No teacher can give thirty students individual guidance at once.

Kira is the AI-native platform that works alongside you — shaping learning pathways to challenge and support each student while you stay the one driving instruction, all built on the high-quality curriculum you're already teaching. Your lessons, assessments, and student insights live in one place, so you can see where every student stands and step in before anyone falls through the cracks.

At ISTE, Matt stopped by the Kira booth to talk AI literacy and how to make student interactions with AI intentional, not accidental. Watch the conversation here.

Getting ready for back to school? Join a free Kira 101 PD session on July 28 or August 20 -> Sign up here.

In case you’ve missed it, we’ve had some great discussions in our Ditch That Textbook online community.

(PS: You can go here — ditch.circle.so — to read all the posts. Register for free to post and comment!)

For one, our Deep Thoughts for Summer channel is still running! We’re posing big questions to ponder, like … “How do I ensure all students have a voice?” and “What’s my teacher legacy?” Please pop in and share your thoughts with us!

Here are some other discussions you might want to check out …

When back-to-school time starts to roll around, I’ve noticed something …

Lots of the tech tools I love start doing virtual events — and they’re usually free!

Here are two I’m participating in — and a third one I’m a fan of!

Connect, share ideas, and explore innovative ways to enhance learning at this virtual event by ScreenPal.

You’ll see how educators, enterprise leaders, and learning innovators are shaping the future of video-powered learning with practical strategies, real-world insights, and powerful tools to help you teach, train, and engage more effectively. Browse sessions and register individually for the ones you want to attend. See the summit schedule and register here!

📺 MY SESSION: Make Screen Time Count: Purposeful AI and Technology for Meaningful K-12 Learning

I’ll explore how teachers can use technology with intention, creating meaningful learning experiences that promote creativity, critical thinking, collaboration, and student voice. Register for my session here!

Google random holidays and you’ll get some fun hits: National Muffin Day (February 20), National Cookie Day (December 4).

Google “World Snorkeling Day,” and you’ll find July 30. Our friends at Snorkl have co-opted the day and made it a holiday about celebrating and supporting student thinking with Snorkl.

This year’s third annual World Snorkl Day (noon to 6pm U.S. Eastern time) will feature 11 free sessions led by 11 teachers from all over. They’ll share how they’re using Snorkl across K–12 — from math, writing, science, and social studies to special education, multilingual learning, world languages, and more. Register for the summit here!

📺 MY SESSION: Reaching All Students Every Day

For ages in education, barriers have kept us from reaching students personally as well as we’d hoped. Now, we’re starting to see some of those barriers breaking down. Teachers and students are seeing the results! In this session, I’ll share what I’m seeing — and how Snorkl is playing into that.

What if you could bottle that carefree, happy feeling that only comes around in summer and bring it back to school?

Join EdPuzzle for real talk and real takeaways to lighten your mental load this school year. Come for the good vibes, and leave with practical tips and strategies to go back with less anxiety and more of that refreshed, summer feeling. Get details and register here!

Today, I was on two short consulting calls about AI in education with school leaders in the United States.

In both, the talk started about AI implementation …

… but then it went broader to the screen time debate.

Everyone in education — especially in edtech circles — is talking about it right now. Books like The Anxious Generation and The Digital Delusion are calling us to have critical conversations about the place of tech in our schools.

Honestly? I think we need to have those conversations. I’m all about focusing on what makes teaching and learning truly great.

But in many cases, we see parents, politicians, fellow educators, and others in our communities with agendas. Rather than having discussions, they show up with cherry-picked stats and talking points that don’t always reflect the realities inside the walls of schools.

Lots of the loudest voices are on the far ends of the spectrum — “technology is the devil” or “technology is the savior.”

And then here we are … folks who work every day in classrooms with students. We’re in what I call the reasonable middle, saying … “I use itechwhen it helps. I don’t when it doesn’t help. It’s a tool. Why are we getting so bent out of shape?”

How did this go sideways so quickly?

After the big ISTE Conference in Orlando — and after having lots of conversations with a variety of educators (including my wife, who’s a high school social studies teacher), here are some things we need to fix in education in our relationship with devices and screens.

I find myself slipping into language like this all the time: “You have to find the right balance between tech and no tech.”

Then I catch myself. Because it’s not a balance. It never was intended to be a balance. I think that’s part of the problem. We casually use language to describe the place of technology that is rather inaccurate.

In my own classroom, my students will have their Chromebooks out all of class on some days — because the apps they’re using contribute to the activities and experience I want them to have. But sometimes, they’ll stay closed and under their desks for days on end. In the end, it’s never a 50/50 split.

We use the tools that help us accomplish our goals. And it’s never balanced.

I accept some of the blame here. Over the years, as devices have become more and more prevalent in schools, there’s been this belief that technology makes us innovative, creative teachers — and that technology helps make learning more effective. That’s just not the case.

Here’s what’s interesting about this. I rarely hear anyone say this. I can’t ever remember saying it directly myself. But with incessant tech PD days and trainings over the years, it has silently sent that message to teachers. We didn’t have to say it out loud, but where you allocate your minutes says a lot about your priorities.

Tech can be a tool that helps create the conditions for innovative, creative, effective learning … but it doesn’t do it by itself.

Years ago, the default in my classroom was “tech on.” Every day, students grabbed Chromebooks out of the classroom cart, turned them on, and logged in without question.

Now, I teach at a school where students bring Chromebooks to class every day. Before class, they’ll work on homework or watch videos or do any number of things on them. And sometimes, if I’m not careful, I won’t tell them to put them away.

What happens then? It’s easy for them to sneak away to digital distractions.

Defaulting to “tech off” doesn’t mean you aren’t going to use it. It doesn’t mean you don’t believe in its place in education. It’s just a simple condition that helps students avoid the addictive pull of technology.

I talked earlier about all the minutes and hours of PD we’ve spent on tech tools and features.

Where’s the professional development about pedagogy … about instruction … about cognitive science? These are the categories of understanding that drive the success of teaching and learning in our classrooms — and the effective integration of technology into instruction. But in too many schools and districts, we stop learning about them after our college teacher prep programs.

If we really believe in improving instruction for our students’ sake, it should be rooted in what actually helps students learn.

When people want to attack the place of technology in the classroom, they’re usually armed with the worst examples. Why? Because they’re probably listening to someone who has an agenda — and it’s easiest for them to make their case with bad examples of tech use.

The parents and the folks in our community need to know the whole story.

If they’re going to form a fair, balanced opinion, they should know the whole story …

And they should know how it fits in a classroom and in a school — not as the ONLY way to teach, but as a powerful tool to use when it makes sense … as determined by a highly qualified, experienced teacher.

This is the trap I see far too many people fall into.

Ban tech/AI … OR … embrace tech/AI.

“It’s terrible and ruining education!”

OR …

“It’s not going anywhere so we should get with the program!”

The best place to be, I’ve found, is in the reasonable middle … where so many caring, experience, practicing educators in classrooms are.

Everyone seems to see this as a technology issue. In reality, I think it’s an implementation issue — and a perception issue.

If we can work on that, maybe we can work toward a model of education that prepares students for a tech-saturated future — but also the skills they’ll need to think and be human in that future, too.

There are even more ways I can support you in the important work you do in education: