoing marketing language from EdTech, who stands to profit mightily from these very beliefs. Rather than support schools in reducing class sizes, EdTech products claim to “ease teacher stress” by outsourcing work to AI or digital products. One teacher told me that “EdTech is great for lazy teachers: they can just sit at their desks and hit ‘play.’”
And yet, I get messages all the time like this (shared anonymously with permission):
“I’ve just returned to the classroom after working in a university and I am shocked at how things have changed since 2015. It is such a challenge to get students to focus. I’ve started to collect their [school-issued] iPads as they walk in the door. I don’t want my [own] kids to be in schools with 1:1 devices. This is not progress!”
Lesson #3: And yet, when asked, teachers could teach without EdTech. This has perhaps been the biggest surprise to me in my conversations with teachers: even though many have been implementing and using EdTech products in the classroom for a while, few of them truly love it or feel like it’s absolutely necessary (recognizing that much of this can be state mandated too, and out of their control).
But more than once I have asked this question: “What would you do tomorrow if all the EdTech tools and products just evaporated?”
And more than once I have received this response: “We would be just fine.”
Schools are spending a lot of time, money, and resources to invest in a product that without which teachers say they would be “just fine.”
Lesson #4: Higher Ed* hasn’t seen the worst yet. On two separate flights recently, I sat next to a college student using ChatGPT to do their quizzes and write their essays. It’s beginning to creep into higher ed, but these students on the plane had screen-light childhoods. Today’s children spend 7 hours on screens per day. Big difference.
With a few exceptions, most higher ed teachers I have spoken with do not yet see the problem. Or, perhaps they see the problem in the form of students using their laptops during lectures to do anything but pay attention or they see students using ChatGPT to do their work, and perhaps they even address it, but they have yet to see the worst of what is to come. I do not, of course, mean the children themselves. I mean that today’s college students were mostly born before the iPhone came out (in 2007!) and most likely didn’t play on a personal iPad in early childhood like today’s two-year-olds (40% of whom have a personal tablet). Which means that today’s college-age students have at least had some opportunity to build critical thinking and executive function skills before arriving in higher ed settings. The landscape will look very different over the next ten years.
*(I am willing to stand corrected on this one, as I myself am venturing into higher ed this spring to teach a seminar at the University of Washington’s Evans School of Public Policy. We shall see, and I will report back on what I learn.)
Lesson #5: Children are not doing better, are not learning more, and are not progressing as a result of the EdTech. Over a decade ago, Steve Jobs said:
“I used to think that technology could help education…But I’ve had to come to the inevitable conclusion that the problem is not one that technology can hope to solve. What’s wrong with education cannot be fixed with technology. No amount of technology will make a dent.”
This is from the inventor of the iPad itself, and yet kindergarteners are regularly coming home with iPads given to them by their schools. We could look at the Nation’s Report Card about declining literacy and math rates, but I honestly don’t even care about what the numbers show. Just ask a seventh grader to handwrite something and tell me if it’s legible. Explain to me why YouTube is available on a first grader’s Chromebook at school when his parents block it at home. Show me the research about why that first grader needs a Chromebook at school in the first place.
I am tired of having to justify why this is bad; I need to see the independently-funded studies that show it is good (spoiler alert: there aren’t any).
Lesson #6: The children are worried about the children. The EdTech (and smartphone) problem is more recent and more pressing that many realize. I recently spoke to a group of tenth graders who told me they feel “lucky” they aren’t children today. One student told me that she babysits younger children who are constantly on TikTok and very influenced by what they see. Another 10th grader who works with a drama club of elementary school students said that the children she works with have lost the ability to imagine:
“Let’s pretend to fly,” she tells them.
“I don’t know how to do that,” they reply. Or “I can't. I'm not a bird.” They don't know how to do something that has been considered innate in children and they're not interested in learning how to do it.
And again, these high schoolers did not have 1:1 devices in their elementary school years. They did not have YouTube accessible to them during the school day. They still knew enough to be able to imagine what it would be like to fly.
I know I often present a lot of the challenges, but I want to make an effort to offer a solution, too. I will be writing about this more in the coming months, but I will start by highlighting a portion of what I spoke about from my newest talk for the Theodore Sedgwick Distinguished Lecture Series, titled “Tech-Intentional™ schools: Why it matters, what it looks like, and how it works,” which I delivered on March 18, 2025, at The Filson Historical Society, Louisville, KY.
The solution to the EdTech problem that exists in schools today is a tech-intentional school.
A tech-intentional school is a school that makes conscious choices to use technology only when that technology is:
Uniquely necessary
Educationally sound
Private by default
Uniquely necessary means that the technology being used is deployed only because no analog alternative is available or superior. It is technology that does something we cannot accomplish solely with a pencil, paper, or teacher, such as learning to write code.
Technology that is educationally sound means schools use independently-funded research to evaluate and assess each digital tool. The technology is pedagogically sound, safe for children, and it works better than any alternative.
Finally, private by default means that schools know if a platform collects data, where that data is stored, and what that platform does with that data. Schools and parents have a clear understanding of what they are consenting to when contracting with such companies.
It is madness to continue to say one thing (“All this tech is great for kids!”) while witnessing the exact opposite (kids are anxious and not learning). I’ve been told I’m on a “witch hunt”-- by a teacher, no less; that I am a “Luddite”-- look that up, it’s actually a compliment; that I should be able to see that “AI can be a child’s friend.”
But I’m not wrong.
One of the best things about being a teacher is that we are also always students– we are always learning– from each other, from the children we work with, from our life experiences. It’s what can make the classroom experience so wonderful (or terrible)-- a teacher who cares and connects can make a lasting impact on a young person’s life.
I am not done learning. I can accept that I may get some of this wrong (in fact, I hope I do). I am willing to be corrected– respectfully, with independent-research and well reasoned arguments, of course. Until then, I will continue to write, act, and think (critically, of course) about all of these issues.
But I need more of us to do that too.
Courage comes from the French word “coeur” which means “heart.” Courage isn’t the absence of fear; it’s having the fear and doing it anyway.
Have the fear, but don’t be had by it.
Find your courage.
And join me. Please.
