🖥️ Our relationship with screens …
I shared my new “Screens” keynote at MassCUE near Boston yesterday.
Years ago, we started bringing devices into classrooms and schools. But we didn't establish an answer to this fundamental question …
What are our screens for?
I gave the keynote speech at the MassCUE Conference near Boston yesterday. (Hence a Friday email today instead of Thursday!) I talked about the complicated relationship we have with our screens — and how we can get some clarity about when to use them … and when to put them away.
It was a fun moment for me. This speech that I've been working on for 9 months finally got an audience. And the strong 1980s theme throughout? It seemed to be a hit!
This is an idea we are going to explore over the next few months. How do we decide when technology helps — and when something else is better.
In today's 💡 Big Idea, we share a non-tech idea your students might love — converting student activities into board games. 🎲
Inside:
🤖 Help students handle their business with AI
👀 DTT Digest: 4 resources worth checking out
👥 Community: How much flexibility is too much?
🎯 Quick Teaching Strategy: Traverse Talk
💡 The Big Idea: Turn any worksheet into an analog board game
😄 Smile of the day: The vicious cycle
👋 How we can help
🤖 Help students handle their business with AI
We know that AI is expanding … and whether we like it or not, our students will need to know how to handle their business with it.
(We also know that lots of students are already using it … sometimes, in ways we don’t appreciate …)
Can we help students learn the implications of AI — AND still teach the content they need to teach?
I’ve found that the answer is “YES.”
In my newest book, AI Literacy in Any Class, I share practical ways to keep teaching your class content — but slip little AI literacy lessons into it.
It helps students identify AI-generated work … understand the ethical implications of using it … know when using AI has gone too far … and more.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ “Matt gives us great ideas that we can use with whatever we teach to help our students realize what AI is and how it can help them and the risks that come with this powerful technology.” — Al Gonzalez (via Amazon)
👀 DTT Digest
4 teaching resources worth checking out today
🤖 Go from AI-curious to AI-confident — With Flint’s free AI Literacy for Teachers course, learn how AI works, practice with personalized learning exercises, and earn some confidence and care.
📺 Earn a Google for Education badge — Learn how to use Google Gemini to design process-based assessments, rubrics, and quick checks that highlight real, authentic student reasoning in this free webinar from Phygital Labs on October 17th.
📓 25 practical ways teachers are using Gemini Notebook— In our newest post educators share creative ideas for using Gemini Notebook (formerly NotebookLM AI in the classroom.
💻 Celebrate Digital Citizenship Week with Common Sense Media — Use their free Digital Citizenship Week lessons to help your students build the human, offline-thinking skills they need for a world that's increasingly online.
📢 TOP DISCUSSION 📢
🤷 How much flexibility is too much?
Sometimes, being too flexible can lead to problems.
In our new International Educators channel, Holly, a high school English teacher who spent 19 years in a brick-and-mortar classroom before going fully online, raised a question that really applies to all of us.
Her school — which is 100% remote — records every class, doesn’t require live attendance, and has open due dates with no late penalties. She sees what that does for students, but also what it costs them.
“I love the lifestyle for me and I know it benefits so many learners.”
“The downfall: too much flexibility can have its own set of problems.”
“I have chatted with a few learners about how the abundance of flexibility has led to their demise!”
“Offering 185 school days to complete the day 1 assignments is a bit much…”
What do you think? Open this discussion and add your thoughts …
Not a member yet? Join the free DTT Community to read ideas like this, connect with other educators, discuss, and share ideas of your own.
🎯 QUICK TEACHING STRATEGY 🎯
🚶 60-Second Strategy: Traverse Talk
Want to introduce classroom debates or persuasive speaking without the intimidation factor?
Try Traverse Talk, a structured 60-second strategy from Edutopia that teaches the basics of debate and active listening while getting students moving across the room.
How it works:
Set the Line: Designate two opposing walls or sides of the room as "Agree" and "Disagree" (the middle space is for neutral/undecided).
Pose a Prompt: Share a debatable statement related to your topic (e.g., "Social media does more harm than good for teens" or "Character A made the right choice in Chapter 4").
Traverse & Position: Give students 30 seconds to physically walk (traverse) to the side of the room that matches their stance.
Micro-Debate: Call on a few students from opposing sides to explain why they chose their spot using brief, structured evidence. Allow students to physically move across the room if a classmate's argument changes their mind!
Why it works:
Low-Stakes Voice: Physical movement reduces the pressure of traditional formal debates, helping hesitant speakers find their voice.
Visual Consensus: Gives you an instant, whole-class visual temperature check on student opinion and conceptual understanding.
Promotes Mindsets Shift: Celebrating students who move across the room normalizes changing your mind when presented with strong arguments or new evidence.
💡 THE BIG IDEA 💡
🎲 Turn any worksheet into an analog board game
This is a fun and easy transformation that can lead to great engagement.
Worksheets get a bad rap.
And honestly? Sometimes, deservedly so.
A stack of questions, a sharpened pencil, and the instruction to "complete questions 1 through 20 independently" isn't exactly a recipe for high-energy student engagement.
But here’s the thing: the worksheet itself might not be the problem.
Sometimes students just need a different way to interact with it.
Instead of throwing out your existing resources or spending hours trying to reinvent the wheel with complex edtech tools, you can take almost any standard worksheet and instantly transform it into a high-engagement, analog board game using three simple items you probably already have in your classroom:
Paper (a single printable game board)
Dice (one standard 6-sided die per group)
Counters (erasers, coins, LEGO minifigures, or plastic game pieces)
Welcome to Worksheet Mania. The worksheet stays — but the experience completely changes.
How the gameplay works
Instead of working silently from #1 to #20, picture your students in groups of three or four with a game board and a worksheet placed in the middle of the table.
The mechanics are intentionally simple so students can dive right in:
Turn Order: Everyone rolls the die. High roll goes first, and play moves clockwise.
The Gameplay Loop: On your turn, answer the next unanswered question on the worksheet. The player to your left checks your answer.
Correct? Roll the die and move forward that many spaces.
Incorrect? Stay where you are.
Winning Condition: Keep working through the worksheet until all questions are answered. The first player to cross the FINISH line wins!
Suddenly, there's an immediate reason for students to care about accuracy — and because everyone is interacting with the exact same content, you haven't had to write a single new problem.
Why chance + "Level Up" cards elevate the learning
If every correct answer simply meant "roll and move," the game would work — but adding dynamic action spaces ("Jump forward 4 spaces", "Miss a turn", or "Bonus turn") introduces a healthy dose of randomness. A student who is lagging behind can suddenly catch up, while a student cruising toward the finish line might draw a setback space.
The winner isn't necessarily the student who finishes fastest. By balancing content accuracy with game chance, all students remain invested in every single turn.
Even better? Landing on a "CHOOSE A LEVEL UP CARD" space pauses the standard Q&A loop and moves students higher up Bloom's Taxonomy. Instead of just solving the next problem, these cards require students to rethink, explain, create, or connect:
Error Analysis: "Find an answered question. Create a wrong answer a classmate might choose and explain why it's wrong."
Reverse Engineering: "Find an answered question. Provide a logical question that could have that same answer."
Get Off the Page: Draw or act out the answer (Charades style) for group members to guess!
Try it with your next assignment
Because the framework relies on whatever text or math problems you provide, you can plug and play this across any subject area:
Math: Convert a standard review page into a high-stakes board race.
Science: Turn a study guide into a drawing and charades challenge.
ELA & Vocab: Transform vocabulary practice into a choice-driven creation board.
Social Studies: Let students write and analyze test questions for one another.
The next time you're about to pass out a practice sheet, pause for a moment. You don't need to rewrite your curriculum, and you don't need to spend hours building a digital game.
Grab a game board, print a handful of Level Up cards, hand out a die, and place the worksheet at the center of a shared experience. Sometimes you don't need to ditch the worksheet. You just need to add a game!
🛠️ Free Resources to Get You Started:
Read the full post: Paper, dice, and counters: Turn any worksheet into an analog board game
😄 Smile of the day
It’s a vicious cycle.
Source: Bored Teachers
👋 How we can help
There are even more ways I can support you in the important work you do in education:
Read one of my six books about meaningful teaching with tech.
Take one of our online courses about practical and popular topics in education.
Bring me to your school, district or event to speak. I love working with educators!
