If your focus is on creating pro-social classrooms, it’s increasingly tempting to ditch technology altogether.
Jessica Grose doesn’t outright state this in the conclusion to her article for The New York Times, but the implication is there.
She makes the case, citing a great article from Jeff Frank of St. Lawrence University, that classrooms should be a sacred place of “authentic connection” free of the constraints and demands of technology.
It’s no doubt a compelling vision and is rooted in a real need. The problem is a screen-free classroom also means learning experiences that lack the tools students use for learning, socializing, and working the moment they step outside school boundaries.
I think there’s another way, and it’s what I was getting at in my EdSurge article from a few weeks ago. We need to, as Grose suggests, “ruthlessly evaluate” edtech but not just for their academic outcomes. We need to vet all tools, no matter their purpose, for their alignment with each school’s cultural goals and values.
Technologies shouldn’t just be efficacious; they should be ethical. Tools shouldn’t just supercharge learning; they should build culture.
This means we need to do honest accounting of whether all the edtech tools used in a classroom support a truly pro-social environment, give students meaningful agency, and match with a teacher’s pedagogical philosophy.
This requires a totally new way of thinking about technology and its place and function in schools. It also requires reworking how we fund, design, develop, and evaluate tools.
It’s no small feat, but this is the kind of transformation required to solve accelerating, technology-intertwined issues like falling academic outcomes, teacher burnout, and student absenteeism.
Originally published on LinkedIn on April 30, 2024.