🤖 What about these cries for "no devices, no screens"?

📺 The Ditch Summit starts on Monday!

It’s almost time for Ditch Summit — our annual free online conference for educators! It starts on Dec. 15 (this Monday!) and lasts until Jan. 11.

Sessions are pre-recorded — and there are several to get you thinking about AI in education! Of this year’s new sessions …

• My session on student AI literacy shares LOTS of morsels from my upcoming book, AI Literacy in Any Class, about how teachers can embed AI literacy lessons in what they’re already teaching.

• I co-present a session with Ken Shelton and Holly Clark about teacher AI literacy. In it, we share ideas right out of our teacher AI literacy certification course.

• In a spotlight sponsor session, Clay Smith from Google shares practical ways that teachers AND students can use custom Gems to support learning in very personalized ways.

Plus, there are several other sessions from previous years’ summits on AI …

… and, of course, not everything’s about AI! We have 100+ total presentations to choose from — a collection of sessions from 10 years of Ditch Summits!

Plus, you can generate FREE certificates of completion for professional development credit by watching the presentations!

📺 SHARE THIS WITH YOUR STAFF: Here’s a document you can copy/paste into an email with details about the summit. Let them know about the summit in case they want to learn alongside us — and knock out some PD hours from the comfort of their couch!

📚 New AI resources this week

1️⃣ Helping K-12 schools navigate the complex world of AI (via MIT) — The MIT Teaching Systems Lab released a new guidebook aiming to help school leaders thoughtfully craft AI policies and practices based on real educator and student experiences.

2️⃣ New Jersey schools and students are cautiously embracing AI in the classroom (via WHYY) — A recent report found a growing number of teachers and students use the technology, which is becoming a more common part of everyday life.

3️⃣ How One District Uses AI to Build More Efficient Master School Schedules (via EdWeek) — One U.S. district reports saving substantial administrative time and money by using AI to generate optimized class schedules — an example of non-instructional AI use with real cost/efficiency gains.

📢 Your voice: The future of AI in education

Last week’s poll: Which of these ideas resonates with you most?

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ Redesign assessment to measure human judgment (10)
🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Implement continuous, formative assessment (8)
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Prioritize a pedagogy-first AI strategy (20)
🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ Mandate comprehensive AI literacy (10)
🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ Protect the teacher-student relationship (9)
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Something else ... (0)

Prioritize a pedagogy-first AI strategy: If AI use by educators is not grounded in research-backed teaching practices, it reinforces ineffective teaching and deepens the cognitive debt we've accrued through inauthentic assessments and busy work. — L. Crunk

Redesign assessment to measure human judgment: It used to be that a well-written and cited essay was the demonstration of the process - you couldn't get there unless you did the work. Now, the end result can be created by a LLM. Therefore, we need to refocus on the process or change what the end result is. — Lindsey Bolin

Redesign assessment to measure human judgment: If traditional assessments can be completed nearly instantly by AI, our expectations for how students demonstrate knowledge need to evolve. We already know multiple-choice tests offer a limited view of student understanding, and writing tasks that rely on rote memorization are becoming equally obsolete. This doesn't mean students shouldn't learn to write; it simply means we must assess them differently. — Rachel Doty, Broken Arrow, OK

Mandate comprehensive AI literacy: AI is not going away, and it will never be like it is today, again. It is already so deeply embedded in our every day lives both personally and professionally, and it is only going to grow and expand. We cannot ignore this. We must take action to teach students about all aspects of AI and digital literacies, and mandate this teaching. It is as critical as learning to read and write. — Crystal Blais, Technology Integrator

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🗳 Poll: The place of edtech in the classroom

Instructions:

1. Please vote on this week’s poll. It just takes a click!

2. Optional: Explain your vote / provide context / add details in a comment afterward.

3. Optional: Include your name in your comment so I can credit you if I use your response. (I’ll try to pull names from email addresses. If you don’t want me to do that, please say so.)

💻 What about these cries for "no devices, no screens"?

I’ve seen growing cries on social media about the concerns over educational technology.

A few weeks ago, Wharton professor Adam Grant was calling for a ban on laptops in classrooms.

I’ve seen plenty of short-form videos on TikTok like the one below, stating something like “we gave students laptops and took away their brains.”

And, in addition to all of that, you don’t have to look very far to see the cries against artificial intelligence and its potential harms in education.

It’s easy to make an argument here. The way that these people present their arguments, there’s one common denominator here.

Devices — and the mind-numbing screens that kids are constantly watching.

Honestly, as a teacher AND as a parent, I think they are right …

… but only to a point.

As school leaders — in a position to advise and guide our educational organizations on artificial intelligence (and, likely, technology in general), here’s what’s crucial …

We have to understand there is NUANCE in this conversation.

Let’s look at both sides.

Why they’re right: The concerns about tech

All you have to do is spend time around kids (or adults) who spend lots of time on devices to see the impact.

The evidence is growing:

• Teens who spend 4 or more hours per day on screens are significantly more likely to report mental health issues – about 1 in 4 of these heavy users experience symptoms of anxiety (27%) or depression (26%) in a given two-week period (CDC, 2024).

• Sleep disruption: Excessive screen time is linked to later bedtimes and poorer sleep quality in young people. Kids with high device use tend to get less sleep and suffer more insomnia and daytime fatigue, partly because the blue light from screens at night disrupts their normal sleep cycles (CDC, 2025).

• Attention span and ADHD: Too much screen use is consistently associated with worse attention and increased hyperactivity in children. Studies have found that excessive, unstructured screen time can aggravate ADHD symptoms, likely by disrupting sleep and altering brain development (Clinical Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 2025).

• Academic performance: High screen use correlates with lower academic achievement. For example, one study found that elementary students with more daily screen time scored lower on standardized reading and math tests compared to those with limited screen exposure (JAMA Network Open, 2023).

Personally, I can attest to this. I’m basically a walking, breathing case study.

Observations from my own classroom

I taught high school Spanish for 11 years — from 2004 to 2015. When I left the classroom to do professional development and write full-time, the students I taught were different in many ways.

I found that out when I returned to the classroom in spring 2024 — and can confirm it again this year.

Even in the 2014-2015 school year, cell phones were a growing phenomenon in schools. They weren’t fully entrenched — and social media was still growing compared to today.

Now, there’s short-form video … ads everywhere … misinformation and disinformation. Social media culture drives students’ in-person culture (which you know if you’ve heard a kid say “skibidi” or “6-7” in the past couple years).

Informally, I can tell you that the learning that used to stick in my first stint in teaching? It takes longer to stick now … and the attention isn’t what it used to be.

After that mountain of evidence, is there even an argument that can be made for using technology in learning?

Yes. Absolutely there’s an argument.

That’s because the counter-argument — the growing movement toward banning tech in the classroom — is based on all-or-nothing thinking.

Why the binary “all tech / no tech” argument doesn’t work

When we start to dig into these claims, we see that there are problems. But the problems aren’t solely the technology — and they don’t go away if we ban the technology.

Claim 1: “It’s time to remove laptops from classrooms.”

• THE CLAIM: The research he cites shows that students get better grades when they take notes by hand, not with a laptop.

• THE ALL-OR-NOTHING THINKING: Because students take better notes without technology, we should ban laptops.

• THE COUNTERCLAIM: Students use laptops for other things than notes. Use them for more effective methods — and encourage students to take notes by hand.

Claim 2: “We gave students laptops and took away their brains.”

• THE CLAIM (among others, it’s a four-part series): Citing a book called The Digital Delusion, she says “consuming information through screens” has led to “failing performance, fractured attention, and an erosion of rigorous thought.”

• THE ALL-OR-NOTHING THINKING: Because students consume information through screens, we’ve taken away their brains.

• THE COUNTERCLAIM: Students aren’t just consuming information through screens — and there are uses of their technology that promote rigorous thought.

Claim 3: “AI is going to kill our kids’ problem solving and critical thinking.”

• THE CLAIM (in general): AI apps are doing all of the thinking and working for students and making them stupid.

• THE ALL-OR-NOTHING THINKING: Students are only / will only use these apps to avoid thinking in cases where they won’t learn anything.

• THE COUNTERCLAIM: When used appropriately, AI apps can be a huge support to students outside of class, to personalize/differentiate learning, and to push deeper learning to higher levels.

Of course, you aren’t going to go viral on social media or make the TV news with a tempered approach like this.

Before I move on, let me be clear …

Screens, devices, and edtech can be dangerous. Social media has negative impacts on mental health.

These devices have caused harm. Just because I made counterclaims above doesn’t mean that I’m an all-tech guy or an AI cheerleader.

Here’s what lots of these folks haven’t seen (or aren’t considering).

I’ve seen the positive impacts of these technologies when used effectively. And to totally rule them out takes potentially positive resources out of the hands of teachers and students.

Instead of the all-or-nothing thinking, let’s try this instead …

Let’s focus more on practice and less on devices

Personally, I started really seeing it during COVID. Remote learning was imposed on teachers who had little to no experience (or training) on effective tech integration.

The cries came pretty quickly, from teachers, students AND parents: “Learning with technology is terrible. Let’s never do this again.”

(More all-or-nothing thinking, by the way.)

Now that the cries are back, let’s go back to the same conclusion we could have drawn from COVID-era remote teaching …

Tech can support solid, deep, rigorous learning.

Tech can create barriers and distractions and deficits.

Let’s equip teachers with research-backed practices.

And let’s encourage them to evaluate what really works (and then do what really works).

(Ask any school district tech integration specialist what they’ve been encouraging throughout the last decade and this is what they’ll point to.)

Example: A glimpse into my Spanish classes

I wrote “How much I use paper in class” in my Ditch That Textbook newsletter in November. I talked about how I only use tech for certain things but I’m considered a very techy guy … and I wondered, does this make me a fraud?

Some examples:

• My students do story retells on paper.

• They do five-minute timed writings on paper.

• They draw vocabulary pictures on paper.

• My class participation system — it’s based on handing out little slips of paper for participation points. Then I count them by hand.

• I give all of my quizzes and tests on paper.

Does this mean I won’t use edtech or AI? Nope. Just means I’m a teacher that thinks with my own brain and I pick and choose when to use it.

Some examples:

• My students get repetitions with online review games on Chromebooks.

• My students do practice activities when they have a substitute teacher with an AI chatbot (so they can get instant feedback instead of no feedback).

• My students sometimes write practice sentences in Pear Deck or other apps on Chromebooks so we can immediately see their responses.

(I’m still phasing back into teaching so I’m still adding new things.)

This nuance seems to be lost on the all-or-nothing screaming heads on social media and TV news.

Enough with the all-or-nothing thinking already

So, as school leaders — people with influence about edtech and AI in our schools and districts — what do we do?

I think we have to lean away from the all-or-nothing thinking and get granular. (Granular, as I’m sure you know, means to look at the small details — the individual parts — instead of just the whole.)

We equip our teachers to get granular, picking and choosing where tech makes a difference and actually helps their students.

But we also influence the culture, making sure that teachers know that tech doesn’t magically make teaching/learning better all by itself.

(And we make sure that they know that they don’t need to justify our budget spend. Forcing teachers to integrate tech a certain amount or in certain ways doesn’t help kids. And it doesn’t make your thousands or millions of dollars more justifiable.)

Instead of swinging a sledgehammer with blunt force, let’s empower teachers to use the precision of a scalpel when determining whether tech supports student learning or not.