I’m starting to see them more and more on different social media platforms.
There are all of these “all or nothing” cries to get rid of classroom technology.
I get it! We’ve been trying to push technology as a cure-all in places where we haven’t needed it in schools for a while now. Teachers have felt a pressure to integrate more and more technology.
But banning classroom technology? Stating that it’s ineffective to learning? That just doesn’t match with my classroom experience.
In today’s Big Idea, I dive into the nuance in the “tech vs. no-tech” debate. Plus, I share EIGHT examples of tech and no-tech activities I use in my own class — with explanations of how I make the decision.
✈️ WHERE’S MATT?
Today, I’m working with teachers at St. Paul’s Independent School in Clearwater, Florida. We’re talking about AI in the classroom — using it for teacher planning, using it for teacher-led instruction, trying different tech tools, and understanding the balance and implications of AI use.
Inside:
📗 AI Literacy in Any Class: Kindle ebook now available!
👀 DTT Digest: 4 resources worth checking out
💡 The Big Idea: When it’s time to turn the devices off in class
💻 Tech Tip: Turn "screen time" into high-impact learning
😄 Smile of the day: It’s fiiiiiineeeeee …
👋 How we can help
📗 AI Literacy in Any Class: Kindle ebook now available!
Artificial intelligence is already here — in our world, our classrooms, and our students’ pockets.
The question is: are they ready for it?
AI Literacy for Any Class is a practical guide for K–12 teachers who want to prepare students for an AI-shaped future without adding more to their plates.
In this book, I show how to weave AI literacy into everyday teaching through small conversations, “by-the-way” lessons, and classroom-ready examples for every grade and subject.
Equip your students — and strengthen your teaching — for a world where curiosity and critical thinking matter more than ever.
👀 DTT Digest
4 teaching resources worth checking out today
🗺️ Explore interactive maps — Check out Retro Report’s interactive collection that offers a great mix of immersive tools, like digital timelines and maps, designed to help students connect historical events to the world they see today.
🎮 Teacher made apps — Discover, bookmark, and follow teacher-created apps on TeacherHive. Apps open cleanly for classroom use with no ads, no logins, and no distractions.
🤖 Make any template work for your class (with AI!) — Use tools like ChatGPT to make creative teaching ideas (and templates) work for your class -- no matter what you teach.
🌄 Using AI image generators in class — Check out this post for 10 AI image generators plus ideas for using them, style prompts and tips.
💻 TECH TIP 💻
🚀 Turn "Screen Time" into High-Impact Learning
Let’s be real: keeping students focused in an age of endless digital distractions is an uphill battle. But what if you could use the same high-quality media they love to teach the skills they actually need?
Enter The Achievery, a FREE digital platform by AT&T designed to bridge the gap between entertainment and education. This isn't just a video library; it’s a comprehensive toolkit for the modern K-12 classroom.
Why it’s a game-changer for your classroom:
The "Hook" Factor: Lessons feature content from NASA, the NBA, and Pixar. Imagine teaching physics with basketball or character description with Elio.
Future-Ready Skills: Tackle the big stuff—like AI Literacy, Digital Citizenship, and SEL—with expert-designed courses that meet core standards.
From Clips to Courses: Beyond standalone "Units," you can now assign full Courses. These are sequential lessons designed to guide students step-by-step through complex topics like AI or Digital Literacy.
The "Classroom" Dashboard: You can build digital classes, assign specific units, and track student progress in real-time. No more guessing who finished the work!
With over 1,000+ videos and activities, it’s the perfect way to spark curiosity while ensuring your students are navigating the digital world with confidence.
💡 THE BIG IDEA 💡
💻 When it’s time to turn the devices off in class
Balancing tech and no-tech doesn’t have to be that tricky. (Image: Google Gemini)
I’m seeing a groundswell of posts on social media from educators (and non-educators) calling for the removal of devices from the classroom.
They often quote Jonathan Haidt’s book, The Anxious Generation, and Jared Cooney Horvath’s book, The Digital Delusion.
They cite articles that claim that using technology in learning leads to diminished student achievement.
They usually include an all-or-nothing conclusion — that all tech should be banned, that schools should get devices out of the hands, and that we should turn back to “traditional learning activities” like paper and pencil and textbooks.
On its face, the claims make sense — and it’s usually enough to generate lots of social media views, clicks, and fiery comments.
But as I started to see these posts become more and more common in my social media feeds, they just didn’t seem to ring true with my own classroom experience.
They’re not all wrong
The folks who create these social posts — and the ones who write impassioned comments on them — have a point. And I agree with them to a degree.
For some reason, there’s been an implied pressure to use more and more edtech in the classroom in the last 10 years.
Sometimes it’s building administrators who have made tech use a school initiative.
Sometimes it’s the central office who just spent incredible amounts of money on devices and want to get a “bang for the buck.”
Sometimes it’s the edtech companies pressuring teachers to use their products so they don’t fall behind or miss out.
Sometimes it’s the influencers and tech cheerleaders on social media telling teachers how and why they should integrate tech.
When I was a new teacher more than 20 years ago, I remember feeling a bit of pressure to incorporate classroom tech. I was still so new and didn’t know what I was doing. It seemed like an important thing that people were doing, and I was just trying to survive and look like I knew what I was doing.
In these last 10 years, we’ve learned that technology isn’t a panacea. It doesn’t solve education’s problems and create new, innovative learning spaces all by itself. Tech is a tool — much like markers, colored pencils, manipulatives, and other teaching materials are tools. Use the tool when it makes sense.
When tech becomes the default, we start to see problems.
But when we make pleas to block and ban all technology, it’s a problem, too. Sometimes, technology can help us to do more … to process things faster … to open up creative and interesting new ways of learning that we can’t do without it.
“All or nothing” thinking — especially in loud, angry social media posts — isn’t helping anything.
Plus, the way that some of the people in these social media posts explain how terrible technology is? That isn’t helping, either.
Here are two quick examples …
Example 1: The handwriting vs. keyboard articles
This is one of the first places these social media posts go. They point to research — like this landmark study in 2014 — that say that handwriting is superior to typing.
And, like so many other posts, they use all-or-nothing thinking and say that we should outlaw all technology.
But if you actually read the research, you’ll often find that the researchers are measuring data on students taking lecture notes in college classes. Students who take handwritten notes perform better than those who type lecture notes with a laptop.
Lecture notes. That’s a very specific use case. And it makes sense. If you can type fast, you can almost write down every word the professor is saying in a document … but you’re not thinking about it. It goes from the ears down through the fingers into the keyboard without engaging the brain.
If you don’t do anything else with those notes — if you don’t study them or even reorganize them with paper and pencil later — you won’t get as much out of them. That just makes sense.
But hand-writing a research paper means that you don’t get to edit and format your document as you go — and you’d better not make too many mistakes.
I’m a big believer in the importance of handwriting. In fact, there are really interesting articles like this one that detail how powerful handwriting is in our brains.
But when it makes sense, I’ll have my students type their work and submit it.
Again … it’s a balance, and the teacher needs to weigh the pros and cons of each and make the best decision.
Example 2: The strawman argument
Beware of these posts! They’re designed to reduce the entire discussion down to an overly simplified truism.
Here’s one I’ve seen recently: “Give kindergarteners Chromebooks before crayons.”
Everyone in the comments screams: “Yes! Students don’t need technology before simple fine motor skills and creativity.”
Here’s the problem …
None of the kindergarten teachers I know would rather give their kindergarteners Chromebooks before crayons. (I know, I’m only using personal anecdotal evidence, but still …)
They’re probably not using Chromebooks much at all until later years. They might use an iPad to do certain activities with an app that they think works.
But those kindergarteners’ days are full of socializing and play and coloring and stories.
It’s a strawman argument. People build up an example that doesn’t really exist in real life and then beat it to the ground in anger so they feel like they’ve accomplished something.
So, what do we do? Examples from my class
How do we manage the tech vs. no-tech balance?
I have so much to write about this. After spending 12+ years teaching, I have found places where tech elevates the learning experience — and where it falls flat.
Here’s the process that I follow. (Forgive me if it sounds too simple!)
In my lesson plans — and on the fly during instruction — I’m making minute-by-minute judgment calls on which approach benefits my students the most.
If tech adds an important element, I’ll use it.
If it isn’t adding anything — or the non-tech alternative is better — I won’t use the tech.
If it’s a toss up, I’ll use the option that seems best in the moment — or I’ll choose the option we haven’t done as much to add variety.
That’s it!
Of course, I have thought a lot about what benefits tech adds to my class over the years — and I have lots and lots of data from my teaching experience.
Here are some example activities from my classroom — and why I choose tech or non-tech for each:
📝 Writing activities — In my classes, whenever students write stories or practice activities in Spanish, we often write them on paper.
Why: Online translators are very tempting to use, and I want students writing with Spanish they’ve learned in class.
💻 Writing with a substitute teacher — When I’m gone from class, I leave students digital writing activities to do with Brisk Boost, an AI chatbot writing coach.
Why: The AI chatbot can give students immediate feedback on their writing. With paper writing, they wouldn’t get feedback until I got back and graded their work.
📝 Quick practice — When students are learning a new verb tense or practicing with new vocabulary, we often do quick practice activities on mini whiteboards with dry erase markers.
Why: It’s tactile. It’s quick. Students can draw and write.
💻 Vocab repetition — Once they’re familiar with new vocabulary, we’ll often play Blooket online review games to get them vocab reps.
Why: Students can get more practice questions per minute (per class period) doing Blooket than any other face-to-face task.
📝 Drawing activities — I’ll ask students to draw scenes with new vocabulary and label vocabulary words in Spanish. We use paper and markers.
Why: It’s tactile. I believe in the importance of dual-coding theory. I think the hand-drawn images and writing make the learning stick better.
💻 Practice sentences with teacher critique — I love having students write practice sentences (and paragraphs) with Pear Deck interactive slides.
Why: I can quickly display all of their sentences on the screen and highlight trends in their writing to praise and critique.
📝 Classroom participation — When students answer questions verbally in class, I hand them a paper card. They turn them in and I manually tally them later.
Why: It sounds tedious (it is!). But the physical paper cards feel like currency and are more real to students than me logging them in a spreadsheet.
📝💻 Paper/technology hybrid — Students write by hand and then we transform their work with an AI image generator. (Here’s a video from my classroom.)
Why: It doesn’t have to be “either / or”! In this case, we got benefits from the paper writing activity AND the power of using an AI image generator to illustrate our writing.
How do you manage the tech / no-tech balance?
I have so much more to say about this … but I know I can’t say it all in this email!
In the meantime, I’d LOVE to hear from you …
How do you manage this balance? What are your go-to tech and no-tech activities? How do you decide what to use and what not to use?
Hit reply and let me know! I’ll gather some of my favorite responses and share them in a future newsletter.
😄 Smile of the day
Pro tip: The vowels decrease as summer inches closer.
Source: Keeping Up With Mrs. Harris
👋 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!
