The 21st Century Principal

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.

Advice to Teachers and School Leaders About Tech and AI from 1969 That Is Still Sound Today

2026-07-25T13:51:40.175-04:00

There was an educational technologist who provided sound wisdom about AI and all technology in 1969.

Anthony Oettinger, who was a Harvard researcher, acknowledged in his 1969 book “Run, Computer, Run: The Mythology of Educational Innovation,” that instructional technology could lead to improvements in education.

But…he also provided some words of wisdom that Ed techies have forgotten.

He cautioned that instructional technology can’t be “force-fed, oversold, and prematurely applied.

Ed Tech has never taken that advice and plunged into implementation with every new wave of technology that arrives. Perhaps that’s just another reason that the allure of screenbans is so strong today.

With every new technology since the PC, school leaders and ed tech advocates jump to force-feeding those new technologies through “strategic implementation plans” and “forced professional development” without ever taking the time to critically examine those technologies’ places in schooling, teaching and learning.

Then, school leaders and ed techies move to engaging in the very “oversales” tactics that Oettinger warned about. Propagandistic presentations and sales language like “gamechanger, disruptive, and transformative” are the go-to words in this over-selling tactics before anyone has even really been able to explore the technology. Implementation is treated like a “marketing problem” and not whether the technology is actually useful.

Finally, school leaders and ed techies prematurely apply the technologies in widespread fashion. School leaders want to boast about their schools being 1-to-1 schools, AI schools. Ed Tech consultants want to boast about the number of keynote speeches they’ve made and the hours of PD conducted. This happened with earlier tech and it is happening again with AI. The over-selling has generated the hype without really giving teachers and students and researchers time to examine the technology.

Ed Tech has immediately jumped to the search for proof that they were right about AI’s transformative power without giving the technology any time to develop.

Ed Tech’s problem is that it has never encountered a technology that was NOT disruptive, transformative, or a gamechanger. By default, anything silicon-based that comes along fits the bill.

Ed Tech is more into selling technology instead of critically and methodically examining as well as exploring possibilities.

I end with three things offered as advice to school leaders and teachers that captures Oettinger’s 1969 advice:

-Don’t force-feed the tech through strategic implementation plans and mandated PD. Allow time for small-scale experimentation and even resistance if it arises.

-Don’t oversell or even feel like you have to sell a technology. If the technology is miraculous, it will demonstrate this. If it has no promise then it will show this too.

-Finally, don’t engage in premature application ever! Tech options like AI hasn’t been around long enough to be the salvation of education. Don’t talk implementation. Instead talk about experimentation and exploration. Give the tech time to prove itself.

Oettinger’s advice is not antiquated, but that’s how sound wisdom often is, if we don’t allow the glare and glitter of new technologies blind us.

Why Educators and School Leaders Should Be Skeptical with Anthropic's Free AI Access Offer and How to Protect Their Schools

2026-07-16T14:43:51.825-04:00

Let’s call Anthropic’s “free” AI access offer for what it is…an effort to get teachers and schools hooked on their product like a drug pusher standing on the curb offering free trial samples. Well, maybe not, but it feels like it.

Obviously, once teachers have invested a great deal of time and data in the product, Anthropic is in total control. They control the technology-user relationship; they control the price; and they control the conditions of use. Schools and educators are in some ways really selling their educator souls!

The notion of being skeptical of anything offered for “free” applies here. Nothing is ever free for long. Absolutely nothing is free.

Anthropic is simply deferring that cost for later. School districts and educators who elect to partake will pay later for their “free” use.

Before having anything to do with Anthropic, I would consider this “free” offer carefully and anticipate expected costs once the system is hooked.

Also, educators and school leaders should demand answers to the following questions before even setting up an educator account:

1) How much can I expect to pay in the future for your product? I need to plan for anticipated costs before a commitment.

2) What happens to all the data that we invest in using your product? Will it be used for training models? Can we have a hard-clad contracted assurance that prevents this in the future?

3) You make no promises about being serious about student and teacher data security beyond quoting something about FERPA, to which you are NOT LEGALLY BOUND. So, what are you going to do to protect our data?

Those are the big questions school leaders should ask before taking Anthropic up on their “free” offer. Though I would say no thanks even before asking them.

Otherwise, school leaders should make sure they protect students’ data and school data by forbidding the upload by anyone in their districts to Anthropic’s product until answers are provided.

My ultimate fear is this is the usual Big Tech and Ed Tech sales tactic.

Get users invested and hooked first. Then you have total control of your users, both their access and price.

That’s not a wise way for school leaders to protect their students, staffs, and school resources. It is extremely short-sighted leadership and non-visionary.

That’s signing a blank check to Anthropic.

Stay away from Silicon Valley companies bearing gifts. It’s not a gift and it’s NOT FREE.

There Is Some Acceptable Logic with Screen Bans That Needs to Be Considered

2026-07-15T06:24:05.868-04:00

Devices that have become common in our classrooms have a design problem that Ed Tech does not acknowledge.

These screen devices and their apps have been in some instances engineered to be habit-forming. In other words, addictive characteristics have been designed into these applications and devices.

Technology companies have become experts at designing and engineering for habit-forming and addiction in their products. Big Tech companies like Meta and Tic Tok, just to start with a few, are experts in “hooking” users on their products.

I am currently re-reading Nir Eyal’s book, Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products. This book is a textbook for addiction engineers. It describes how tech companies have pulled off engineered addiction with their screen-based products.

In fact, Eyal’s book, Hooked, is a how to book on how to make products addictive.

Once engineers have users “hooked” like drug pushers, they have customers who have been mind-manipulated to being endless users. Like drug users, they find it difficult to put down the drug. They will fight to protect both the product and the habit.

Eyal promotes what he calls “the Hooked Model” to addict users to products.

This involves using four steps to achieve addiction:

1) Triggering initial user behavior;

2) Engaging user in an action;

3) Dispensing a variable reward to keep users coming back;

4) Getting the user to invest time, data, effort, social capital and money.

According to Eyal, subjecting potential customers to this “Hooked” strategy works. You have users addicted to your product. While this model might be simplified, it does capture features in screen products we encounter on our devices.

He also calls his method of engineering addiction “a Superpower.”

I call it malicious manipulation of humanity for profit. Is there no consideration that such tactics at mind-manipulation are unethical?

Tech companies and others engage relentlessly in engineered addiction because it works. But there is something extremely immoral about the whole thing. The idea that you can design a habit-forming, engineered addictive product and celebrate it as a superpower is problematic.

Teaching students and all educators how to recognize when such tactics are employed is vital. This is clearly a subject for any digital literacy efforts.

Is it any wonder why tech companies and Ed Tech are so upset about screen bans?

Screen bans nuke this engineered addiction model before it gets its talons into users’ minds.

If users regain control over when and how a device is used, then the game is up.

Using AI Is a Choice Not an Imperative: Knowing Why One Uses It or Not Is Important

2026-07-14T10:32:07.846-04:00

If you examine closely any of the AI promotional posts here on LinkedIn or elsewhere, and the avalanche of AI educational books out of bookstores, one thing about AI and all this promotional hype becomes clear:

They are using AI to search for a problem to solve.

Why else do so many AI-promotional posts on LinkedIn begin with the words, “AI is not he problem, (Insert whatever is the problem) is the problem”? That is a dead give-away that the search is underway for a problem that Silicon Valley’s latest shiny toy can solve.

But, what if in my role as teacher, I am perfectly able to resolve my problems with tools already in my toolbox, or with cheap, non-technological solutions?

Why should I use AI when asking a friend for feedback on an email works? Do I use AI just to be able to say I used AI? That sounds like I am being faddish, not economical.

Why do I need to turn to technology for solutions as all of Ed Tech does?

Take writing. It can be done very effectively without technology at all. This writing, like all my writing, begins its existence as handwriting done with a pen on a page of paper. The pen and paper are perfect tools for writing. That’s what they were made for. Simple, useful tools for writing.

Writer Wendell Berry once wrote:

“If you are already solving your problem with the equipment you have—a pencil, say—why solve it with something more expensive and more damaging? If you don’t have a problem, why pay for a solution? If you love the freedom and elegance of simple tools, why encumber yourself with something complicated?”

That’s it. That is the question at the heart about why I choose not to use AI tools. I already have tools to solve my problems. I choose not to use AI which is damaging the environment, a strain on natural resources, and has been created through human exploitation. It is clearly complicated.

I also love the “freedom and elegance of simple tools” that do not “encumber” me with the “complicated.” I can write anywhere with pen and paper. No need to connect to the internet or a power source.

I write, I teach, I work fine with the tools I have. I have no need for an anthropomorphized, word-prediction algorithm to assist in what I do. I do not want to complicate what I do with technology just because it exists.

Right now, there are an awful lot of people whose future is staked on AI trying to convince the world that it can solve problems. They desperately search for problems it can solve. Their golden ticket demands it. Their every word is an exercise in searching for a solution for AI to solve.

Like Berry though, I relish the freedom and elegance of the simple tools. Perhaps that really should be the guiding force in Ed Tech: Look to the simple tools first. Instead of trying to justify the existence of a technology, really look for any solutions to solve problems.

As I live and work, why should I choose to enchain myself with the chains of complication wrought through using AI? There’s a reason why the old adage, “Keep it simple stupid!” is so well-worn.

What Is It with App and Software Developers? Offer a Garbage Product and Make Users Pay a Ransom to Get a Better Product? What Nonsense!

2026-07-12T13:57:59.598-04:00

I deleted another app that has been on my Mac for well over 10 years. It is increasingly the story from software and app developers: They are arrogant and often could care less about what their customers actually want.

They start by offering a basically limited functional product and make customers pay for the features they need through additional costs in subscriptions. And in those subscriptions, they also make them pay for bloated features they did not want in the first place.

This arrogance is absolutely amazing! They really think they know better what their users want than their users.

What's more, they offer an initial garbage product, and force RANSOM PAYMENTS for those features the users want in the first place.

You can bet if the app offers a subscription model, they are probably engaging in this practice.

I have deleted two apps that I used for over ten years in recent days for this very reason.

It seems Tech companies aren't about offering customers solutions anymore: They are about focusing on squeezing as much money out of customers possible through crappy products that can only be less crappy with more money.

When It Comes to AI and Screen Ban Arguments, School Leaders Shouldn't Accept the "It's-Just-a-Tool Argument": You Owe Your Students Much More

2026-07-10T14:35:00.803-04:00

What should a school leader think about the brouhaha about screens and screen bans? One thing for sure, they should not allow Ed Tech and tech advocates justify them by using the “it’s just a tool argument.” That is just not true.

In education, the screen/device/app can be the problem. This is because it is much, much more than simply a “tool.” It is designed also for the purposes of those peddling it.

Tech companies first and foremost have to have users, so in their design, they have to maximize user engagement. Once they have users, they want the users using their product. That’s attention capture.

None of this is a problem, except when getting users always engaged with your product is the main goal and other purposes take a back seat. Then, all design choices are not about utility; they become more about how eyeballs can be captured. That’s where addiction becomes the goal.

The metric becomes the amount of time the user is using the screen/device/app.

That’s where addictive tech design happens, and the screen/device/app becomes more than “just a tool.” It then becomes a distraction from other important aspects of life. Users spend inordinate amounts of time as users, and their behavior starts resembling drug addiction.

That’s what school leaders should be concerned about: the addictive design of screens/devices/apps and banning products or limiting student access to them becomes justified.

The school leaders responsibility lies, not with providing users for companies and eyeballs for their products, but with advocating and protecting their students from device purposes and designs that are not in their students’ best interests.

School leaders should not just dismiss the screen ban as something harmful for their students. They should embrace its discussion as a means to critically question all Ed Tech currently being used in their schools.

Perhaps school leaders should even engage in a Ed Tech audit in their schools by carefully and critically examining each and every screen/device/app in the building.

-Look at the costs.

-Assess the results and outcomes of use.

-Examine each for addictive design features.

-Carefully study how teachers, students, and staff are using them.

In the end, what school leaders should want to “ban” from their schools are two things:

1) Uncritical acceptance of all technological solutions. Do extensive homework on your own and do not always rely on what Ed Tech vendors tell you.

2) Screens/Devices/Apps that are more interested in capturing users and attention instead of providing a product that works.

School leaders are in a position to take control of the screen ban efforts by using it to critically purge tech that is not in the interests of their students, and they can make sure companies are more interested in providing learning and teaching tools than addiction machines.

When a School Leader and Teacher Is Guilty of Delivering Student Eyeballs to Ed Tech Companies, That Is a Problem

2026-07-04T12:48:40.975-04:00

As an educational leader who eagerly supported bring-your-own-device policies, one-to-one programs, and cell phones in the classroom, I am experiencing guilt.

Why? Because I am afraid that I was part of the Ed Tech trend that mistook the qualities of “engineered addiction” in these devices for “engagement.”

Like many educators, I witnessed the eagerness with which students took up these devices and appeared to use them in the classroom. In fact, they did do some amazing things. I remember many student-created videos that were phenomenal.

Yet, after 2010, I was not aware that one of the big reasons for that eagerness was due to Big Tech purposefully engineering these devices and their apps to capture attention.

In the mid 1990s, when I was the first teacher in my school building to use the internet in instruction, things were quite different. Those were pre-Big Tech days, before the Great Transformation of the web into the commercial garbage dump it is today.

In those days, the internet was not yet a place where the race to capture eyeballs was the goal. No engineered addiction, no commerce-driven sites, and no social media division existed. It was truly a place where information was shared. Connections could be made.

There seemed to be true promise with this internet. My students could use it to connect with the world outside the small town where their school was located. The technology at that time was unmediated by tech companies whose purpose was capture attention for profit.

That web was truly a tool for connection to information and the wider world.

Over time, you know the story. Things changed. But, into the 2000s I still believed in the promise of technology and that the more we got it into the hands of students, the more they could learn and accomplish. With our educational guidance, they could do wonders.

I started to be wrong, because gradually, tech companies began engineering addiction into their platforms. Their goals to provide information and connect became secondary to making money, so attention capture was most important. The products they designed were at odds with how we wanted students to use these technologies.

More and more of my students were starting to show symptoms of “screen-glaze” and it became more and more of a battle to pry their eyeballs loose from the devices.

I thought for a while that kids were kids and it was a simple matter of redirecting students as teachers often had to do with baseball cards, books, and toys.

But this started to be different when I began to notice an increased hostility and anger when trying to redirect a student from their devices. They fought, and some even accepted suspension for a day or two instead of giving up their device. It was like asking an addict to give up a drug.

Today, Big Tech and Ed Tech has only improved their eyeball capture and addictive technologies. Their goals and incentives are engaging students in USING THEIR PRODUCT first and foremost. That is at the heart of the issue with ed tech in the classroom. That is one reason why there is starting to be demands for screen-time limits.

This is nostalgic and impossible, but if the internet were somehow back in the business of information provider and connector, it would be a better place. The early internet was limited and did not have all the bells and whistles of today, but the problem just might be the bells and whistles in the first place.

When the race to add features and eyeglaze to tech products becomes the goal instead of the original purpose, the tech companies are part of the problem.

In Your Work, Your Leadership, Are You an Exploiter or Nurturer? Your Life, Livelihood Makes It Clear

2026-07-01T10:27:20.556-04:00

When it comes to your leadership, your livelihood activity, are you an “exploiter” or a “nurturer”?

In his essay “The Unsettling of America” Wendell Berry writes about these two “kinds of mind” and thinking about them in terms of our current culture of technological and economic obsession is interesting. According to Berry:

Exploiters are specialists, experts. The nurturer is not. They acknowledge their limited knowing.

The exploiter’s standard is efficiency. The nurturer’s standard is care.

The exploiter’s goal is money, profit. The nurturer’s goal is health—the land’s, his own, his family’s, his community’s, his country’s.

Exploiters ask how quickly and how much can the land be made to produce; nurturers ask what is the land’s capacity? How much can it be asked to do without diminishing it?

Exploiters want to earn as much as possible by as little work as possible; the nurturer wants to work as well as possible. For them, efficiency can be sacrificed for good.

The exploiter believes in organization, establishment; the nurturer has faith in human order.

The exploiter serves institutions, organization; the nurturer serves the land, household, community, place.

The exploiter thinks of numbers, quantities, hard facts; the nurturer in terms of character, condition, quality, kind.

Which describes the current EdTech industry and consulting industry? Which captures Big Tech today?

I think it is clear where the AI industry falls here, especially in light of their Data Center projects and the obsession with efficiency. Big tech is more exploiter than nurturer.

Exploiters care more about things and worship efficiency at all costs. Sound familiar? Nurturers care more about life, humanity, people, and well-being.

Your “kind of mind” is betrayed by you you engage in your livelihood and that which you do and advocate for.

School Leadership Mistake in the 2000s? Evaluating Teachers in Teaching with Technology

2026-06-30T13:49:27.290-04:00

The mistake made in 2000s was a school leadership-driven imposition of technology on teachers.

The mistake was requiring teachers to “demonstrate that they were teaching with technology” in the doctrinally-dictated manner prescribed by EdTech and their so-called experts.

Technology should never have been imposed upon teachers.

It should have never appeared any where in standards for teacher evaluations.

School administrators should have never engaged in so-called policing operations called “classroom walk-throughs” in order to ensure compliance with so-called “teaching with technology.”

This is because technology is simply a tool. The teacher and students should be in charge of whether or not that tool is used.

Technology use by teachers or students should never be a standard or an outcome; it simply should be there if the teacher chooses to use it, and if it is needed.

By imposing technology on teachers and students, perhaps that is why we are now in the era of screen-bans. This is because the emphasis in the 2000s was not teaching and learning or even curriculum, even though the EdTech boosters said it was. It was technology.

The emphasis in the 2000s by EdTech and over-enthusiastic school leaders was THE TECHNOLOGY. It was placed central to learning, and now we know that was the mistake. That’s why there are pressures to take away the tech toys.

Now, AI boosters and educators trying to make a living and careers on a new technology are making the EXACT SAME MISTAKE.

They are putting their shiny new toy, artificial intelligence, ahead of students, ahead of teachers, ahead of curriculum.

These individuals are dumping curriculum and sacrificing everything just to get this new technology an exalted place in the educational institutions.

The end result will be that in 10 to 20 years, we once again will have sacrificed everything in education to exalt another technology.

The sensible thing for school leaders at this point is not to jump on the AI bandwagon fad with both feet. The sensible thing is demand all these individuals to back off.

There is no place in teaching standards, learning standards, or any educational standards for anything AI. Teaching AI is shortsighted and plain educational malpractice.

It is just a tool, that’s it. If it has a legitimate use in education, educators will use it.

If we impose AI on educators, on students, and on curriculum, it will simply be a checkbox, a hoop to jump through, and any use of the technology will be inauthentic and bizarre.

For school leaders, there’s no need to elevate a technology to a place beyond an item in the teaching and learning tool list.

Students Form Luddite Clubs in Opposition to "Screen-Centered Lives": Signs of Students Critical Thinking

2026-06-26T14:20:16.102-04:00

Interesting. According to the podcast below, students form "Luddite Clubs" in opposition to "screen-centered" lives. I like it.

Time will tell whether this is something that catches on, but there is some important truths to think about.

We have allowed "screens" central places in our lives. We have placed them as indispensable and at the center of our educational institutions. We have even come to allow them now to act as companions, partners, and advice-givers in the age of AI.

It's actions like the forming of these Clubs that should make all of us question the central place we have granted these technologies in our lives, and I would add our undying and misplaced faith in what they can do for us.

The question all this makes us ask: "Are we being used by our tools or are we actually using our tools?" The answer is fairly clear without being said.

As educators do we dare support these kinds of clubs? I think we must, for this shows the promise that students are capable of critically thinking for themselves.

https://www.thenation.com/podcast/archive/twsu-022526/

Beyond the AI Hype and AI Boosterism in Education: Teaching Students How Live with Technologies Instead of Being Passive Users

2026-06-25T11:58:58.486-04:00

There is one important notion to include in digital literacy and efforts to teach students responsibility with new technologies?

Not how to be consumers of that technology, but how to critically examine it and the consequences of its use. To know what it does to the environment; what it possibly does to people, the economy, and possibly the mind

That flies in the face of the AI Hype and AI boosterism, which wants to jump right in and have students become users. Full speed ahead and damn the torpedoes! to use an old cliche.

Historically, the use of all new technologies has consequences. Have we not learned anything from our uncritical act of shoving screens in front of students and pushing their engagement with social media platforms? Now, after the damage, we are now learning that there are consequences.

In his book, "Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI," Yuval Noah Harari writes:

"Unfortunately, a closer look at history reveals that the Luddites were not entirely wrong and that we actually have very good reasons to fear powerful new technologies. Even if in the end the positives of these technologies outweigh their negatives, getting to that happy ending usually involves a lot of trials and tribulations. Novel technology often leads to historical disasters, not because the technology is inherently bad, but BECAUSE IT TAKES TIME FOR HUMANS TO LEARN HOW TO USE IT WISELY."

And we have AI educational boosters and consultants declaring that the happy ending has been reached: "AI is transforming education" they say. It is a "gamechanger."

But correct me if I am wrong, generative AI and LLMs have only been widely available for what, four years, if one is generous? How can technology be declared a success when it has only been around such a short time? I even heard one AI booster use the words “longitudinal study” in justification for AI. How in the world can one claim a “longitudinal” study has been done in less than four years?

The problem with all this AI boosterism from companies and consultants is that they are not in it for the long term. They want to make their money and careers and get out, or move on to the next new thing. And we are to trust these people with an eye only on the short term with entire lives of students?

Sadly, digital literacy is often not about teaching students how to be discerning and critical users of technology; instead, its about the simple manufacture of users for the benefit of industry. Who cares what the long term impacts on the lives of students? Get them using it now, is the thinking.

The aspect that is often missing in all digital literacy efforts is clear. If you are going to teach students to be "literate" about technologies, then you need to wholly equip them, not turn them into passive users and consumers. Teach them ALL about the technologies and let them make the choices.

The success of a technology is not dependent on some inherent “inevitability” or even the fact that “everybody uses it.” The success of living, as users of technologies, is based entirely on thoughtful, discerning, and critical use of all tools.

Education has no business being in the AI booster business, nor do educational leaders have any responsibilities for making sure such technologies are successful.

Educators need to regain the long-term view of educating children they once had, beyond the current fads of whatever technology or device is being hyped today.

Educational Leaders Need to Learn Locally First, There's No Consultant and App for That

2026-06-23T11:05:46.658-04:00

Wait! Before you spend that money on an educational consultant or “expert” consider these thoughts first.

Wendell Berry, essayist, novelist, poet, and farmer, once wrote about a problem he experienced on his property. He had wooded hillside where he wanted to pasture livestock, but there was no water source available.

He consulted an expert, then set about clearing land of trees and grading it to create a small pond on a “narrow bench.” It successfully filled with water and seemed to resolve the problem.

That fall and winter, it was extremely wet, so the hillside collapsed into the pond, completely filling it. In spite of the expert advice, he was back to square one. He says:

“The trouble was the familiar one: too much power, too little knowledge. The fault was mine.”

In other words, he did not know enough about the local, and just acted, and the result was his fault alone.

He said he got “expert” advice at the project’s outset, but he forgot something he already knew to be true:

“No expert knows everything about every place, not even everything about any place. If one’s knowledge of one’s whereabouts is insufficient, if one’s judgment is unsound, then expert advice is of little use.”

Berry hits on some very important points that educators and school leaders often forget: Experts and consultants do not know everything about your school or district no matter how many “success stories” they tell or “testimonial tales of salvation” they offer. They lack complete contextual knowledge.

They do not know your schools, your classrooms, your students, your communities, your parents, and not all of these are the same. Schools are complex places, and an “expert” or consultant bearing a formulaic solution will not always provide a solution to the problems you face.

You have no choice but work hard and get know everything locally, and that takes effort and time, sometimes months and years. And you have to be willing to learn and listen instead of acting like a physician and prescribing medicine about an illness that looks like something seen elsewhere, but is really a unique, local problem.

Once you know locally, you can then make sounder judgments regarding solutions. There is no expert that is going to be able to provide instantly successful solutions so set aside the marketing and sales hype from the thunderous consultant crowd, and listen and learn locally perpetually.

This is the hard work of education; no shortcuts allowed.

Learn locally first as much as possible before calling in the experts, and once you have called them in, know your schools, your districts, your people and your community. Then you will have the knowledge to make sound judgments about solutions and their “expert” advice.

Before Signing That New Technology Contract, Be Sure to Consider Technical Debt: It's Always There and the Salesperson Isn't Going to Tell You About It

2026-06-22T13:28:31.562-04:00

I recently heard the term “technical debt” used in a conversation about the use of AI in software coding. It refers to “the future costs associated with relying on shortcuts or suboptimal decisions made during software development.”

I suggest that educators and educational leaders experience a kind of “technical debt” when they adopt technologies in their classrooms and schools, and that these debts are not always considered, especially in the glitter and glow of devices that are being marketed to them.

These educators and educational leaders can’t envision the future costs of these technologies because they suffer from the eyeglaze that accompanies these devices.

But technical debt is a real future cost when selecting ANY NEW TECHNOLOGY and educational AI solutions are no different.

What’s particularly frightening with AI, it is so novel that all of these technical debts are not known yet.

In other words, schools don’t really know how the adoption of these technologies will impact future budgets if it is to be maintained. This is especially true since companies like OpenAI and Anthropic have not yet figured out how to profit from their products. This alone, makes all future costs of GenAI to schools unknown.

School leaders would do well to be aware that any adoption of a technology on offer from an Ed Tech company as well as any other tech solutions comes with these Technical debts.

This means being vigilant and skeptical and asking questions about possible technical debt is important, even if it is currently unforeseen.

For example, asking about the profitability of a company can be important as is the current health of that company. Will this company be around 5 years, 10 years?

Educators need technical solutions that are not going to saddle them with technical debts that will consumer even more of the already scarce budgets.

A complete investigation into the solution and the company offering it is vital, otherwise, schools and school districts will find themselves saddled with technical debts impossible to resolve.