When the Altman's and Amodei's of This World Say Their Technologies Are World-Ending, Digital/AI Literacy Involves Interrogating Their Words

If we’re going to teach digital/AI literacy, then at the forefront of those efforts, we should be examining statements like this one with our students:

“AI will probably most likely lead to the end of the world, but in the meantime, there’ll be great companies.” Sam Altman

I can’t help but wonder what good great companies are if the world has ended, but we have FOR WAY TO LONG given technology companies and their leaders some kind of elevated status in our world. It’s time to interrogate them and their work and to unveil what it is they are really doing in our world. What’s more, we need to teach our students how to do it.

Even if one sets this crazy statement aside to Altman’s ego-mania, or even some kind of twisted marketing-promotion, these kinds of statements are worthy of close interrogation, and that’s what a true digital/AI literacy program should do; not just examine the technologies, but examine the entire marketing, promotion, and culture surrounding these technologies.

The simple fact that someone would make this kind of statement is important for critical examination. Such questions like: “What kind of person would continue to advocate for a technology that is world-ending?” is exactly what we should be teaching with all technology literacy.

Instead of using digital/AI literacy to program our students as users of these technologies, we need to teach them to interrogate all aspects of them. Quesitons like the following should be central to AI literacy:

-Who is going to benefit the most from these?

-Why are the leaders of the companies that develop these technologies making apocalyptic statements, and yet, still continuing to make those products?

-What kind of values does a human being hold who makes these statements and yet charges full steam ahead in developing such a product?

-Why would we want such a person even be leading these efforts?

-Are their values my values? Are they values that align with the good of all of us?

-What can I do as a user/non-user of their products do to counter the damage their products cause? Should I even be enabling these individuals by using their products?

Being technologically literate means being able to see everything about that technology, not just being able to use that technology. It means being empowered with critical knowledge to make one’s own decisions about what technologies we should value.

Digital/AI literacy should never be about user conformity.

We need to equip students to question and interrogate the technologies and the claims being made by those who stand to benefit the most from them. When they make insane statements like this, we have in our hands words that can tell us a great deal about the values of the makers of these products which will always be embedded within them.

How Wrong We Were as School Leaders Bragging about One-to-One Technology Ratios and Other Frivolity Driven-Measures

Remember as a school leader bragging about your school’s one-to-one computer ratios as if that was some kind of badge saying we had entered the 21st century? How mistaken we were!

Schools are notorious for using such frivolous measures of quality and status. It’s like bragging that your school has a 98% attendance rate, yet, if what students do during that increased presence is no more instructionally sound and effective, it is a meaningless statement.

The same applies to technology. We get tangled in the numbers like computer ratios and numbers of teachers trained in AI, like that really tells us anything.

We like to call that data-driven, but in reality, it is frivolity-driven leadership and education. 

School letter grades are mostly derived from this frivolous data, so they are basically a measure of frivolousness. Well, one thing school letter grades do well is provide a pretty good indicator of our students’ sociodemographic status.

So what really matters about technology and how can we measure it so we can boast about it? 

I am not really sure on this one. All measures can be used in a frivolous manner too, even test scores. I suspect there isn’t any one measure worthy of being a bragging point by itself, but we often do it anyway.

In a world where schools are constantly trashed by various industries and tech companies for the purposes of generating a market, education suffers from low self-esteem, so we listen to any critic offering their latest take.

If a person who has an interest in selling you a technology or any product for that matter and tells you schools suck and I can help you, most of us already are listening.

Our mistake as school leaders we use frivolous data to justify our existence, and we allow others who want to use us a market to use frivolous data. Educators need to be much more critical and ask the tough questions of any claims made by tech companies and their boosters.

When Ed Tech Companies Become Parasites: Adding Features, Increasing User Costs, and Degrading User Experience to Force Users Choices

Over the years, I noticed a developmental pattern among Ed Tech solutions school districts adopt to solve problems in their schools.

The schools search and find a new, low-priced solution. This solution is not elaborate, but it does what it does well. Sometimes it only does that one thing well such as sending calls to parents or contacting subs for teachers. It does that one thing extremely well and the price is perfect.

Then, this company decides to add on to their product. For example, the teacher sub contact system expands into payroll tracking or HR job posting and onboarding. Now, they have additional products on offer.

But, the school system decides to just stay with the substitute teacher calling system. It works well and better than other solutions but they already have payroll and HR systems working just as well.

The company has invested a ton of money into these additional functions, so they can’t really afford for their customers to stay with the original software, so they devise a plan.

The company INCREASES the price of the original product and they offer a package bundle, still substantially more, but what looks like a deal for the system. It is not because the system has the payroll systems and HR systems and does not need the other products.

But, if they want to keep the original teacher substitute calling system at a cheaper price, they either a) pay a much higher price, or b) adopt the additional payroll system and HR system.

In the end, the school system is either forced to look for an entirely new product and the cycle begins again; keep the product at a much higher price, or adopt the entire product line and spend hours and months transitioning everything and have even more money siphoned away by this so-called New Deal.

I have seen this pattern at least three times in 36 years working with Ed Tech companies, and it really is a great example of Cory Doctorow’s “enshitfication” Ed Tech style.

Invent a great new tech product or software. Add more to the product. Enshittify the experience of your users to force them into an upgrade or your product.

Ed Tech has learned well from Silicon Valley and this playbook is common.

The sad thing is this playbook only transforms Ed Tech companies into parasites who search for ways to suck additional money out of school systems.

That’s what happens when the focus is on short-term gains and not customer loyalty.

Screen Bans Are Not Just About Screens; It's About Ed Tech's Almost Fundamentalist, Religious Devotion to Technology

What if, in their efforts to push technology into the classrooms educational technology overpromised about what problems technology could solve? The entire field of Ed Tech just might has been guilty of engaging in a form of 21st century technological alchemy. Their tech promised to transform, revolutionize, disrupt education, but in the end, like alchemy, it failed to transmute base education into a golden one.

Just maybe, at the heart of educational technology is a”categorical thinking” that does not allow for the notion that answers may lie outside the technological. Ed Tech’s problem with all tech including its new-found love, AI technologies, is that it will admit not compromise, and will not allow any questioning of tech’s status in light of its lackluster contributions to educational improvement. It’s guilty of a fundamentalist thinking that blinds it to other possibilities.

It’s almost as if, Ed Tech is a fundamentalist religion, especially about new technologies that arise. It automatically takes as its mission to push into every school and every classroom any new technology, even if it has not proven itself. It operates entirely on a faith that because it does this miraculous thing, it will do that revolutionary thing.

We have a ed tech fundamentalist problem, when a college teacher acts as a fundamentalist zealot and will not allow for any sort of education that does not include AI technologies, we have a serious problem in higher education. She wields AI as a hammer to beat students into her image of what she thinks their future is. (How’s that different from a strict, fundamentalist cult?)

When a high school principal takes on the mission to force all teachers and students to use generative AI with their students, he is acting as a fundamentalist zealot who does not allow for any compromise. Anyone questioning or otherwise acting is subjected to negative evaluations and more scrutiny.

With the “Screen question,” Ed Tech is facing important questions about the addictive nature of technologies and whether its overpromises about technology in the 2000s onward were warranted. Their promises of educational transformation and educational revolution are beginning to look like alchemical attempts to alter education through forced tech adoption.

Screen limits and screen bans are simply a reaction to the overpromises of the field of educational technology as a field that has only served, not as a critical weigh-station that evaluated the usefulness and suitability of new technologies, but as a technology cheerleader. In this role, Ed Tech has only served to make sure new technologies, Chromebooks, and now AI are forced into every school or classroom.

If anything, the “screenlash,” as the screen bans have been called, is because educational technology always sees new technologies as educationally transformative and then moves to forced implementation. It never steps back and examines new tech carefully. It should be the most skeptical field of all when new technologies arise and the most cautious. It’s not either.

Can You as an Educational Leader Trust the Evidence of Effectiveness Provided by the Product Developer? Probably Not

Can educators and educational leaders trust the research that companies provide about their products? Should they? Probably not. The tech industry that includes Ed Tech has a major credibility problem in the middle of the calls for screen bans and screen limits. For example, there is growing independent evidence that social media is harming our children. Why else would Facebook settle their massive lawsuit.

I just completed reading Max Fisher’s 2022 book “The Chaos Machine: The Inside Story of How Social Media Rewired Our Minds and Our World” and it clearly describes why we can’t trust research provided by companies on their own products. The book reinforced why I quit Facebook and Twitter sometime ago. But one particular incident in the book illustrates clearly to me why companies just can’t be trusted to provide unbiased, reliable evidence of their own product’s effectiveness or lack thereof.

In the book, Max Fisher points out that Facebook completed an internal study of their technology’s effects when faced with growing suspicion that their site might be making the political divisions in the US worse. Their own research warned internally that the platform was doing exactly what their company’s leaders denied it was doing. 

Their own leaked research said “Our algorithms exploit the human brain’s attraction to divisiveness.” According to Fisher, this was in a 2018 presentation leaked to the Wall Street Journal. This presentation also said that Facebook’s systems were designed in a way that delivered users “more and more divisive content in an effort to gain user attention and increase time on the platform.” 

Later, this research was hidden by Facebook executives and they rejected the recommendations for tweaking the algorithm that would have resulted in less time spent online. They, in other words, deliberately chose to keep users addicted to divisive content that their own machine served up to them.  

This is why companies’ research can’t ever be trusted. Neither can their executives. This is also why educators can’t trust research either done by or paid for by the companies whose products they are considering to purchase.

Companies simply aren’t going to provide educators and educational leaders with reliable, independent evidence that their products are effective. They are also going to hide studies that are less than supporting of their products. I would expect no different, after all that would prevent sales.

Facebook’s own research showed their product was harmful, yet they buried the evidence. They made the deliberate choice to keep their product addictive.

As an educator, I always ask for independent evidence of product effectiveness. Independent being evidence generating by studies not done or paid for in anyway connected to the company. Most often, none exists.

If such evidence does not exist, then   ask the company to allow you to run a study of their product on a trial basis. Use research methods to evaluate the product for what they claim. Once you have that, publish it and make it known. Share it with other individuals.

I can envision a whole network of school technologists who independently evaluate these products and share that evidence independently and not as a testimonial asked for by the company. 

Where the evidence comes from, who paid for it, who conducted the study that generated it, and why the evidence is being provided all matters.

This is what has been lacking in the massive technology acquisition and placement in schools. Now, our parents and common decency requires us to do things differently.

Is the US Department of Ed's Advice to Judge Screen Products by Evidence Helpful? Not Really

The latest advice provided by our US Department of Education advises educators to judge educational technologies by evidence of impact on learning, but there’s one problem, where do we get that so-called “evidence.” From the companies themselves? That’s a horrible idea

“…instructional technologies should be judged by their impact on learning, not simply whether they happen on a screen,” said Assistant Secretary of Elementary and Seconday Education Kirsten Baesler, in her attempt to salvage the status of educational technologies.

The problem is finding such evidence. Sure, you’ll get bombarded by “testimonials” from other districts about how effective a product is, but a pal of an owner of a ed tech company hardly counts as evidence. Besides, testimonials are not reliable and valid evidence. Too much room for corrupting influences in those.

What about any studies the ed tech company provide in their sales pitches? Well, I would not get too excited about that either. According to a 2019 Hechinger Report article, “The Dark Side of Education Research: Widespread Bias” by Jill Barshay, we need to scrutinize any research companies provide as evidence of their product’s effectiveness. Surprise, it is too often biased toward their own products.

Like Big Pharma, who has been guilty of generating their own faulty, self-promoting research for their products, Ed Tech companies and other educational resource companies have been operating from this playbook too.

This 2019 article examined a John Hopkins University study of 30 years of educational research by developers of educational interventions and products. These companies conducted their own research or paid someone to do the research, and most of the time, the results commonly showed greater benefits for students than when the research was independent. “On average, the developer research showed benefits—usually improvements in test scores—that were 70 percent greater than what independent studies found.”

In other words, studies done by or funded by the companies themselves were biased. They always made the product look better than independent studies did.

So, the US Department’s admonition that educators and education leaders “look to the evidence” before banning a screen product will not help at all. Most products, if there is any evidence, it is either testimony from another district, which is highly unreliable, or it is their own insider research which can’t be totally trusted.

Most companies, after all, would not want independent research because you can’t control the outcomes. Who wants to find out their product is garbage?

So what do we do with the US Department of Ed advice? Not much it seems, for independent, reliable research on these products is rare and mostly non-existent.

With school district technology employees taking free training from the likes of Google, Microsoft and others, can you really trust anything they say about the products either?

I might add as well, school technology conferences are also heavily underwritten by technology companies, so…well, not much help there either.

What do we do then as educators to determine whether a screen product is effective at what it does? Without independent research, I would conduct small-scale in-school studies myself before implementation to determine effectiveness. If enough educators did this and shared results, then there could be a pool of independent knowledge about these products. But it is going to require school technology educators become critically independent.

As expected, the US Department of Education’s advice about technology is about useful as a study provided on the safety of cigarettes by tobacco companies.

Screen Bans Should Be Embraced as an Opportunity to Think Outside the "Technology-Always-Has-The-Answer Box"

Screenbans in schools is an opportunity for Ed Tech and educators, not a threat.

Why? Because it is an opportunity to disrupt the tech-solutionism that has obsessed educators since the PC entered the classroom.

Tech-solutionist see technology as the "always-answer" to every problem.

This thinking places educators in a "Technology-Always-Has-The Answer" box where every problem has a tech solution. That turns into technology-obessiveness.

Despite what the Ed Tech marketers have promoted, they have not been promoting "thinking-out-of-box"; they have been promoting only thinking in their box. 

Screenban discussions and talk moves the thinking outside "technology-always-has-the-answer box” to a universe and world of options out there. Not every problem has a tech solution. 

Screenbans are disruptive of the Ed Tech status quo with its tech-solutionist answers. That’s the reason for their concerns.

Educators should take advantage of this time and de-center technology and place it among the other tools in the toolbox and reach for it when it solves a problem, not spend all their time looking for problems to solve with tech!

Ed Tech Does Not Always Have to Be Revolutionary: It Just Has to Work!

 Educators don’t always adopt Ed Tech to “revolutionize” or “change” anything. A tool doesn’t have to transform the work to be effective.

Sometimes you adopt a new technology to facilitate and help do what you are currently doing, not disrupt; not transform; not change anything.

The mistake often made by Ed Tech is thinking that their product must “revolutionize” or “transform” and that’s their marketing story.

The truth is, there are times when no change is needed other than having a tool that helps you do what you are doing better.

I suspect one of the reasons for the so-called “tech-lash” is because of promises of transformation that never panned out.

But the Ed Tech industry never blames their technologies. It’s always the implementation or the “system” that is rigid and unwilling to change. But, it just might be that the technology does not work, and in some cases it might be harmful.

Have you ever heard anyone in Ed Tech blame technology? I haven’t heard that that I recall. It’s never the technology’s fault.  It’s the system, the school, the leadership, the teacher, the student, the parent…never the technology.

But, just maybe, the Ed Tech is garbage. Maybe the company spent a ton of money dressing it up in expensive marketing clothes, and the actual product is junk. 

Ed Tech does not have to always be revolutionary or transformative. Sometimes it just has to help schools and teachers do what they’re doing better. That’s not as big a sell, but it is a solid product.

Why Is There Techlash and Screenbans? Perhaps Its Because It's a Problem!

I spoke to a parent of a middle schooler today. Somehow in the discussion technology came up in our conversation.

She said she honestly believed technology has ruined her son. He uses it for play and distraction instead of learning. He is consumed by it. 

Which makes sense, because our handheld tech is engineered for distraction.

She brought up here school's Chromebooks program and how she saw it a detrimental to her son's education. He simply could not handle the "freedom to be distracted."

Before you start blaming the parent, perhaps there needs to be more thought.

This illustrates what we've got wrong with Tech; we assumed it was the answer for all students. We standardized the technology and how it was used. No wonder there's what Ed Tech calls "Techlash"!

Instead of arming ourselves with arguments for Tech, perhaps we should focus on the students. The technology, if it is simply a tool, it does not have to be the tool used in learning. 

Maybe personalizing learning means having students who learn more effectively without tech engaged in screenless activities. Just maybe we can go a day or two, a week or two, or even a course or two without Tech.

The screen ban trend is not a marketing problem; perhaps sometimes the Tech IS the problem.

Before Signing That New Technology Contract, Be Sure to Consider Technical Debt: It's Always There and the Salesperson Isn't Going to Tell You About It

I recently heard the term “technical debt” used in a conversation about the use of AI in software coding. It refers to “the future costs associated with relying on shortcuts or suboptimal decisions made during software development.” 

I suggest that educators and educational leaders experience a kind of “technical debt” when they adopt technologies in their classrooms and schools, and that these debts are not always considered, especially in the glitter and glow of devices that are being marketed to them. 

These educators and educational leaders can’t envision the future costs of these technologies because they suffer from the eyeglaze that accompanies these devices.

But technical debt is a real future cost when selecting ANY NEW TECHNOLOGY and educational AI solutions are no different.

What’s particularly frightening with AI, it is so novel that all of these technical debts are not known yet.

In other words, schools don’t really know how the adoption of these technologies will impact future budgets if it is to be maintained. This is especially true since companies like OpenAI and Anthropic have not yet figured out how to profit from their products. This alone, makes all future costs of GenAI to schools unknown.

School leaders would do well to be aware that any adoption of a technology on offer from an Ed Tech company as well as any other tech solutions comes with these Technical debts.

This means being vigilant and skeptical and asking questions about possible technical debt is important, even if it is currently unforeseen. 

For example, asking about the profitability of a company can be important as is the current health of that company. Will this company be around 5 years, 10 years? 

Educators need technical solutions that are not going to saddle them with technical debts that will consumer even more of the already scarce budgets. 

A complete investigation into the solution and the company offering it is vital, otherwise, schools and school districts will find themselves saddled with technical debts impossible to resolve.

ChatGPT: Not a Tool, But a Novelty In Search of a Legitimate Use

I am increasingly seeing the ChatGPT creations where a user asks it to generate a drawing or illustrated map of themselves with drawings indicating who they are, based on the "conversations they have been having with the chatbot."

Don't get me wrong, can anything good come from that?

I hope the "conversations" these users have been having with that chatbot has not been too intimate. Silicon Valley has a notorious reputation with what they do with individual personal data. 

Then there's the idea as to why I should care what ChatGPT has to say about me, though I will confess I am not a user, nor will I ever be. But, what credibility does a chatbot have other than what we decide to give it? It's like a bit tech "soothesayer" or horoscope with about the same level of truthfulness.

It's a machine, and it just spitting back to you what you have inputed, and some cases manufacturing that information in order to please the user. Really, it is just a more complex version of Joseph Weizenbaums' chatbot Eliza.

People are searching for ways to use GenAI, in order to give it legitimacy. They want so bad to find some usefulness for it, because it's so neat!

True tools are not like that. They are created to solve a problem, not a solution in search of a problem to solve.

The Proper Role of Ed Tech and Educational Leaders in the AI Push into Schools

 “We as educators need to educate our students about AI,” is how Ed Tech’s latest pitch goes regarding their new project. Let’s look at what is really involved in that project.

Paul Kingnorth writes in his 2025 thought-provoking book “Against the Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity”:

“…we need to understand the consequences of the Machine we have built, and which is now rebuilding us so that we may become more perfect consumers, shopping for individual fulfillment in its global marketplace of goods, ideas, and identities.”

The Ed Tech calls for “AI Literacy” are part of the “Machine” project that Kingsnorth describes here, the project of “rebuilding us so that we may become more perfect consumers” of AI, Silicon Valley’s latest money-maker. Big Tech, as it did with the internet, Web 2.0, social media, has once again activated our Ed Tech establishment in schools to take on the task of transforming students and teachers into proper consumers of their latest cash cow, AI.

Part of this project of Big Tech has been to short-circuit any critical thought about AI as they have made it, about its moral and ethical uses, and even whether we should accept it as presented. They did this through their “inevitability” myth, and their “everybody-is-using-it” myth, both of which are not true and does not have to be true.

They have used these myths effectively in the past, and educational technology has been acting and is currently acting as the proselytizers of Silicon Valley since it beginnings as a disciplinary field. It is a discipline that exists to carry out Big Tech’s latest proclamations, and their latest is to get all of education—students, teachers, parents—to acquiesce without protest, to being blind, perfect consumers of AI.

Educators have no business acting in this role. If anything, they should be fostering critical-thinking individualists who decide for themselves the role, if any, AI will play in their own lives and use. These students can also decide for themselves whether acceptance or resistance is called for. The next generation can demand that AI serve humanity, not those who stand to profit the most from its success.

Reflecting back on thirty-plus years in education and my own role in Ed Tech, I have seen how educators become implicated in this whole project of consumer generation. Now, we see how this blind promotion of technology has not really transformed anything for the good.

Past history tells us, that this AI consumer project will not end well in its present form either, without ensuring that our students, teachers, and parents are able to think for themselves critically about the place and form of this technology in their lives. 

We do not have to let Silicon Valley and Ed Tech decide for us.

AI Advocates and An Automated Dreamworld: A Fictional World Once Described by Author Kurt Vonnegut

Would you like to see what the world will look like if the AI company CEOs, AI cheerleaders, along with EdTech AI evangelists get the automated world they so desperately desire?

I've been re-reading one of my favorite Kurt Vonnegut novels, Player Piano written in the 1950s. In that book, you have a world where the machines have replaced all the workers, doing the "so-called work that no one really wants to do.

It is a divided world where there are machines, there are engineers and managers, and there is everyone else. The machines do all the work. The engineers design machines for every task, because there is the faith that they can always do it better. 

The managers keep the machines running and the engineers designing. The rest of the people? They take on the left over jobs, such as cleaning the streets; they become members of what is called in the “Reconstruction and Reclamation Corps” or the “Reeks and Wrecks.” They are the people for whom the automated, artificial society no longer had a place for, so they were relegated to the left-over portion of society because they “couldn’t compete with machines.” They even live separately from the machines, managers, engineers in a place called “Homestead” where they can be out of view and only interacted with when needed.

I read the book a few years ago, but now as I re-read, it seems to take on an even greater relevance in the AI arguments of today. It’s almost prophetic!

Vonnegut wrote in his Forward:

“This book is not a book about what is, but a book about what could be,” and I think it a very apt description. 

Player Piano is a book about what could be if humanity continues down a path of pursuing blind efficiency and profit at all costs, and mechanizing and automating everything including their thinking.

Player Piano is what happens when one views everything in the world as a design problem.

The problem with the vision that AI evangelists and promoters have for the future, is that it is a dreamworld, and a world where they thrive at the expense of many others. That’s world that Vonnegut captures in this novel.

There’s all this AI hype about freeing up workers so they can do more important work. But that is nonsense. That is not what will happen. History shows us this, if only they would read it. In this instance, our fiction is becoming our history.

Besides, the reality is, work does not always have to provide us with meaning; we can find meaning in our work, no matter what it is.

And then there is the dreamy idea a so-called “Universal Minimum Income.” That’s really nonsense. (Actually Vonnegut has such a feature in this society, and it does not wokr.) But it will not happen, ever, in a society such as ours. In our current society, we are constantly cutting food stamps, medicaid and all manner of services for those in need, and we expect our government is going to provide a universal income for everyone regardless of what they do? That is biggest nonsensical idea ever!

I am so glad to be revisiting the world of Kurt Vonnegut’s Player Piano now, because it offers a clearer picture than ever, where this blind, religious faith in AI is going to take us. It is not a “Promise land of abundant milk and honey flowing" either.

I’m sure Vonnegut would have a big laugh at the thought of him being a prophet because that would be nonsense to him. But, his world in Player Piano and the beliefs that underpin it, are very much alive in the hearts and minds of AI dreamers. 

AI Is Not Inevitable No Matter What Ed Tech Tells You

Ed Tech’s argument to educators about AI continues with the inevitability argument, a genius marketing tactic of Big Tech.

“AI is here to stay so you might as well accept it and subject students to it, after all, they are going to use it anyway,” says post after post from the Ed Tech faithful.

That’s such a poor argument on so many levels.

First of all, the here-to-stay, inevitability argument… This is Silicon Valley dogma and marketing at its best. No technology is “inevitable” but think about it. If the Tech companies get users to acquiesce without protest, they’ve won from the start! 

Sorry EdTech, we do not have to accept AI as is. We can, through our government, push for regulation and through our consumer choices, we can refuse to use their products if they are not up to our standards. Consumers always have a choice. Accepting inevitability means surrending power.

Secondly, the students-are-going-to-use-it-anyway argument… Does it really matter? Students often choose to use any number of products, and it is not education’s role to teach the proper use of these products. It is not educators’ responsibility to sanitize AI so that it is used properly either. If one follows that argument, we should be requiring gun safety for every student too, just because all students need to use guns for good purposes and not bad ones.

EdTech is so biased on the issue of AI they have become a 24-hour-a-day commercial for it. Is there not anyone with a critical thought among them?

The field of Ed Tech’s future depends on the acceptance of AI, cell phones, and all manner of gadgets, and that’s why it is a marketing arm of the Big Tech. After all, creating students who are CRITICAL USERS might mean that they can choose to not use, and that’s bad for business.

Educational leaders, parents and teachers should take all arguments about AI and cell phones, etc. coming for Ed Tech with a grain a salt. 

Educators Should NOT Teach Students How to Use Technology with a Purpose: They Should Teach

Ed Tech advocates say, "We should teach students how to use technology with a purpose."

Do we teach students how to use a pencil, an eraser, or paper with purpose?

No, we don't start with the device, then teach students the ways in which to use the device; we start with the purpose, that which needs to be taught, not the device. The device is actually only relevant in its ability to serve the purpose.

If the device does not serve the instructional purposes, acccording to the judgment of the teacher, it has no place in instruction.

We also don't sit around inventing ways to use a pencil or paper in the classroom. We use them when they suit our instructional purpose, which comes first.

Education has gotten this wrong quite often in the past. We exchange our instructional purpose for the technology to achieve that purpose and spend all our time on the technology.

Too often, Ed Tech confuses the technology as the objective and the purpose.

Education should never be about teaching how to use technology with a purpose; it should be teaching and instruction as the purpose, and the technology might or might not help in that.

Educate Students, Not Consumers and Users of AI

It is not the function of education to sanitize and transform AI into a useful tool for humanity or even businesses.

If it is a useful tool, then it will find a place in that niche.

It is fallacy to think that if schools do not somehow educate to transform AI into a "magical tool of production" they are failures. This play on an educator's conscience is an old EdTech tactic and it is reprehensible.

There is tiresome post after tiresome post from AI experts, consultants and creators, who keep making hyped claims about its future. In reality, they ARE USING THE HYPE AND THE INEVITABILITY ARGUMENT TO ENSURE THEIR FUTURE INCOME AND WELL-BEING. The wise educator will cut through and look beyond the sales tactics.

After all, if AI flops or does not measure up to expectations, they will have made their money, and they can move on to the next technological invention like they have done in the past.

I understand when one has enthusiasm for a new gadget, but one must not let the glow and glitter shine so brightly that one can't really see. And, those of us out there that are subjected to this promo-rhetoric, need to keep our wits about us and our critical thinking hats on.

With the Instructure Canvas Data Breach It's Clear That Ed Institutions Either Pay Hackers Extortion Money or Pay Tech Solutionist Mob Bosses to Protect Data: The Cloud Is a Nasty Place

Do educational institutions need to rethink their use of all cloud solutions?

If educational institutions want to exist in the cloud, they seem to have to pay either extortionist hackers or pay the "Tech Mob" solutionists for protection.

With the Canvas data theft, I am convinced that all the web is perceived as a money extortion scheme by everyone.

The hackers extort money from educational institutions.

Then, educational institutions have the choice to pay the hackers or suffer their data spread everywhere.

Or, they can pay additional Mobsters, in the form of data protection solutions to keep their data safe.

What's wrong with this? Educational institutions have to pay ransom to someone regardless in order to keep their data as safe as possible.

Either way, if educational institutions choose to use any cloud solutions, they pay for the solution, then they pay for the mob protection of companies that provide security.

The web has turned into an unsavory place where one has to pay for protection. That is a problem.

Ed Tech Doesn't Need to Advocate for Technology: It Needs to Shine a Spotlight on Its Flaws Too

One key component of any Digital Literacy Program? Web content is not always there due to its merit; it's there because someone "pays for its spread" and "games the delivery algorithms."

Of course, the most astute users already know this.

But if we want truly digitally literate students, they need to know the games people play to get noticed.

They need to know that all web content, especially that disseminated on platforms, is not necessarily there due to its merit, but because it is like a paid informercial or because someone knows the algorithmic game.

As schools grapple with AI, it is important to include in literacy the games behind its creation as well. Its use of web content, including pirated copyrighted content in its development. Also, its use of exploited labor to train models, and its massive consumption of our natural resources and power.

Too often, educators get caught up in the shiny gleam of technologies as gems and fail to see that most of the time what they really have are rhinestones.

Ed Tech promotes the "gemstones" myth for all technologies.

Ed Tech Defends Devices Not Students: There Is an Attention Problem and It's Not the Screentime That's the Problem: It's the Products or Screens

Many in Ed Tech are striking back against those wanting to control screen time with bans and restrictions. They rely on the old “utilitarian argument” used by gun advocates. “Devices don’t distract students; students distract themselves” they say.

How ludicrous does that sound when the devices are PURPOSEFULLY DESIGNED AND ENGINEERED by Big Tech to “distract” and “capture attention?”

Sure, it’s not the time spent behind the screen that is the problem. Its the products that Ed Tech uncritically subject students to.

It’s devices and apps that are purposefully engineered for addiction. The product is the problem. It’s how it’s made and that is of concern.

These companies aren’t going to change their money-making products, and their goal is more and more addictive and distracting designs with each new feature.

In the classrooms, teachers are fighting “mech-dealers” (the tech-equivalent of meth dealers), who sell these addictive products and who only want students attention and data so they can make more money.

That is the problem with screens.

Instead of working with these Ed Tech companies and serving students and their attention on a silver platter,  why not join with those who want to address these issues. 

No, like Ed Tech does when their devices flop, it’s the teachers’ fault; it’s the school’s fault.

It’s an implementation problem, they say. Just maybe, the product is the problem.

Come on Ed Tech, advocate for students, not the Tech and those peddling it.

Why Abandoing E-Books Restores an Old Experience of Reading

Why do I still buy physical books? Call it reverse digital conversion.

When the Kindle appeared, I was in awe and I have purchased multiple versions over the years, and always used the app across devices. It gave me instant access to book purchases (though under Amazon terms I did not actually own the books but simply pay them for access). It also allowed me to carry a library around with me at all times (though I discovered you still can only read one book at a time.)

That awe e-books invoked has long-since cooled and I buy more physical books than I do e-books. Why?

The experience of reading a physical book for me is different and more suitable to the way I want to experience reading. 

First of all, reading from a device can bring the multitude of distractions that gadgets bring. I can read a physical book on MY TERMS, and truly block out the world. Devices are designed for distraction, so a physical book has none of that.

Secondly, I like to physically underline as I read, make notes in the margins, and I have an old-fashioned journal and pen I can pick up and record quotes and thoughts. I have never been able to get that feature in the Kindle app to work the way I want to work. 

Despite what the Tech evangelists tell us, devices LIMIT sometimes, and the e-book limits my reading experience.

Finally, I honestly like to own my books, and not pay for access. I return again and again to my books and right there in them are my notes and thoughts. I don't have to make sure my device battery is charged or whether there's a wifi connection. Just open it and you're there. That's pretty darn efficient.

I still purchase a e-book every now and then, but it is usually one I read for relaxation or interest. It's the books I usually give away. It is never one that I will re-read or return to. Though, there are times when I purchase an e-book first, but find that I want a physical copy instead. 

There are obvious issues with physical books but one adapts. For example, the photo below is my solution for that stack of books I kept by my chair on the end table. The book tree works well. I can see my titles and pull and replace easily. Of course a single Kindle on a table would replace, would it not? God forbid! Then it brings its distractions, charging issues, etc.

This really is an illustration of "reverse digital conversion." We all need to think outside the silicon box that technology has placed us. Perhaps then, we will rediscover old experiences and invent new ones. The world is not yet encased in chips, and if it is, I don't envy living in such a place.