A Teacher’s Case for Moderating Technology Use in Post-COVID Classrooms
In an era of moral, political, economic, environmental, and psychological crises, we desperately need to raise kids to be confident, creative, self-aware thinkers who love Earth.
Photo by Annie Spratt.
by Zach Hughes
I remember her eyes. Every time I crossed the threshold of Mrs. Greb’s third-grade classroom, I met her eyes, so wide that I could see the white all the way around her irises. Those eyes sent the same message each time: Thank God you’re here.
I was student-teaching, completing a requirement for a class in my university’s education department. My assignment was to assist Mrs. Greb’s third-grade classroom in a formerly rural district in southwest Alabama. As part of the education class, I kept a journal on each of my visits, outlining a successful teaching technique I could steal or an amusing interaction with a student, and mostly, over and over, recording how the computers wrecked Mrs. Greb’s class.
This was 2018, two years before COVID-19 induced emergency online learning. Still, the school district was making a push to bring their classrooms into the 21st century and supplying every third-grader in the school with a Chromebook laptop. These computers purported to empower student research, familiarize students with useful writing and presentation platforms, and save paper. But what I witnessed as a result of these devices looked more like havoc than utility.
Doug Lemov’s famed pedagogy guide, Teach Like a Champion, offers “49 Techniques that Put Students on the Path to College.” Lemov developed the techniques from over a decade of classroom observation, aimed at closing the achievement gap by empowering teachers to use classroom best practices. His very first technique is “No opt out.” When a student “opts out,” they choose not to participate in the class, either because they do not want to try or because they don’t know how to succeed and don’t want to risk failing. What was the issue with Mrs. Greb’s computers? They presented endless opportunities to opt out.
If Mrs. Greb asked her students to write a paragraph in Google Docs about the chapter they had just read in Frindle, they could write the paragraph...or, they could share their docs with friends and start chatting. If she asked them to log into the “student zone” for a math video game, they would comply and open an internet tab for the “boring” game and then open a different tab for Fortnite. All they had to do was watch Mrs. Greb out of the corner of their eyes. When she came near, switch tabs. When she left, switch back. As long as they didn’t get caught twice, they were in the clear. When they did get caught twice, once on Fortnite and the second time watching their favorite YouTuber with closed captions and muted volume, they were punished. With a book.
That’s right. In Mrs. Greb’s computerized classroom, students were punished with books (cue Ray Bradbury rolling over in his grave). Reinforcing the “books are bad, computers are good” lesson was the fact that computers were also used as rewards. “Finish your homework, and then you can get on the computer.” “If we line up very quietly for lunch, we can use our computers during indoor recess.” The students were always eager to use their computers, and Mrs. Greb channeled this eagerness to her advantage.
“In the efforts to modernize schools, district decisions to put laptops in every classroom and every backpack have put students at risk to opt out their education.”
In some ways, I cannot blame her. Mrs. Greb was up against tough odds in her classroom of twenty-eight. Kids love computers and often comply for a reward of computer time. However, conditioning students under this behaviorist strategy may reinforce a technology addiction and frame books in a negative, punishment-associated light.
The consequences of over-technologized classrooms are not entirely Mrs. Greb’s fault. In the efforts to modernize schools, district decisions to put laptops in every classroom and every backpack have put students at risk to opt out their education. These students are eight. Yet, we expect them to shun the temptations of YouTube, chatting with friends, and addictive video games and to opt into strictly-educational computer programs.
There’s a ten-foot poster on the wall of the elementary school that reads, “Integrity means doing what’s right even when no one is watching.” The poster’s picture is of a little boy, looking around warily as he reaches into a cookie jar. The poster is there because we know that it is hard for people, especially kids, to resist instant gratification. Yet, we teach our children to do so--to recognize that the easy way is not always the right way. We tell them to choose broccoli over cookies, to tell the truth when lies could help them get ahead, and to work hard when the going gets tough. We hope these lessons stick and produce a society of healthy, honest, hard working adults. But the world we live in makes resisting instant gratification difficult.
Nobel Prize-winning behavioral economist, Richard Thaler, puts it this way: “People aren’t dumb. The world is hard.” Thaler was alarmed by the 42% of Americans with less than $10,000 set aside for retirement, so he dedicated research to helping people make the right (but difficult) choice to put some of their paychecks into retirement savings. In Thaler’s eyes, people don’t neglect saving part of their paychecks because they are stupid. They neglect saving because they have debt payments, high living expenses, children to feed, and innumerable consumer temptations. They have needs and desires to pay for right now that make it hard to prioritize their retired self in the distant future. Thaler’s response? Make it easy to make the right choice. Automatically enroll employees in retirement savings programs. You still offer the choice to opt out, but you make it easy to opt in. In integrity-poster terms, “Give the people a bowl of broccoli and put the cookie jar in the closet.”
Giving every elementary age student a laptop for classroom use is putting the broccoli in the closet and the cookie jar in their lap. Rather than following Thaler’s advice, we keep the world hard. We make it easy to make the wrong choice, to choose YouTube over math, tech addiction over active play, passive learning over creative construction.
Of course, not all classroom technology is bad. Technology truly can enable research, creativity, and effectiveness. Proper use can prepare students to learn, speak, and make positive change. It can prepare them to be exactly the type of person we need to face the problems of our future. But the lazy babysitter approach that I witnessed in Mrs. Greb’s class did not use technology as a force to empower our students as learners and creators; it tempted them to opt out and check out. Children need to be empowered in school, not just entertained. Classrooms must be crafted to shape students into active learners.
Some people suggest that the excessive technology use of this generation is inevitable: These kids can’t help the era they were born into. This is just their normal. Admittedly, some technology use is inevitable (and even helpful), but overuse is both avoidable and more harmful than one might think.
Today, kids younger than one year old are given screens for an average of ninety minutes a day. Kids eight to eighteen are averaging over seven hours of screen time a day, an increase of two and a half hours in the last ten years (pre-2020 stats). As screen time increases, so do obesity rates, as children are often sitting in front of TV’s, video games, tablets, or cell phone screens instead of enjoying active play outside. This trend will likely continue as screen use is shown to be habit-forming. Additionally, sedentary screen time limits social interactions, often shows kids violent models, and can contribute to hyperactive behavior.
Tech time can also come at the expense of time in nature. In his influential book, Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder, Richard Louv investigates the separation of children from natural environments and uses the term “nature-deficit disorder” to describe the negative consequences of such human-nature separation (Louv 99). Children raised separate from natural spaces are at higher risk for obesity, irregular sleep schedules and shorter duration of sleep, behavioral problems, lack of food source knowledge, loss of social skills, violence, and less time for play--all symptoms also associated with technology overuse.
By contrast, natural spaces can provide kids with hours of unstructured play that gets them moving, triggers their sense of wonder, and reduces stress and fatigue. As they build forts, turn over rocks, encounter new plants and animals, and find their way home, children grow in creativity and imagination as well as awareness and responsibility. They encounter new forms of stimulation that build new neural pathways. In other words, contact with natural environments can counteract many of the concerning symptoms of technology overuse. Obviously, not every kid grows up surrounded by a pristine natural environment. For this reason, city planners have a duty to prioritize urban green space for kids who do not. But right now, even the kids living in woodsy suburbs are staying inside on their phones rather than romping through the forest.
Many classrooms are inadvertently designed to reinforce habits of technology overuse, and these habits of overuse are often reinforced at home as well. Heavy technology use poses risks for the wellness, creativity, and awareness of our children. Most concerning of all, excessive technology use can pose a risk to our children’s lives. A 2019 systematic review over five psychology databases found a direct association between heavy internet and social media use and suicide. Although the study finds that some young people can find supportive internet communities to lower their risk of self-harm and suicide, its conclusions state the following: “Current evidence suggests that excessive or ‘problematic’ use of social media/internet does impact suicide risk, specifically increasing the risk of suicide attempts.” Many of our children struggle with loneliness, self-loathing, and depression. Overusing technology is hurting, not helping them, and this overuse can be avoided and replaced with more positive alternatives.
In an era of moral, political, economic, environmental, and psychological crises, we desperately need to raise kids to be confident, creative, self-aware thinkers who love Earth. The current movement in many schools is an arms-wide-open embrace of technology. This embrace risks giving students endless opportunities to opt out of learning while exacerbating technology addictions and often putting students in a passive, uncreative learning stance. Worst of all, excessive screen time may put our children at increased risk for taking their own lives. What’s the alternative? How can we move forward in our increasingly technologized age with classrooms crafted to prepare our students to lead us into a better future? Here are six ideas:
Use computers and other forms of personal technology sparingly in classrooms. Videos, educational games, and platforms for research, writing, and presenting are important tools for learning. Teachers should not reject them. But using computers every day in every class is unwise. Districts need to moderate their trust in technology to revolutionize the classroom. Give a class or a grade level a computer cart; do not give each student a personal computer. If needed, students can check computers out as they would library books. But always keeping computers at the fingertips of students leads to overuse. Finally, teachers need to avoid using books as punishment and computers as rewards and babysitters.
Whenever technology is used in the classroom, teachers should structure its use so that there is no easy “opt out.” Give clear instructions, time limits, and sit or patrol in a way that allows you to monitor how your students are using the technology you have given them. Consider technologies like Flipd and Remarkable that encourage focused, non-addictive technology use. And if an activity can be done just as well with a book, a conversation, a hands-on exercise, or a trusty piece of paper, use these tech-free alternatives. Our eyes could all use a rest from our blue-light screens, and low-tech usually offers lower temptation for opt out alternatives.
Adults must model healthy technology use for our children at school and home. Many of our children are technology addicted partly because they are taught by teachers and raised by parents who are also technology addicted. Both kids and adults are at risk for excessive screen time and the accompanying risks of weight gain, sleep loss, and behavioral problems, not to mention Louv’s “nature-deficit-disorder.” If we want our kids to be healthy, well-rested, and sociable, we probably want ourselves to be that way, too. One step is snapping out of the “chained and entertained” stance to technology addiction, a stance adults too often model toward our political news cycle as well as toward more traditional types of entertainment. To “snap out of it,” we should monitor the hours we spend on our phone or TV’s and question--is this exactly how I want to spend my limited free time? Is there anything I feel like is missing from my life that I never seem to have time for? If I cut down some of those “chained and entertained” screen hours, could I walk outside with my partner or friend, reconnect with my family, or pursue a personal project I’ve been dreaming about? One of my middle school students told me this fall: “You know, if you spend two hours each day on your phone, the time adds up to one month of your time each year.” Food for thought.
In general, keep Richard Thaler’s advice in mind: “People aren’t dumb, the world is hard.” As a guiding principle, try to set up your classroom and life so that it is easy to make the right choice and hard to make the wrong one. Put the cookie jar in the closet and the broccoli in the lap. Teachers can think of lesson plans as educational liturgies. Liturgies intentionally structure every segment of a service to allow worshipers the comfort of bodily routine so that their spirits can be elevated, focused, and at peace. Similarly, a classroom environment should welcome students into the comfort of a routine that is structured to automatically opt them into an elevated state of mind. As soon as students enter the classroom, they should be swept into learning. Try starting each class with a “bellwork” problem so that students enter and immediately get to work, then proceed with a plan that keeps students occupied and engaged throughout the class time. Contemplate seating arrangements, desk contents, and even small details like the availability of sharp pencils to minimize distractions that open the door to opt outs. When you make good choices easy, most people make good choices. If we can set up classrooms and home environments to make children less tech-addicted, more responsible, more sociable and aware of others, and more creative with a greater sense of self-efficacy, everyone wins.
When possible, bring nature into the classroom and the classroom into nature. Class plants and pets and school gardens all give children the chance to take care of other lives, learn about natural processes, and experience the healing benefits of contact with nature. Teachers can use the school grounds for object lessons: they can teach about sustainability from the squirrels, the acorns, and the oak trees or teach about recycling by discussing the source of the school’s playground padding. Schools can also plan field trips to natural ecosystems as well as to museums and institutions. These trips give kids the chance to adventure, create, and discover in the natural world around them, shrinking the deficits of “nature-deficit disorder” and reinforcing a style of play with innumerable benefits.
When teachers choose to use technology, they should use it to empower active-stance, joy-of-discovery learning. While online teaching during the COVID crisis has presented us with many difficulties, it has also forced us to adapt. There are incredible tools for student creativity on the internet, and many of our students are adept at using them. When using computers, ask students to create digital stories, podcasts, videos, blogs, or even computer programs. Empower them to seek knowledge for themselves and translate it into a creative construction of their own making. Yes, the internet can present distractions and encourage technology overuse. But it is also one of the most powerful tools for research, creativity, and communication in existence, and it should be used by teachers to prepare and enrich our students.
“We want our students to be engaged, active learners who come alive in the classroom, building a love for learning because they experience the joys of discovery and creativity. If we give them too many opportunities to opt out, we stack the deck against their success. ”
We don’t need to shelter our students from all internet use, but we do need to make sure they are being raised by responsible adults and not by personal devices. As I saw in my time as a student-teacher, and as I see in my classroom now, putting too much trust in technology-as-teacher sets students up for failure. We want our students to be engaged, active learners who come alive in the classroom, building a love for learning because they experience the joys of discovery and creativity. If we give them too many opportunities to opt out, we stack the deck against their success.
What are we to do? Put the cookie jar in the closet. Moderate our technology use, in classrooms and at home. Engineer classrooms that set students up for learning and life experiences of greater presence and lower distraction. Allow them to join learning communities where peer pressure pushes them towards discovery and creativity, not towards distraction, disengagement, and depression. If we give them the chance to engage and create, they can respond beautifully, coming alive as the learners we need to build a flourishing future.
Zach Hughes is a writer and political thinker who teaches Government, History, and Literature to students in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Names and identifying details of his student teaching experience have been changed. This essay was originally published on March 23, 2021 and edited on April 14, 2021.