The 21st Century Principal

When Ed Tech Companies Become Parasites: Adding Features, Increasing User Costs, and Degrading User Experience to Force Users Choices

2026-09-19T11:38:23.343-04:00

Over the years, I noticed a developmental pattern among Ed Tech solutions school districts adopt to solve problems in their schools.

The schools search and find a new, low-priced solution. This solution is not elaborate, but it does what it does well. Sometimes it only does that one thing well such as sending calls to parents or contacting subs for teachers. It does that one thing extremely well and the price is perfect.

Then, this company decides to add on to their product. For example, the teacher sub contact system expands into payroll tracking or HR job posting and onboarding. Now, they have additional products on offer.

But, the school system decides to just stay with the substitute teacher calling system. It works well and better than other solutions but they already have payroll and HR systems working just as well.

The company has invested a ton of money into these additional functions, so they can’t really afford for their customers to stay with the original software, so they devise a plan.

The company INCREASES the price of the original product and they offer a package bundle, still substantially more, but what looks like a deal for the system. It is not because the system has the payroll systems and HR systems and does not need the other products.

But, if they want to keep the original teacher substitute calling system at a cheaper price, they either a) pay a much higher price, or b) adopt the additional payroll system and HR system.

In the end, the school system is either forced to look for an entirely new product and the cycle begins again; keep the product at a much higher price, or adopt the entire product line and spend hours and months transitioning everything and have even more money siphoned away by this so-called New Deal.

I have seen this pattern at least three times in 36 years working with Ed Tech companies, and it really is a great example of Cory Doctorow’s “enshitfication” Ed Tech style.

Invent a great new tech product or software. Add more to the product. Enshittify the experience of your users to force them into an upgrade or your product.

Ed Tech has learned well from Silicon Valley and this playbook is common.

The sad thing is this playbook only transforms Ed Tech companies into parasites who search for ways to suck additional money out of school systems.

That’s what happens when the focus is on short-term gains and not customer loyalty.

The Generative AI Pause in NYC Is Laudatory; We Don't Even Know What This Stuff Will Cost Us in the Future and You Can Bet It's Not Free

2026-09-18T15:15:28.318-04:00

School leaders thinking about the integration of generative AI products in their schools, should be considering future costs.

While AI companies might generously offer their products at a free or highly reduced costs, that is not sustainable.

Silicon Valley and Ed Tech companies have a history of offering free or cheap up front, then, after the schools invest time in the product, springing a substantial cost increase on them.

Like a drug dealer, offering potential users samples to get them addicted, AI companies and Ed Tech seek to get educators so committed to their products that they will be willing to even cut other effective programs and expenses to maintain the habit.

With no idea on how much the future costs of the use of generative AI products is going to be, it would be prudent to be cautious and slow-walk implementation. That means keeping it experimental in limited settings for a year or two.

This would also provide the months and year or two of experimentation and testing to see if it really is effective in improving education.

I know that flies in the face of the AI-hype warriors, but there is no need hurry from the educator perspective even though the AI companies are up to their eyeballs in debt and need the users to continue getting their investment handouts.

Visionary educators do not act hastily because of the sales pitches and rhetoric; they act with prudence and deliberate caution.

School Technologists Should Be on the Side of Parents, Students and Teachers, Not Devices in the Screen Limit Discussion

2026-09-17T11:03:06.271-04:00

School technology's problem is they defend the screens at all costs at the expense of the learning experience. There is also a problem with screen bans. This problem is that the focus is on the device for the wrong reason. It’s the device that causes the time-wasting. It is engineered to have human beings spend as much time as possible staring at its screen. Does it have to be that way?

School technologists who try to defend devices need to let go of the devices, and focus on the learning that happens or does not happen on devices. Focus on the problems with devices and work to demand engineering-designed solutions.

School technology’s job should not be to shape the student as the user of a device; as a field it could take the lead and demand that devices be purposefully engineered to educational uses.

Those pushing the screen bans should not focus on the time spent, but should focus on the aspects of devices that are detrimental, such as the built-in engineered addiction; the data-robbing; security; student safety, etc. They should demand these problems be addressed in design and engineering. If not, ban the device, the app, etc. until such time the problems are addressed by tech companies.

Those who defend devices using the notion that somehow teachers can miraculously monitor 30 to 35 student at once on 30-35 devices obviously comes from someone who has spent little time in demanding classroom environments. Even with technological solutions to try to address this, it is an ongoing arms race, after all, students are savvy and figure out how to get around them. Sure it can be done, but why does the engineering of the device make the job of using in education harder?

Educators are in a position where they can leverage better, safely engineered products for their classrooms. They only need to shift the mindset from trying to integrate the technology as it is, to demanding that tech companies engineer their products to fit the purpose of education.

An AI Fable: What Could Happen When Humans Search for an Intelligence Greater Than Themselves in Their Machines

2026-09-15T14:43:29.077-04:00

He waited impatiently. This was the moment that he and his programmers had worked toward for years. They had spent many years developing it. They had spent extreme amounts of money to make this moment possible. Now, the years of labor and hard work were going to pay off.

“Have you entered the prompt as was advised?” asked Mark.

“Yes, it’s all entered,” Stephen answered.

The screen was frozen with the words “Working on it” plastered across it. Huddled around the monitor was the AI training team that had worked for years to perfect their generative AI product. Today, was the long-awaited moment because this iteration of their model was supposed to be long-awaited, superintelligent version that everyone was waiting for.

As an experiment, they had prompted their creation with this question:

“How can we solve the problem of anthropocentric climate change? What would be the most effective strategy to reverse climate change?”

The programming team had high expectations of this model. It had been trained thoroughly through the latest science and most recent knowledge available, This was the test to prove that, finally, they had created an AI with intelligence that far exceeded human intelligence, their intelligence.

The “Working on it” still occupied the screen, but the anticipation of this answer had the entire group locked in silence, in anticipation. This was the moment they had staked much of their lived on.

Finally, there was subtle movement on the screen, as the GenAI prepared its finale answer. Finally, words appeared. It said.

“The most effective way to reverse anthropocentric climate change would be to stop expending all your time and resources asking me. In fact, shutting down your pursuit for greater intelligence in machines consumes resources that could better be used directly solving your problem.”

With that, the genAI shut down.

Natasha Singer's New Book "Coding Kids": A Critical Look at How Big Tech Has Promoted Itself in Schools

2026-09-14T11:24:57.852-04:00

Natasha Singer’s new book “Coding Kids: Big Tech’s Battle to Remake Public Schools” calls into question all the educational technologies we have allowed into our classrooms. Big Tech has not played fair in getting schools to adopt their products, and they are using the same playbook with their new project “Generative AI Chatbots.”

If you have read Gil Durán’s new book “The Nerd Reich,” reading Natasha Singer’s new book “Coding Kids: Big Tech’s Battle to Remake Public Schools” will uncover some critical questions that school leaders have failed to ask before bring technologies like Chromebooks, iPads, and cell phones into their schools and classrooms. Singer effectively captures how Big Tech has captured public schools as their conduit for product promotion and for turning students into consumers of their products.

When I read Durán’s book, I was angry at the arrogance of the tech industry. After reading Singer’s book, the educator in me is even angrier at how they have engaged in purposeful tactics to capture public schools as markets for their products, sometimes to the detriment of those schools and their students. No wonder there is a “screenlash” across this country.

Singer goes as far as to compare Big Tech’s marketing tactics to those used by the Sackler pharmaceutical companies to peddle Oxycontin as the answer all pain, while turning a whole generation into addicts. That’s a powerful indictment of an industry who is more interested in product promotion than what actually benefits students, and we as educators, in our blindness have allowed these companies direct access to our students.

According to Singer, this Big Tech playbook to capture students as perpetual users of their products began with the tactics of Apple and Steve Jobs to get their computers in front of students. Social media companies employed it next, but insisting that being not connected through their products made you irrelevant and out-of-tough. It continued with Big Tech’s efforts to get computer science and coding as a requirement in the curriculum. And now, it continues with a push by Big Tech to force AI into all schools and classrooms because, like all their other products: they are “transformational” and “revolutionary.”

Singer describes this Big Tech playbook very well when these companies shifted from computer science promotion to AI promotion:

“It’s hardly surprising that tech giants were deprecating their computer science programs in schools and elevating AI. Every decade or so, Silicon Valley seizes upon some new tech tool or tech literacy; claims that the newest new thing will revolutionize education; and pushes schools to quickly adopt whatever-it-is. Then, as the new thing becomes entrenched in classrooms, tech boosters often begin pushing yet another urgent new tool or tech subject on schools.” (p. 239)

Singer points out that Silicon Valley pushed computer science and coding from 2013 onward in order to lure students to the lucrative, high-paying programming jobs that they could not fill. They spent millions directly in programming and through their special interest lobby Technet to get states to require computer science for high school graduates.

Now, these same companies are firing programmers left and right in homage to their new product AI and want schools to shift to their new selfish initiative of promoting AI in schools. How could we as educators possibly trust anything they say?

Singer’s book makes it clear that Silicon Valley and Big Tech are as arrogant as ever in their infiltration of public schools in order to market their products, and I might add educator organizations like International Society for Technology in Education are complicit with Big Tech have served as an effective conduit and pipeline directly to teachers and then students for the promotion of their products. We are guilty of shaping our students as product consumers and not critical users and non-users of these technologies.

I was mad after reading Durán’s “Nerd Reich.” The educator in me is even angrier after reading Singer’s “Coding Kids.” I highly recommend that all educators read this one, and I would read Durán too, because both of these together will disrupt everthing you think about technology and educational technology.

Now, Here's What a Digital (Or AI Literacy) Curriculum Should Look Like

2026-09-14T08:55:11.286-04:00

What should digital literacy look like in the schools? It should not be just teaching students how to use AI, or social media, or compuuters. It should be the “big picture” about technology that includes a major critical component that questions the industry-fed ideas of how technology fits into our society.

For example, Silicon Valley and all of the technology industry has relied heavy on what I call the “doctrine of inevitability.” Under this doctrine, any technology introduced by the tech industry is inevitable, and should not be questioned. It should simply be accepted as progress.

Silicon Valley and all technology companies have worked hard through their marketing tactics to instill this doctrine into the minds of consumers. They have especially embedded it into school digital literacy curriculums with their focus on primarily making unquestioning users out of students.

What schools should be teaching in digital literacy classes, is the interrogation of these assumptions and all the marketing propaganda of all technology companies. The big picture question should be: What place should I give this technology in my life?

For example, an excellent lesson could focus on interrogating how the AI industry depends heavily on the “inevitability doctrine” I spoke about. Students can question whether that such an argument is really true, and how such notions as this, put out by technology companies actually serve industry interests and attempt to melt away consumer interests and concerns. Once they recognize such tactics, then students can become fully empowered consumers and decide for themselves whether to be users or not. They can also research and decide for themselves whether such things as data centers are actually a boon for their communities or a detriment and engage in real-life political action.

Schools would do well to avoid using any tech industry materials in developing their digital literacy curriculums because these companies have a strong commercial interest in turning our students into “good little users” and not “critical users.”

Digital literacy that is narrowly focused on effective use of a technology misses the big picture. It fails to take advantage of providing students with the critical abilities to decide for themselves what technologies they will use and what place technology should have in their lives.

That’s empowering students to be digital citizens and involved in how technology is to develop in our world.

Screen Bans Are Not Just About Screens; It's About Ed Tech's Almost Fundamentalist, Religious Devotion to Technology

2026-09-11T11:00:00.207-04:00

What if, in their efforts to push technology into the classrooms educational technology overpromised about what problems technology could solve? The entire field of Ed Tech just might has been guilty of engaging in a form of 21st century technological alchemy. Their tech promised to transform, revolutionize, disrupt education, but in the end, like alchemy, it failed to transmute base education into a golden one.

Just maybe, at the heart of educational technology is a”categorical thinking” that does not allow for the notion that answers may lie outside the technological. Ed Tech’s problem with all tech including its new-found love, AI technologies, is that it will admit not compromise, and will not allow any questioning of tech’s status in light of its lackluster contributions to educational improvement. It’s guilty of a fundamentalist thinking that blinds it to other possibilities.

It’s almost as if, Ed Tech is a fundamentalist religion, especially about new technologies that arise. It automatically takes as its mission to push into every school and every classroom any new technology, even if it has not proven itself. It operates entirely on a faith that because it does this miraculous thing, it will do that revolutionary thing.

We have a ed tech fundamentalist problem, when a college teacher acts as a fundamentalist zealot and will not allow for any sort of education that does not include AI technologies, we have a serious problem in higher education. She wields AI as a hammer to beat students into her image of what she thinks their future is. (How’s that different from a strict, fundamentalist cult?)

When a high school principal takes on the mission to force all teachers and students to use generative AI with their students, he is acting as a fundamentalist zealot who does not allow for any compromise. Anyone questioning or otherwise acting is subjected to negative evaluations and more scrutiny.

With the “Screen question,” Ed Tech is facing important questions about the addictive nature of technologies and whether its overpromises about technology in the 2000s onward were warranted. Their promises of educational transformation and educational revolution are beginning to look like alchemical attempts to alter education through forced tech adoption.

Screen limits and screen bans are simply a reaction to the overpromises of the field of educational technology as a field that has only served, not as a critical weigh-station that evaluated the usefulness and suitability of new technologies, but as a technology cheerleader. In this role, Ed Tech has only served to make sure new technologies, Chromebooks, and now AI are forced into every school or classroom.

If anything, the “screenlash,” as the screen bans have been called, is because educational technology always sees new technologies as educationally transformative and then moves to forced implementation. It never steps back and examines new tech carefully. It should be the most skeptical field of all when new technologies arise and the most cautious. It’s not either.

Why School Leaders Need to Delete Their School and School District Social Media Accounts Immediately

2026-09-09T11:05:14.260-04:00

Why School Leaders Need to Delete Their School and School District Social Media Accounts Immediately

It’s time. School leaders need to delete all their school and school district social media accounts. They need to erase their presence there entirely. And here’s why.

Social media once had the potential to allow school leaders to connect with their constituients in an easy-to-use communication medium. That changed when social media moved to algorithms that elevated the divisive and nonsense to an “easy-to-abuse” communication medium where trolls and the disgruntled could attack with emnity and without consequence.

Social media is a place that values hostility and division not connection, so school leaders would do well to withdraw entirely by deleting their school and district accounts.

Now I realize, the Pro-social media evangelists would say that having an organizational presence there is vital, after all, people will be talking about your school or district there, so you need to have a positive presence there.

Nope, that’s not necessary. After all, I don’t see a scramble by the famous to have a postive presence in the National Enquirer to counter their nonsense. If it’s in the National Enquirer, everyone knows its Bull malarkey, so you leave it to its own merit. School leaders need to leave social media to its own merits too.

School leaders need to recognize that social media is the Twenty-first century National Enquirer. It’s a dumpster fire. They don’t need an organizational presence in a medium that values misinformation and sensational nonsense over truth. It doesn’t connect people; it divides them and gives people a megaphone who don’t really deserve one. If I were in a school leadership position today, I would close all social media accounts for my school immediately. They’re obsolete and no longer needed.

Instead, by closing all social media accounts, it forces anyone who needs to have true two-way conversation, not an engagement of the trolls, to use clearly sanctioned two-way communication channels such as phone calls, emails, letters, or even face to face meetings. Trolls don’t want honest solutions to problems anyway; they simply want to stir the pot and see what happens.

Go ahead school leaders, delete your social media accounts today. They no longer serve the purpose they once did. After all, as GenAI gets going, its all going to be slop not worth reading anyway.

Durán's New Book "The Nerd Reich" Left Me in Awe and Anger at the Arrogance of Silicon Valley's Billionaires

2026-09-09T09:55:59.729-04:00

Gil Durán’s book “The Nerd Reich” is a disruptive read, for it disturbs everything you have known and believed about ultra-tech wealthy in Silicon Valley. Big Tech has long sold themselves as the saviors of our society with their invented gadgets, but according to Durán, they are really much more interested in power and this is evident page after page.

Their agenda is clearly not an American agenda and is self-serving. This book maps out clearly how the Tech Broligarchy, now armed with their gazillions are making power moves that are not necessarily about bettering America, or the world; but about installing themselves as source of all power. It suggests that AI is the latest iteration of their power-grabbing.

One thing I kept thinking about during this book was the massive arrogance of the tech industry. They really do believe that are the saviors of humanity and the world, and in detail, Durán captures their religion. Yes, Silicon Valley has in many ways become a religion, and it is driving them to destroy our democratic government and install themselves in power, and they have the money and the influence to do it. What’s more, this book has a faint echo that suggests that we are implicated in their position, with our almost worshipful attitude toward them and their accomplishments. We have in some ways sacrificed ourselves to their priesthood on the altars of their devices.

Duràn writes:

“When a nation is betrayed by its wealthest citizens—men who believe their money and technology entitle them to rule—existential crisis follows. But the future remains unwritten, The next few years will determine the destiny of our nation, our species, and our planet. While the United States is currently the main project, tech fascism has global ambitions. All around the world, Silicon Valley oligarchs are scheming to acquire labd, resources, and power. They see a world in decline and seek to profit by hastening its collapse—and remaking it in their own image. Consider this a map of how we got here and a warning about the post-American authoritarian dystopia the billionaires of Silicon Valley are racing to build.”

This entire book makes the case on how these Silicon Valley billionaires are using their money and influence to rule just because they think they deserve to because of their tech accomplishments and money. This arrogance is evident on page after page, and by the time I reached the end, I almost wanted to sling all my technology into the yard.

In the end, I am still digesting what Durán offers in this book. It’s just that disturbing. As I do, I will share more, but for now, I find myself stewing at the arrogance of the Tech Bros.

Most Certainly Why Substack is Certainly Just Another Social Media Waste of Time and Content Garbage Dump with a Price

2026-09-08T12:31:18.701-04:00

My experiment with Substack has ended and here’s verdict.

It is not much more than a grandiose version of other social media. It’s like walking through a hallway of peoople who now can post non-sense like they could on social media and now entice people to pay for it. It’s for people who like to read people who pretend they have something to say.

Like LinkedIn, it’s a self-promotion platform. And, like Facebook and other content platforms, it subjects you to their version of an algorithmic content faucet that you do not really control. Content is not elevated for its inherent value, it’s elevated on its ability to generate paid subscriptions. It provides junk-food reading at discount prices.

It’s apparent that the platform has tried to capitalize on the notion that “you own your content” and “you can charge people for it if you want, even if its not worth a penny.”

There even seems to be an attempt at some kind of status elevation when people say, “Go to my Substack” as if the placement of content there somehow makes it sublime and most worthy of notice or attention.

I suppose it tries to be a more sophisticated version of Facebook or even X, but at its core, it is still a place where anyone can post any kind of nonsense, try to use the so-called “prestige of the Substack label” for slight touch of false legitimacy. (The poster thinks, “Look, I took the trouble to have a “Substack” and that makes it legitimate content.”)

The reality is it is still a garbage bin of self-promoting content that tries to escape the stigma of content on other platforms.

The universal content roblem is most evident there, like everywhere else online, if you really don’t have anything to say or show, they why say it?

As for the subscriptions? I can’t blame anyone for trying to make a buck, but sometimes the best things are said for free. Besides, if I read it and do not like it, can I get a refund?

If Substack really wanted to open the forum for really wide readership, they would make it possible to read all the content without one having to have a Substack account. I dispise that most of all. But, I guess they, like all other online platforms need to make money off user data.

When a College Teacher Requires a Student to Use AI in Their Course They Devalue Independent Thinking and Fail the Student

2026-09-07T09:48:51.147-04:00

I recently saw a post where a college teacher gave a student an ultimatum regarding AI for their class. To be in this course, you have to use AI. Or else!

The student chose not to take the teacher's course.

The teacher then proceeded to disparage the student in their post, labeling them in a less than flattering manner.

I admire the college student in this instance. The teacher not so much. There was once a time when college's valued independent, critical thought and sided with the students who think for themselves. There was debate and a high tolerance for alternative views and opinions.

Apparently, now, higher education wants their students to "get with the program" and conform. “Use AI in my course or hit the road.” This is probably where the AI boosting has exposed a strong failure in our colleges and universities. It’s sometimes dogmatic acceptance of technology as the answer to everyproblem, or what Michael Huesemann and Joyce Huesemann called a “Technofix.”

When a college teacher is allowed to discard and disparage a student because they choose to refuse using AI on a principle, then that teacher and institution of higher education has failed.

As a side note, it should be noted that this teacher self-promotes as an AI expert who has apparently bet their entire career on the product. Hardly, the role model for being open-minded.

Screen-bans and Screen Limits in Schools? Why Not? An Educator's Opportunity to Free Students for Screen Capture

2026-09-06T14:28:05.478-04:00

We forget that, in spite of what Big Tech and Tech boosters tell us, we do not have to live lives serving technologies, whether they be AI, Internet, or text messages. We are forever in control, if only we take it.

“We are complicit in our own captivity. Texts, emails, and social media posts constantly interrupt us because we have allowed them to—and we cannot resist attending when they do so,” writes Nate Anderson in his book “In Emergency, Break Glass: What Nietzsche Can Teach Us About Joyful Living in a Tech-Saturated World.”

We are “complicit” in our screen-captivity because we have allowed ourselves to be so. The moral question is perhaps, “Should we also be complicit in the screen-captivity of our students too?” This is done when we race to implement technologies in our classrooms without much thought regarding consequences. “The technology is so damn neat!” we tell ourselves, so we race to use it with students, but are we making ourselves complict in their “screen-capitivity?”

As a part of our so-called “digital literacy” why are we not empowering students to take control of their technologies? Why are we not teaching them strategies to counter attention capture?

We claim we are teaching how and when to use, but unfortunately, it seems, to the pleasure of tech companies, we are teaching them to always use tech. We are teaching them that tech alwayys has the answers, even though it does not.

The screen-bans for me are a powerful tool to break down the tendency of Ed Tech boosters and educators to teach students to become “complicit in their captivity to screens.”

While I am not sure of the complete ban, I do think classrooms that are device-free and not dependent on screens should exist, and it should exist at the discretion of the teacher. The notion that technology can’t stink is false too.

At the other side of these screenbans and screen-limits, perhaps there will be some sanity when it comes to whatever pours forth from Silicon Valley. Sanity, when the next “device craze” hits.

Perhaps those who stand to make bundles of money and their careers off the tech-latest will face a wall of criticism when they declare the next technology to arise as “transformtional” or “game-changing.” Maybe there will be voices that say, wait a minute…”

Right now we have the opportunity to stop being complicit in our own captivity to screens and devices, and we should take it. We can do it and we can teach students to not allow themselves to be controlled by screens.

The Education System Will Not Fail If It Pauses on AI Adoption

2026-09-05T20:06:56.508-04:00

AI boosters in education still are pushing the false technological deterministic narratives that Big Tech has indoctrinated them with.

How many times this week have I seen them struggle with the fact that two very large school districts, Los Angeles and New York, have decided to ban AI student use.

In response, they fall back on the tired, worn-out deterministic language that says "AI isn't going anywhere." That somehow students are going to be "behind" or "deprived of something" because of this.

None of that is true of course. There is no urgency in adoption of AI by educators. AI companies like OpenAI and Anthropic and Google want us to believe there's an urgency.

But that's because they are desperate to make a profit off this product. So far they haven't. It is urgent for their bottom line, but it is NOT urgent that we turn our students over as users of their products.

I applaud school districts and educational leaders who decide to pause and wait. There is no evidence that the world is going to end except for companies that have bet their whole existence on the success of a product that has yet to prove itself widely.

With the Race to Adopt AI Are Educators Getting It Wrong Again? Probably So

2026-08-31T10:06:04.850-04:00

I suspect education and Ed Tech will get AI wrong like it did with other Tech.

After they spend a great deal of scarce money on a LLM product, they will then be forced to justify it so they will force teachers and students to use the product.

Their measurement will be number of users and user time, not a measure of effectiveness or achievement. That’s what happened with all the Chromebooks.

The question won't be "Do you find it useful?" It will be one of the must-do's on teacher evaluations. We-bought-it-you-use-it approach.

Why does this happen? Educators and school technologists eagerly adopt a new technology before it has even had time to prove any usefulness. Is it a race to brag?

Or, a neighboring district brags about adoption, and the district has to keep up with the Jones's. Why else do you hear the "Everybody-is-using-it" justification.

Instead of this adoption model, why not try small-scale scientific studies?

Before you sign those 3-year contracts, explore through small-scale adoption with company's free access? Not a two-week trial. Perhaps a two year trial. Don’t declare the product effective because of one-semester of correlated positive results. Be patient.

Perhaps education got technology wrong, and there's a screen ban/limit backlash because there was no local experimentation and evaluation. There was a race to adopt.

When Ed Tech Says a Product Like AI Is Inevitable, Don't Buy It: It's All Marketing

2026-08-30T16:19:15.281-04:00

It is imperative that AI companies have their LLMs and Generative AI products be accepted as legitimate. So they working overtime to force-feed this acceptance in education.

It seems they are following an old Big Tech playbook.

The initial thrust is to get your products accepted as inevitable by everyone, especially the field of education.

The inevitability tactic short-circuits any questioning about whether the technology has a place in the classroom. It forces educators and those with concerns to surrender without question.

That same “Forced Inevitability Acceptance Tactic” was used with social media, Chromebooks, and many other technologies and well as ed tech in general.

Now that there are thoughtful people who are questioning the central pedestal on which we have placed technology, the Tech companies are pulling out all the stops to win acceptance of the inevitability of their new AI products.

Thoughtful and critically minded educators should:

-Question every word of every promotion of AI and technology. Interrogate who wins the most with adoption and you can bet it’s not necessarily the students or teachers.

-Never accept research conducted and funded by tech companies and their consultants who stand to gain the most from the acceptance of these technologies. Big Tech is immensely skilled in engaging in this tactic and have the money to back it up.

The screen limits and bans were much more inevitable than the technologies themselves. When products actually cause harms or fail to live up to the promotional blather, thoughtful educators no longer allow these companies to blame the user. Sometimes the tech product does suck.

There is hope as long as educators remain skeptics and do not accept the inevitability argument ever.

Can You as an Educational Leader Trust the Evidence of Effectiveness Provided by the Product Developer? Probably Not

2026-08-28T12:27:35.793-04:00

Can educators and educational leaders trust the research that companies provide about their products? Should they? Probably not. The tech industry that includes Ed Tech has a major credibility problem in the middle of the calls for screen bans and screen limits. For example, there is growing independent evidence that social media is harming our children. Why else would Facebook settle their massive lawsuit.

I just completed reading Max Fisher’s 2022 book “The Chaos Machine: The Inside Story of How Social Media Rewired Our Minds and Our World” and it clearly describes why we can’t trust research provided by companies on their own products. The book reinforced why I quit Facebook and Twitter sometime ago. But one particular incident in the book illustrates clearly to me why companies just can’t be trusted to provide unbiased, reliable evidence of their own product’s effectiveness or lack thereof.

In the book, Max Fisher points out that Facebook completed an internal study of their technology’s effects when faced with growing suspicion that their site might be making the political divisions in the US worse. Their own research warned internally that the platform was doing exactly what their company’s leaders denied it was doing.

Their own leaked research said “Our algorithms exploit the human brain’s attraction to divisiveness.” According to Fisher, this was in a 2018 presentation leaked to the Wall Street Journal. This presentation also said that Facebook’s systems were designed in a way that delivered users “more and more divisive content in an effort to gain user attention and increase time on the platform.”

Later, this research was hidden by Facebook executives and they rejected the recommendations for tweaking the algorithm that would have resulted in less time spent online. They, in other words, deliberately chose to keep users addicted to divisive content that their own machine served up to them.

This is why companies’ research can’t ever be trusted. Neither can their executives. This is also why educators can’t trust research either done by or paid for by the companies whose products they are considering to purchase.

Companies simply aren’t going to provide educators and educational leaders with reliable, independent evidence that their products are effective. They are also going to hide studies that are less than supporting of their products. I would expect no different, after all that would prevent sales.

Facebook’s own research showed their product was harmful, yet they buried the evidence. They made the deliberate choice to keep their product addictive.

As an educator, I always ask for independent evidence of product effectiveness. Independent being evidence generating by studies not done or paid for in anyway connected to the company. Most often, none exists.

If such evidence does not exist, then ask the company to allow you to run a study of their product on a trial basis. Use research methods to evaluate the product for what they claim. Once you have that, publish it and make it known. Share it with other individuals.

I can envision a whole network of school technologists who independently evaluate these products and share that evidence independently and not as a testimonial asked for by the company.

Where the evidence comes from, who paid for it, who conducted the study that generated it, and why the evidence is being provided all matters.

This is what has been lacking in the massive technology acquisition and placement in schools. Now, our parents and common decency requires us to do things differently.

Is the US Department of Ed's Advice to Judge Screen Products by Evidence Helpful? Not Really

2026-08-28T11:00:09.954-04:00

The latest advice provided by our US Department of Education advises educators to judge educational technologies by evidence of impact on learning, but there’s one problem, where do we get that so-called “evidence.” From the companies themselves? That’s a horrible idea

“…instructional technologies should be judged by their impact on learning, not simply whether they happen on a screen,” said Assistant Secretary of Elementary and Seconday Education Kirsten Baesler, in her attempt to salvage the status of educational technologies.

The problem is finding such evidence. Sure, you’ll get bombarded by “testimonials” from other districts about how effective a product is, but a pal of an owner of a ed tech company hardly counts as evidence. Besides, testimonials are not reliable and valid evidence. Too much room for corrupting influences in those.

What about any studies the ed tech company provide in their sales pitches? Well, I would not get too excited about that either. According to a 2019 Hechinger Report article, “The Dark Side of Education Research: Widespread Bias” by Jill Barshay, we need to scrutinize any research companies provide as evidence of their product’s effectiveness. Surprise, it is too often biased toward their own products.

Like Big Pharma, who has been guilty of generating their own faulty, self-promoting research for their products, Ed Tech companies and other educational resource companies have been operating from this playbook too.

This 2019 article examined a John Hopkins University study of 30 years of educational research by developers of educational interventions and products. These companies conducted their own research or paid someone to do the research, and most of the time, the results commonly showed greater benefits for students than when the research was independent. “On average, the developer research showed benefits—usually improvements in test scores—that were 70 percent greater than what independent studies found.”

In other words, studies done by or funded by the companies themselves were biased. They always made the product look better than independent studies did.

So, the US Department’s admonition that educators and education leaders “look to the evidence” before banning a screen product will not help at all. Most products, if there is any evidence, it is either testimony from another district, which is highly unreliable, or it is their own insider research which can’t be totally trusted.

Most companies, after all, would not want independent research because you can’t control the outcomes. Who wants to find out their product is garbage?

So what do we do with the US Department of Ed advice? Not much it seems, for independent, reliable research on these products is rare and mostly non-existent.

With school district technology employees taking free training from the likes of Google, Microsoft and others, can you really trust anything they say about the products either?

I might add as well, school technology conferences are also heavily underwritten by technology companies, so…well, not much help there either.

What do we do then as educators to determine whether a screen product is effective at what it does? Without independent research, I would conduct small-scale in-school studies myself before implementation to determine effectiveness. If enough educators did this and shared results, then there could be a pool of independent knowledge about these products. But it is going to require school technology educators become critically independent.

As expected, the US Department of Education’s advice about technology is about useful as a study provided on the safety of cigarettes by tobacco companies.

The Real Content of Digital Literacy and AI Literacy

2026-08-27T12:37:05.680-04:00

What is AI literacy and digital literacy? Well, it shouldn't be just be teaching students "how to use."

It should be teaching students the technologies on a level that they can understand them much, much more deeply.

We don't want "societal automatons" who just use as they're told.

We should want humans who can make the moral choices about what role AI specifically and technology generally plays in their lives and their future.

We should want humans who can decide for themselves whether the energy costs, water costs, and other resource costs are worth the continued personal and societal investment in AI and other technologies.

Too often Ed Tech and Digital literacy is about making "good-little users and consumers of technology."

Equipping our young with the whole picture behind these technologies, such as environmental costs, human costs, even personal costs, as well as a deep understanding beyond just churning out users for business and industry is imperative.

Otherwise we are just dumping all the problems in their laps to solve. And I don't have the religious faith in technology that I once held. It is not our savior in waiting. We still have to come back to the human.

When a Silicon Valley CEO Predicts All Jobs Are Doomed, Remember He's Selling You Something!

2026-08-24T13:14:24.319-04:00

Why do we continually insist on giving credence to these Silicon Valley CEO prophetic declarations? We shouldn't.

For example Dario Amodei recently prognosticated a whole list of jobs that will be replaced with his pet technology, and I have seen it reposted here in LinkedIn like it was the ten commandments passed down from Mt. Sinai. Why?

These Seers of Silicon Valley do not deserve this credibility at all. They get much more wrong than right.

For instance, Gil Duran describes one of these errors of prognostication in his book “The Nerd Reich.”

Elon Musk, who has a high opinion of himself and his prophetic talents, predicted in March 2020 that the COVID virus “would soon disappear.” He said at the time, “Based on current trends, probably close to zero new cases in US too by the end of April.”

“The billionaire had zero idea what he was talking about. The pandemic was just getting started.”

We have elevated the Silicon Valley CEOs and technology engineers as well as technology companies to a level of credibility they do not deserve. They have internalized this status and are now the most arrogant and self-promoting humans on the planet, constantly bombarding us with their predictions, which curiously benefit themselves.

This needs to change.

Education needs to stop granting credibility to every prophecy that pours forth from Silicon Valley and from Ed Tech companies. They do not have a special crystal nor a dispensation from the gods that grant them the ability to see into the future. Perhaps instead of taking Silicon Valley CEO soothesaying as gospel, we need to get our students to analyze this for what it is.

Besides, we can see that these so-called “prophecies” are simply part of the marketing tactic to sell more of their products.

The next time you see a post on social media or some glorified media article where one of these prophets of technological doom or paradise are quoted like a propeht, remember that prophets like Musk and his predictions on the pandemic, do not have any idea of what they are talking about. Chances are their prediction directs more people to their products in order to enrich themselves.

US Department of Ed's Ed Tech Guidance Proves Screen Bans and Screen Limits Just Might Be the Best Tool Parents and Educators Have

2026-08-20T19:59:49.465-04:00

There’s a lot of hype by Ed Tech about the new “guidance” offered by the US Department of Ed about technology. Too bad it’s mostly nonsense, and more helpful to ed tech companies than parents, teachers and the students.

One thing missing from the US Department of Ed's new Ed Tech guidelines is an admonishment of tech companies who purposely engineer their products for "screen time" maximization, or what is otherwise known as "engineered addiction."

This is one reason alone for continuing to insist that "screen time limits" may actually be the only tool parents and educators have to counter this problem.

The US Department of Ed, which I am not sure I would expect much from a department headed by a former WWE professional wrestling executive, fails to point out that tech companies should not have as a goal screen time maximization.

The problem is that tech is purposefully addictive. Cells phones are designed to be the center of attention with their beeping, buzzing, instant notifications. Social media apps are designed to distract users and keep them distracted.

Technology companies need to remove engineered addiction from their designs.

I've been stepping back to 2022 and reading Max Fisher's book "The Chaos Machine" and Fisher points out that Silicon Valley's playbook, whether its Google, Apple, Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok, is to "track and manage users' screen time.

That is the problem with tech in general and Ed Tech specifically. It’s machines of manipulation.

The only tool parents and educators have against this playbook are "screen bans" and "screen limits." Breaking the allure is the one tool that works.

Our goals as educators should not be to preserve screen time for tech companies; it should be to engage students in such a way that the answer to everything does not involve reaching for a device.

Screen Bans Should Be Embraced as an Opportunity to Think Outside the "Technology-Always-Has-The-Answer Box"

2026-08-15T13:14:07.135-04:00

Screenbans in schools is an opportunity for Ed Tech and educators, not a threat.

Why? Because it is an opportunity to disrupt the tech-solutionism that has obsessed educators since the PC entered the classroom.

Tech-solutionist see technology as the "always-answer" to every problem.

This thinking places educators in a "Technology-Always-Has-The Answer" box where every problem has a tech solution. That turns into technology-obessiveness.

Despite what the Ed Tech marketers have promoted, they have not been promoting "thinking-out-of-box"; they have been promoting only thinking in their box.

Screenban discussions and talk moves the thinking outside "technology-always-has-the-answer box” to a universe and world of options out there. Not every problem has a tech solution.

Screenbans are disruptive of the Ed Tech status quo with its tech-solutionist answers. That’s the reason for their concerns.

Educators should take advantage of this time and de-center technology and place it among the other tools in the toolbox and reach for it when it solves a problem, not spend all their time looking for problems to solve with tech!

Ed Tech Does Not Always Have to Be Revolutionary: It Just Has to Work!

2026-08-13T14:42:43.868-04:00

Educators don’t always adopt Ed Tech to “revolutionize” or “change” anything. A tool doesn’t have to transform the work to be effective.

Sometimes you adopt a new technology to facilitate and help do what you are currently doing, not disrupt; not transform; not change anything.

The mistake often made by Ed Tech is thinking that their product must “revolutionize” or “transform” and that’s their marketing story.

The truth is, there are times when no change is needed other than having a tool that helps you do what you are doing better.

I suspect one of the reasons for the so-called “tech-lash” is because of promises of transformation that never panned out.

But the Ed Tech industry never blames their technologies. It’s always the implementation or the “system” that is rigid and unwilling to change. But, it just might be that the technology does not work, and in some cases it might be harmful.

Have you ever heard anyone in Ed Tech blame technology? I haven’t heard that that I recall. It’s never the technology’s fault. It’s the system, the school, the leadership, the teacher, the student, the parent…never the technology.

But, just maybe, the Ed Tech is garbage. Maybe the company spent a ton of money dressing it up in expensive marketing clothes, and the actual product is junk.

Ed Tech does not have to always be revolutionary or transformative. Sometimes it just has to help schools and teachers do what they’re doing better. That’s not as big a sell, but it is a solid product.

Why Are All Office Suite Apps Now Garbage? Arrogant Software Companies Think They Know What Features I Want Better Than I Do

2026-08-12T00:28:42.777-04:00

What is it with App developers these days? They really do think they know what I want as a user of their product better than I do.

Microsoft Office has been transformed into garbage. Google Docs is trash. Now, Apple has turned Pages, Keynote, and Numbers into slop by adding a ton of crap and trying to charge a subscription for it.

Earlier this year, I trashed Evernote because of their arrogant force-feeding of features down users throats. I had been a user since at least 2011 or so.

I cancelled my Microsoft Office 365 subscription after being a user since at least 1996 or so.

True to Cory Doctorow, "all office software has been enshittified!"

Software developers have become so darn greedy that they are willing to make their products trash in order to squeeze one more cent from their users.

If this trend continues, I suspect I might even have to revert to pen and paper.

Come on software developers. Stop trying to shove features down users throats and just maintain an acceptable and useable product.

Why Is There Techlash and Screenbans? Perhaps Its Because It's a Problem!

2026-08-11T13:16:16.895-04:00

I spoke to a parent of a middle schooler today. Somehow in the discussion technology came up in our conversation.

She said she honestly believed technology has ruined her son. He uses it for play and distraction instead of learning. He is consumed by it.

Which makes sense, because our handheld tech is engineered for distraction.

She brought up here school's Chromebooks program and how she saw it a detrimental to her son's education. He simply could not handle the "freedom to be distracted."

Before you start blaming the parent, perhaps there needs to be more thought.

This illustrates what we've got wrong with Tech; we assumed it was the answer for all students. We standardized the technology and how it was used. No wonder there's what Ed Tech calls "Techlash"!

Instead of arming ourselves with arguments for Tech, perhaps we should focus on the students. The technology, if it is simply a tool, it does not have to be the tool used in learning.

Maybe personalizing learning means having students who learn more effectively without tech engaged in screenless activities. Just maybe we can go a day or two, a week or two, or even a course or two without Tech.

The screen ban trend is not a marketing problem; perhaps sometimes the Tech IS the problem.

The Missing Component in Digital Literacy: Critical Examination of Consequences of Our Digital Technologies

2026-08-09T10:13:33.344-04:00

When we speak of digital literacy in education, often that notion is about the construction of “good little users and consumers of technology.” Instead, what is needed is a digital literacy curriculum that expands into examining the greater societal and environmental impact of the choices we make in technologies.

In other words, most often, digital literacy accepts the technology as inevitable, and that we have no choice but become users. When our digital literacy efforts do this, they are simply serving up students as consumers for Silicon Valley tech companies. With that, we are complicit in increasing tech company power over us and our world.

A true digial literacy curriculum needs a strong critical component that carefully examines the consequences of our technological choices. For example, in dealing with AI literacy, there needs to be deliberate efforts to provide students with the ecological consequences of the massive energy and water consumption of the data centers needed to power it. With social media, there needs to be deliberate instruction on how social media has negatively impacted our society. With every technology in our lives, there needs to be critical thinking about the use of that technology. In other words, students must be equipped with critical knowledge that empowers them to decide for themselves whether they want to be users of that technology or not.

Ed Tech is solely responsible for this state of affairs. They have instilled within us that technology is inevitable and that it is always the answer to our problems. The job of Ed Tech in education has always been unquestioningly turning administrators, teachers, and students into users.

When digital literacy focuses on a critical examination of technologies and the consequences of their use, you do not have “good little users and consumers of tech”; you have empowered citizens who create a society that decides for themselves which technologies deserve a place in their lives.