If testing season has you buried in prep packets, we found this one for you. We've heard from thousands of teachers in 40 states who swapped the packets for free 5-minute games — and they're loving it.

Groovelit's free game collections are built for your state test. Five-minute games where your students:

Every game targets the exact constructed response and vocabulary skills their assessment measures — but it feels like an argument they want to win.

📚 New AI resources this week

1️⃣ The Viral Video That's Getting EdTech Wrong — Again (via Andrew Marcinek) — He sums up the “anti-tech” movement with so many points I’ve been thinking about recently.

2️⃣ K–12 Edtech in 2026: Five Trends Shaping the Year Ahead (via EdSurge) — An analysis of why 2026 is the "year of the agent," where AI has shifted from a standalone tool to an embedded feature in every district purchasing decision.

3️⃣ AI’s Future for Students Is in Our Hands (via Brookings Institution) — A strategic report on ethical stewardship, urging leaders to move from "spectators" to active participants in regulating AI’s impact on child development.

Last week’s poll: How do you feel about proposed legislation regarding device bans and screen time limits?

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This legislation provides a hard device/screen time reset that we need. (15)
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
Focus on teaching responsible use rather than creating bans. (71)
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The choice should be up to teachers and schools, not lawmakers. (28)
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️
These bans and limits are too vague to be enforceable. (7)
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️
Multiple / other ... (8)

Responsible use: I think responsible use is key here. But that also needs to be incorporated in the PD for new tech tools. PD for technology often ends up being spun in a way that makes it seem like the devices/platforms need to be used all the time and not just when appropriate. — M. Lindgren

Too vague: This issue isn't new but the fault lies in two primary areas. First, not preparing students well enough to understand why responsible use is not only important in school, but outside of school and in life in general. The second is we have done a terrible job in providing regular and meaningful Professional Development on the topic of tech use in our classrooms for staff. — D. Kammrath

Responsible use: As a long-time educational technologist, I have serious concerns about these proposed bans. They strip educators of their vital role in determining what's best for student learning in their classroom, deny neurodivergent and ESL learners the vital tools and support they need, and then burden the one person with enforcement who has the least time and reason to do so (the teacher). That's a recipe for disaster. — D. Rondot

Responsible use: If teachers just let students be on devices ALL THE TIME with no purpose, that is a problem. However, there are definitely times that technology can help students and teachers do something in a better way. Plus, I still doubt the world is going to become less technology-centric, and our students just won’t have been prepared to deal with things as they are. — L. Rogers

Up to teachers/schools: In my district, use has actually leveled out and devices are only used when it enhances instruction. I personally believe the legislation is a back end way of saving districts money as we reach end of life of covid funded 1:1 devices. Replacement costs are becoming a factor in decision making. — A. Schroeder

What’s a topic you’d like to see covered here? Hit REPLY to this email and let me know.

Have you done anything you’d like to share with the AI for Admins community? Hit REPLY and let me know.

Would you like to write a guest post to support and equip AI for Admins readers? Hit REPLY and let me know.

🗳 Poll: Keeping students thinking in class

Instructions:

👩‍🏫 EdTech Coach: Write without tech — or cheat like a kid

This post is written by Brittanie Payne, the Instructional Coach for Technology for El Campo ISD in El Campo, Texas. She is a former high school ELA teacher. When she’s not at work, she likes spending time with her family and watching football. Go Chiefs!

As a former high school ELA teacher, when ChatGPT first released to the public in the fall of 2022, I felt the same panic that most teachers did.  

“What do you mean that there is this free tool on the internet that can write for you?  I just type in a prompt (or copy and paste it from the assignment directions my teacher gave me) and it spits out a response that I can copy and paste over into a Google Doc to turn in? How will teachers know that students have done this?  What happens to the longstanding traditional essays of high school ELA lore?  WHAT DO YOU MEAN?!”  

With the release of Chat, and the subsequent AI onslaught in pretty much every technology platform that teachers and students use in the educational setting, it was easy to turn to fear and assume the worst – students will cheat with this if they have access.  

What can we do to prevent that from happening?  

The simplest and easiest answer was a blanket ban – and many school districts are still living this reality.

We wanted AI checkers (thinking that they’d be like plagiarism checkers). We’ve found that they aren’t reliable.  They frequently produce false positives, especially for our neurodivergent learners or non-native English speakers.  As the edtech coach for my school district, I tell teachers to avoid them at all costs as I’ve yet to find one that I find reliable or worth using.  

Instead, I tell my teachers to do 2 things: 

Let’s dive into what I actually mean by these 2 suggestions.

When I tell teachers to have students write without technology I mean to put pencil to paper.  This can be as informal as having students do a “brain dump” on a topic,  write their responses to warm-ups (bellringers) or exit tickets on paper,  or doing quickwrites that maybe aren’t even related to anything academic to having students write a first draft of an essay by hand without access to devices during the class period.  

The goal here is to get a sense of how your students write.  Having students write anything without technology will give you a sense of their natural writing ability and their writing voice.  This is a way of getting to know your students that can be easily overlooked.  Seeing how they phrase things is often what tips teachers off to something being amiss when reading typed work and questioning if a student plagiarized or used AI, and this is something you can often get accurate without the use of any plagiarism or AI checkers, just because you’ve gotten to know the students and their typical writing styles. 

I also tell my teachers that if we want to know what our students may be doing with AI and our assignments, cheat like a student would.  When I first started playing with ChatGPT back in November of 2022, I took on the mindset of a junior sitting in my high school ELA Honors class. I even thought like one might: “You think I can’t cheat with Chat?  You think it can’t write a beautiful literary analysis essay about The Great Gatsby for me?  Bet.”  

It was game on.  

I plugged in a past assignment prompt and I went back and forth between prompting and reiterating what I knew the essay had to include to meet the requirements.  As other AI tools and apps became available, I’d do the same: plug in one of my past assignments and go to town.  

Here’s what I found. Back in 2022, Chat could give me some pretty good material IF I had a solid foundation of what I needed it to do which most students likely wouldn’t have yet.  As I’ve plugged in different types of assignments and as AI has constantly improved, I’ve found that sometimes it hits the mark.  

This is where it can get uncomfortable as an educator. (Many teachers miss this step, I think.) Doing this – cheating like a student might – caused me to reflect.  

Sometimes, we, as veteran educators, get into our groove.  We create assignments or assessments that we love. We use them year after year without adjustment because we know that they were once grounded in solid pedagogy. We believe they’re a stepping stone to deep learning or truly understanding and mastering the content. 

But we have to ask: are they still relevant in the same way in today’s classroom?  Do you need to make adjustments?  

Asking yourself those questions can raise some emotions – trust me, I felt them, too, but this is where you need to be honest with yourself as a teacher and you need to be willing to adapt.  

Teaching in today’s classroom requires ongoing reflection and adjustment. You can empower your students with authentic writing and learning opportunities that they won’t be able to easily “cheat” their way through.  The discomfort you might feel about AI is a necessary step toward deciding what needs to change because ignoring this very real part of your students’ present and future is no longer an option.

Want to hear more from Brittanie? Listen to her episode about AI checkers on the EdTech Bites podcast … or check out her website … or follow her on Instagram.