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.
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