The Missing Component in Digital Literacy: Critical Examination of Consequences of Our Digital Technologies

When we speak of digital literacy in education, often that notion is about the construction of “good little users and consumers of technology.” Instead, what is needed is a digital literacy curriculum that expands into examining the greater societal and environmental impact of the choices we make in technologies.

In other words, most often, digital literacy accepts the technology as inevitable, and that we have no choice but become users. When our digital literacy efforts do this, they are simply serving up students as consumers for Silicon Valley tech companies. With that, we are complicit in increasing tech company power over us and our world.

A true digial literacy curriculum needs a strong critical component that carefully examines the consequences of our technological choices. For example, in dealing with AI literacy, there needs to be deliberate efforts to provide students with the ecological consequences of the massive energy and water consumption of the data centers needed to power it. With social media, there needs to be deliberate instruction on how social media has negatively impacted our society. With every technology in our lives, there needs to be critical thinking about the use of that technology. In other words, students must be equipped with critical knowledge that empowers them to decide for themselves whether they want to be users of that technology or not.

Ed Tech is solely responsible for this state of affairs. They have instilled within us that technology is inevitable and that it is always the answer to our problems. The job of Ed Tech in education has always been unquestioningly turning administrators, teachers, and students into users.

When digital literacy focuses on a critical examination of technologies and the consequences of their use, you do not have “good little users and consumers of tech”; you have empowered citizens who create a society that decides for themselves which technologies deserve a place in their lives.

Advice to Teachers and School Leaders About Tech and AI from 1969 That Is Still Sound Today

There was an educational technologist who provided sound wisdom about AI and all technology in 1969.

Anthony Oettinger, who was a Harvard researcher, acknowledged in his 1969 book “Run, Computer, Run: The Mythology of Educational Innovation,” that instructional technology could lead to improvements in education.

But…he also provided some words of wisdom that Ed techies have forgotten.

He cautioned that instructional technology can’t be “force-fed, oversold, and prematurely applied.

Ed Tech has never taken that advice and plunged into implementation with every new wave of technology that arrives. Perhaps that’s just another reason that the allure of screenbans is so strong today.

With every new technology since the PC, school leaders and ed tech advocates jump to force-feeding those new technologies through “strategic implementation plans” and “forced professional development” without ever taking the time to critically examine those technologies’ places in schooling, teaching and learning.

Then, school leaders and ed techies move to engaging in the very “oversales” tactics that Oettinger warned about. Propagandistic presentations and sales language like “gamechanger, disruptive, and transformative” are the go-to words in this over-selling tactics before anyone has even really been able to explore the technology. Implementation is treated like a “marketing problem” and not whether the technology is actually useful.

Finally, school leaders and ed techies prematurely apply the technologies in widespread fashion. School leaders want to boast about their schools being 1-to-1 schools, AI schools. Ed Tech consultants want to boast about the number of keynote speeches they’ve made and the hours of PD conducted. This happened with earlier tech and it is happening again with AI. The over-selling has generated the hype without really giving teachers and students and researchers time to examine the technology.

Ed Tech has immediately jumped to the search for proof that they were right about AI’s transformative power without giving the technology any time to develop.

Ed Tech’s problem is that it has never encountered a technology that was NOT disruptive, transformative, or a gamechanger. By default, anything silicon-based that comes along fits the bill.

Ed Tech is more into selling technology instead of critically and methodically examining as well as exploring possibilities.

I end with three things offered as advice to school leaders and teachers that captures Oettinger’s 1969 advice:

-Don’t force-feed the tech through strategic implementation plans and mandated PD. Allow time for small-scale experimentation and even resistance if it arises.

-Don’t oversell or even feel like you have to sell a technology. If the technology is miraculous, it will demonstrate this. If it has no promise then it will show this too.

-Finally, don’t engage in premature application ever! Tech options like AI hasn’t been around long enough to be the salvation of education. Don’t talk implementation. Instead talk about experimentation and exploration. Give the tech time to prove itself.

Oettinger’s advice is not antiquated, but that’s how sound wisdom often is, if we don’t allow the glare and glitter of new technologies blind us.

Why Educators and School Leaders Should Be Skeptical with Anthropic's Free AI Access Offer and How to Protect Their Schools

Let’s call Anthropic’s “free” AI access offer for what it is…an effort to get teachers and schools hooked on their product like a drug pusher standing on the curb offering free trial samples. Well, maybe not, but it feels like it.

Obviously, once teachers have invested a great deal of time and data in the product, Anthropic is in total control. They control the technology-user relationship; they control the price; and they control the conditions of use. Schools and educators are in some ways really selling their educator souls!

The notion of being skeptical of anything offered for “free” applies here. Nothing is ever free for long. Absolutely nothing is free.

Anthropic is simply deferring that cost for later. School districts and educators who elect to partake will pay later for their “free” use.

Before having anything to do with Anthropic, I would consider this “free” offer carefully and anticipate expected costs once the system is hooked.

Also, educators and school leaders should demand answers to the following questions before even setting up an educator account:

1) How much can I expect to pay in the future for your product? I need to plan for anticipated costs before a commitment.

2) What happens to all the data that we invest in using your product? Will it be used for training models? Can we have a hard-clad contracted assurance that prevents this in the future?

3) You make no promises about being serious about student and teacher data security beyond quoting something about FERPA, to which you are NOT LEGALLY BOUND. So, what are you going to do to protect our data?

Those are the big questions school leaders should ask before taking Anthropic up on their “free” offer. Though I would say no thanks even before asking them.

Otherwise, school leaders should make sure they protect students’ data and school data by forbidding the upload by anyone in their districts to Anthropic’s product until answers are provided.

My ultimate fear is this is the usual Big Tech and Ed Tech sales tactic.

Get users invested and hooked first. Then you have total control of your users, both their access and price.

That’s not a wise way for school leaders to protect their students, staffs, and school resources. It is extremely short-sighted leadership and non-visionary.

That’s signing a blank check to Anthropic.

Stay away from Silicon Valley companies bearing gifts. It’s not a gift and it’s NOT FREE.

There Is Some Acceptable Logic with Screen Bans That Needs to Be Considered

Devices that have become common in our classrooms have a design problem that Ed Tech does not acknowledge. 

These screen devices and their apps have been in some instances engineered to be habit-forming. In other words, addictive characteristics have been designed into these applications and devices.

Technology companies have become experts at designing and engineering for habit-forming and addiction in their products. Big Tech companies like Meta and Tic Tok, just to start with a few, are experts in “hooking” users on their products.

I am currently re-reading Nir Eyal’s book, Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products. This book is a textbook for addiction engineers. It describes how tech companies have pulled off engineered addiction with their screen-based products.

In fact, Eyal’s book, Hooked, is a how to book on how to make products addictive.

Once engineers have users “hooked” like drug pushers, they have customers who have been mind-manipulated to being endless users. Like drug users, they find it difficult to put down the drug. They will fight to protect both the product and the habit.

Eyal promotes what he calls “the Hooked Model” to addict users to products. 

This involves using four steps to achieve addiction:

1) Triggering initial user behavior;

2) Engaging user in an action;

3) Dispensing a variable reward to keep users coming back;

4) Getting the user to invest time, data, effort, social capital and money.

According to Eyal, subjecting potential customers to this “Hooked” strategy works. You have users addicted to your product. While this model might be simplified, it does capture  features in screen products we encounter on our devices.

He also calls his method of engineering addiction “a Superpower.”

I call it malicious manipulation of humanity for profit. Is there no consideration that such tactics at mind-manipulation are unethical?

Tech companies and others engage relentlessly in engineered addiction because it works. But there is something extremely immoral about the whole thing. The idea that you can design a habit-forming, engineered addictive product and celebrate it as a superpower is problematic. 

Teaching students and all educators how to recognize when such tactics are employed is vital. This is clearly a subject for any digital literacy efforts.

Is it any wonder why tech companies and Ed Tech are so upset about screen bans?

Screen bans nuke this engineered addiction model before it gets its talons into users’ minds.

If users regain control over when and how a device is used, then the game is up.

Using AI Is a Choice Not an Imperative: Knowing Why One Uses It or Not Is Important

If you examine closely any of the AI promotional posts here on LinkedIn or elsewhere, and the avalanche of AI educational books out of bookstores, one thing about AI and all this promotional hype becomes clear:

They are using AI to search for a problem to solve.

Why else do so many AI-promotional posts on LinkedIn begin with the words, “AI is not he problem, (Insert whatever is the problem) is the problem”? That is a dead give-away that the search is underway for a problem that Silicon Valley’s latest shiny toy can solve.

But, what if in my role as teacher, I am perfectly able to resolve my problems with tools already in my toolbox, or with cheap, non-technological solutions? 

Why should I use AI  when asking a friend for feedback on an email works? Do I use AI just to be able to say I used AI? That sounds like I am being faddish, not economical.

Why do I need to turn to technology for solutions as all of Ed Tech does?

Take writing. It can be done very effectively without technology at all. This writing, like all my writing, begins its existence as handwriting done with a pen on a page of paper. The pen and paper are perfect tools for writing. That’s what they were made for. Simple, useful tools for writing.

Writer Wendell Berry once wrote:

“If you are already solving your problem with the equipment  you have—a pencil, say—why solve it with something more expensive and more damaging? If you don’t have a problem, why pay for a solution? If you love the freedom and elegance of simple tools, why encumber yourself with something complicated?”

That’s it. That is the question at the heart about why I choose not to use AI tools. I already have tools to solve my problems. I choose not to use AI which is damaging the environment, a strain on natural resources, and has been created through human exploitation. It is clearly complicated.

I also love the “freedom and elegance of simple tools” that do not “encumber” me with the “complicated.” I can write anywhere with pen and paper. No need to connect to the internet or a power source. 

I write, I teach, I work fine with the tools I have. I have no need for an anthropomorphized, word-prediction algorithm to assist in what I do. I do not want to complicate what I do with technology just because it exists.

Right now, there are an awful lot of people whose future is staked on AI trying to convince the world that it can solve problems. They desperately search for problems it can solve. Their golden ticket demands it. Their every word is an exercise in searching for a solution for AI to solve.

Like Berry though, I relish the freedom and elegance of the simple tools. Perhaps that really should be the guiding force in Ed Tech: Look to the simple tools first. Instead of trying to justify the existence of a technology, really look for any solutions to solve problems.

As I live and work, why should I choose to enchain myself with the chains of complication wrought through using AI? There’s a reason why the old adage, “Keep it simple stupid!” is so well-worn.

What Is It with App and Software Developers? Offer a Garbage Product and Make Users Pay a Ransom to Get a Better Product? What Nonsense!

I deleted another app that has been on my Mac for well over 10 years. It is increasingly the story from software and app developers: They are arrogant and often could care less about what their customers actually want.

They start by offering a basically limited functional product and make customers pay for the features they need through additional costs in subscriptions. And in those subscriptions, they also make them pay for bloated features they did not want in the first place.

This arrogance is absolutely amazing! They really think they know better what their users want than their users.

What's more, they offer an initial garbage product, and force RANSOM PAYMENTS for those features the users want in the first place.

You can bet if the app offers a subscription model, they are probably engaging in this practice.

I have deleted two apps that I used for over ten years in recent days for this very reason. 

It seems Tech companies aren't about offering customers solutions anymore: They are about focusing on squeezing as much money out of customers possible through crappy products that can only be less crappy with more money.

When It Comes to AI and Screen Ban Arguments, School Leaders Shouldn't Accept the "It's-Just-a-Tool Argument": You Owe Your Students Much More

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.