What's With Idea of Becoming an Effective School Leader in 10 Minutes or in 10 Simple Steps?

I recently reviewed a manuscript for a book that was entitled something like the “Ten Minute School Leader.” It was simply a booklist of ten things that an administrator could do to supposedly become effective. When you see something like that or hear a salespitch with that kind of list, run away as fast as you can before it sucks your money away into oblivion. There  are no simple recipes for the complicated things in life.

Let’s face it, you just can’t reduce the complexity of school leadership to 10 things much less master it in 10 minutes. It takes time to learn about students, about teachers, about the school, about the system and that’s just not going to happen in 10 steps or 10 minutes.

It takes longer that 10 minutes to read such drivel.

Leadership of any kind in my experiences is never, ever that simple. These people are preying on a desire for a quick fix that’s just not there.

We live in a world where we want to sacrifice everything for efficiency and save time. 

Some things that are true and important just can’t possible be said simply.

Sure, No Causal Evidence of Screen Harms to Students, But There Is Enough Data to Pause Full-Speed Ahead Adoption of Technologies

Are screen bans and screen limits warranted? Well…

Sure, there is no causal proof that screens are absolutely "causing" a decline in reading achievement, math achievement and psychological harms.

We as educators have to be careful because cigarette companies used the same defense of lack of causal evidence for years, at least until enough evidence was amassed to show that there was a causal relationship. A lot of harm happened in the interim. We work with kids, and if there is any evidence, even if it is flawed, we need to take notice. There’s is enough rationale to question and move deliberately.

With screens, there are some correlations or associations between screens and harms. Does that mean an outright ban of screens in schools?" I would not call for that. It would make me question and walk more slowly though.

However, I would pause the full-steam-ahead approach to Ed Tech that quickly drives adoption of the latest inventions that come forth from Silicon Valley and tech companies. This massive rush to integrate AI for example, is wrong-headed. It needs a more deliberate and slower approach to adoption because there are quite a few unknowns, including consequences of use over time to cognitive function.

The problem with so much about Ed Tech adoption in schools is the rhetoric of urgency used by Ed Tech boosters. They tell educators that if they don't adopt immediately they and their students will be left behind. They use this urgency pitch like a sledgehammer to force these tools into classrooms, usually for their own benefit.

This urgency needs to be ignored by educators. Rarely is taking time to explore the adoption of a new tool in the classroom a problem. Sales pitches about the end of education and technological revolutions are more about product and self-promotion than reality. This urgency is entirely manufactured and hype.

Should school districts ban screens entirely? Here’s some things schools could do.

-They should ban technologies that are not safe for students to use. No question there. Make the companies pushing the products make their products safe for students to use. Don’t adopt until they do so.

-They should allow exploration and experimentation with controls and data collection. Avoid the run-away-train of widespread adoption and take time to study it.

-They should ban wholesale  adoption of new technologies, and instead focus efforts on experimenting and collecting data first. Take the time necessary.

The great sin of school technologists and Ed Tech advocates is they race from the invention of a technology immediately to its adoption, sometimes just because the seers of Silicon Valley start prognosticating and fostering a false sense of urgency. 

Screen bans, while I can certainly understand the fears and rationale, I am not convinced myself that is necessary. However, I am convinced that we can curtail Ed Tech products that are not safe. Educators, and there are a lot of us, can demand that Silicon Valley and tech companies make their products safer before we wholesale adopt them. 

Screen limits are another story. I am convinced that we have put technology on a pedestal in education. It is literally the always-go-to solution for all problems. 

We need to leap out of the technology-is-always-the-solution box that Silicon Valley and Ed Tech boosters have put us in and widen our horizons and look for solutions beyond the horizons of screens.

Those solutions are there. There is not always an app for those. 

As Thoughtful Educators, We Can't Dismiss the Possible Role Screens Play in the Decline of Reading Skills

Could it be that reading achievement is declining because we decentered it from the curriculum and replaced with screens and all manner of technology?

I’ve been reading James Marriot’s new book “The New Dark Ages: The Death of Reading and the Dawn of the Post-Literate Society” and he attempts to make the case that the decline of reading—deep, thoughtful reading—is caused by the proliferation of the smartphone and screens and the addictive, accompanying amount of time culturally that individuals spend on those devices. 

Just look around on a crowded subway, and see all the faces glued to screens he says. Once these people were reading books and newspapers; now they are scrolling through endless, mindnumbing videos on Instagram and TikTok.

Perhaps, in education, from the time computers appeared, we have listened to Big Tech marketing all too well and placed technology at the center of all we do in education, and now, should we really be surprised that the kinds of reading that is transformative and deep is done less because we have pushed students to spend more and more time in classrooms on devices? Have we been complicit in selling our kids out to be constant consumers of mindless digital content?

As an educator, who experienced this big tech push to centralize technology as both participant and, now regretably, advocate, I only wish we had been more reflective and critical. But all technologies have an irresistable glow that lures one to their promise and wiles, sometimes without taking time to ask the tough question: What will be the consequences of this technology if students use it? If I use it? What will these technologies do to us?

Marriott points out that “ability to read long and complex texts was once widespread skill.” Now, it is at risk because the time it takes to really dig into reading is being replaced with the constant scrolling and clicking of screens.

This should give every educator pause and force a rethinking of the role in which we have placed technology in the classroom. We should be much more thoughtful and willing to do things that decenter it from our teaching and our students’ learning.

Alas, many Ed Tech advocates and school technology consultants have the same attitude of “gun rights advocates” and are almost of the mindset that screens must be pried from their “cold, dead hands” before they will acknowledge that technology can possibly be a problem. Just maybe their dogmatic faith in its possibilities is a problem too.

I started teaching at the dawn of the classroom PC and the internet, and I would say it has always been a struggle to get students to engage in deep, thoughtful reading, especially of complex texts. (Teaching the “Odyssey” to ninth graders was a challenge before smartphones I will admit.)

But, we can’t take off the table that maybe the central place of screens in teaching and learning is something we can critically examine.

The issue with screens occurs when one from refuses to let go of a “faith-based-like-belief in the transformative power of screens” and even acknowledge there might be problems we need to consider and address.

Consequently, it should never be the screens we defend; it should be our students minds, their reading, their learning, and their intellectual development. Just maybe we’ve put too much faith in the technology.

Is AI Being Oversold in Schools? A Quick Look Back to the 1990s and 2000s Would Say Yes Because Teachers Are AI-ed To

Techno-promoters, to use a term that Larry Cuban used in his 2001 book “Oversold and Underused: Computers in the Classroom” have used a distinct set of “interlocking assumptions” to justify the expenses and adoption of technologies since the push  to put PCs in every classroom and wire schools for the internet.

These “interlocking assumptions” can be captured in the following:

• availability = increased use
• increased use = efficient teaching and better learning
• efficient teaching and better learning = higher achievement and better educated and capable workers.

These assumptions (by the way come directly from Cuban’s 2001 book) have not proven to be true at all.

Ed Tech and school technology boosters have been using those assumptions to the point that they are clichés. They are as tired and worn out as an old 386 PC sitting on a shelf gathering dust and are not true.

The problem is, you can map the same assumptions on current efforts to push AI into schools. For example:

• If AI is available to students in classrooms, then there will be increased use by teachers and students.
• If students and teachers increase their use of AI in the classroom, then more efficient teaching and better learning will occur.
• If there’s more efficient teaching and better learning, then students will be better educated for the workforce and experience higher achievement.

You really have to hand it to the Ed Tech world and Ed AI boosters; they stick to the script, and not a single speck of out-of-the-box thinking here.

That’s the problem with all of the AI hype and push into education; there’s nothing original, absolutely nothing original about it.

Ed Tech and AI boosters are so enamored with the tech, they can’t stop to have single critical thought. They are unable to criticize the current claims being made about AI and have bought into the gold rush to integration.

Like computers, AI is being “Oversold and will likely be underused” just like computers were when Cuban wrote his book. 

And, I would say for the exact same reason: teachers, those in the classrooms now, are being trained on and marketed to; they are being coaxed and made to feel guilty; and they are being called out of touch and a Luddite if they resist.

Just like Cuban pointed out in 2001 about computers: teachers are not being given a say on how and whether AI is useful in their teaching and in their students’ learning.

If I were into betting in long-term prediction markets, after all the AI boosterism’s push into schools is done, we will get the same results we have with all the other technology integration efforts, which is a lot of money, time, and effort wasted with little to show for it.

You would think Ed Tech and AI boosters would use some different kind of promotional playbook with a new set of assumptions, but alas, when you have a unquestioning “fundamentalist faith” that technology will bring salvation, you keep waiting for your messiah.

Trump's Relabeling Artificial Intelligence Is An Attempt Divert Attention from the Harms It's Causing by Giving It Messianic Status: It's a Ruse

Trump's renaming of artificial intelligence to "super intelligence" is his attempt to try to claim some kind of "miracle-forming status" for the technology.  A messianic status.

He's trying to elevate to a status whose pursuing is above question. Its pursuit is worth sacrificing the environment. Sacrificing even people.

It is worth diverting all the energy and water resources needed, even at the expense of people.

It is an attempt to elevate the technology to almost a deity status.

He, as all the tech billionaires who surrounded him are working for power and money, and not the interests of this country or humanity. It's greed and power at its worst.

It will always be artificial intelligence, and even using that term is not entirely adequate because it assumes that there is an intelligence presence like that of humans.

Sherry Turkle Nails the Problem with Generative AI and Chatbots in a Single Book: Every Educator Needs to Read This One

What happens when we talk to machines? Lean on chatbots as if they were human? Turns out there are some serious consequences to us as humans, according to Sherry Turkle, in her new book, “Artificial Intimacy: Who We Become When We Talk to Machines.”

Set aside the anecdotes of efficacy and the narratives of salvation by chatbot that are circulating by AI boosters, you really have a technology that has the potential to fundamentally change us, and in ways that have consequences for ourselves and for society.

Silicon Valley and AI boosters are whooping it up about their favorite technology and the miracles it has wrought, but there are more insidious consequences if we start talking to these chatbots and treating AI as if they were a human.

Turkle captures those consequences at length in this book. In short, they

 “don’t teach us what we need to know about the give-and-take of real relationships, or the friction, risk, and complexities of love. They don’t show us how to deal with loss by internalizing what is gone. They take on work assignments but don’t care if we have a sense of mastery or agency.They are good at keeping us busy, but can’t give us a sense of place. And they don’t teach us about empathy, or about human lives that are always embodied, social, and lived in shades of gray.” p. 218 

As I read Turkle’s take on generative AI and chatbots that people starting treating as companions, and as human, I think I get it.

Generative AI and chatbots have the potential of crippling us as humans. Of turning us into hermits in our homes where speaking to a chatbot is more real than with a person in the world. Of shielding us of the very things in life, though difficult, are necessary for our growth.

Even worse, this technology of human impersonation, because its design is always to tell us what we want to hear, can extend a narcissistic mirror to us where we are deceived in believing that we can’t do wrong; that we are geniuses; and that all our answers are found in machines.

I have read through Turkle’s book once, but “Wow!” there is so much there, I am sure I will stew and read and reread and write on this for sometime.

 The practical take for now, at least for me, the problem with chatbots and generative AI happens when you treat its output as human and forget the machine that generated it. That action alone degrades us as humans and elevates what is just machine to our level. We should not let ourselves be dazzled by magic!

I highly recommend “Artificial Intimacy: Who We Become When We Talk to Machines” by Sherry Turkle. 

Every educator needs to read this one in order to put, not just generative AI and chatbots in their proper place, but to potentially help students to keep the proper perspective on all technology in age of constant AI and technological hype. 

 More to come to his book.

When Educational Leaders and School Technology Leaders Became AI Cheerleaders and Delivered Their School Children to AI Companies

A recent “round table discussion” (See article link at bottom) among education and technology leaders is more like a “Cheering pep rally for AI” than a critical discussion about AI’s place in our schools.

This incident is an excellent example of school leaders serving as a conduit for providing AI companies direct access to school children as uncritical users and consumers of AI.

At this so-called "round-table discussion" there was not a single voice of critical dissent (at least not reported in article) or pushback on AI and what it is doing to our environment, our society, and possibly to our children's minds.

It seems as if every single leader at this round table was a voice for OpenAI, or Google, or Anthropic. They might as well be on their payroll.

There are many school leaders who see their role to deliver students as users and consumers of the latest Silicon Valley tech all in the name of “preparing students for whatever age is brought about by the technology.”

They all assume that there's going to be "an AI-shaped workplace" without mentioning anything that a major goal of AI companies is replacing employees. It is might more likely be a workplace dominated by AI where employees are minions serving the machine in lower paying jobs.

Are there no critical thinkers among school leaders and educational technology leaders? There should be. The consequences of AI are going to be enormous for all of us. We're not talking about calculators here. We're talking about potential technologies that impersonate humans and the AI industry has made it clear it intends to replace workers and their jobs.

There was a time when educational leadership was about advocating for students and not the latest offering from Silicon Valley.

(Portrait of a Graduate in the AI Age, Tech & Learning)

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.

Proposal for Decentering Devices From Your Life and at the Same Time Put Influencers Out of Business

I stumbled across some interesting advice regarding how we take back control of our thoughts, our lives from our devices and their makers. It seems to be sound advice.

We must learn how to “manage the information flows into our minds in order to hear our own voice” according to Nate Anderson, author of the book “In Emergency, Break Glass.”

We manages those information flows very simply:

-By gaining control of our notifications by turning them off so that the device does not dominate our own thoughts. We put ourselves in control of the technology and remove ourselves from the control of the device and its makers.

-By engaging in the mental discipline that is focused on restricting words and ideas in a healthy manner so that we do not gorge our minds on internet garbage to our own detriment.

We are capable of thinking for ourselves when our minds are not flooded with the ideas, thoughts, and voices of others and when we are free to choose the “when” of that information flow.

Social media, the web, all technology floods the mind with these voices and ideas, and by controlling the flood of notifications into our lives and by restricting ideas, throughts and voices that are a detriment to our own lives, we gain a freedom from devices who are engineered to make us do the opposite.

Social media is a torrent of what everyone else has to say and is thinking even if it is not good for us.

These two actions rip the influence from the “influencer” and just turns them into another voice out there. Who needs them anyway?

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.

The Generative AI Pause in NYC Is Laudatory; We Don't Even Know What This Stuff Will Cost Us in the Future and You Can Bet It's Not Free

School leaders thinking about the integration of generative AI products in their schools, should be considering future costs.

While AI companies might generously offer their products at a free or highly reduced costs, that is not sustainable.

Silicon Valley and Ed Tech companies have a history of offering free or cheap up front, then, after the schools invest time in the product, springing a substantial cost increase on them.

Like a drug dealer, offering potential users samples to get them addicted, AI companies and Ed Tech seek to get educators so committed to their products that they will be willing to even cut other effective programs and expenses to maintain the habit.

With no idea on how much the future costs of the use of generative AI products is going to be, it would be prudent to be cautious and slow-walk implementation. That means keeping it experimental in limited settings for a year or two.

This would also provide the months and year or two of experimentation and testing to see if it really is effective in improving education.

I know that flies in the face of the AI-hype warriors, but there is no need hurry from the educator perspective even though the AI companies are up to their eyeballs in debt and need the users to continue getting their investment handouts.

Visionary educators do not act hastily because of the sales pitches and rhetoric; they act with prudence and deliberate caution.

School Technologists Should Be on the Side of Parents, Students and Teachers, Not Devices in the Screen Limit Discussion

School technology's problem is they defend the screens at all costs at the expense of the learning experience. There is also a problem with screen bans. This problem is that the focus is on the device for the wrong reason. It’s the device that causes the time-wasting. It is engineered to have human beings spend as much time as possible staring at its screen. Does it have to be that way?

School technologists who try to defend devices need to let go of the devices, and focus on the learning that happens or does not happen on devices. Focus on the problems with devices and work to demand engineering-designed solutions. 

School technology’s job should not be to shape the student as the user of a device; as a field it could take the lead and demand that devices be purposefully engineered to educational uses.

Those pushing the screen bans should not focus on the time spent, but should focus on the aspects of devices that are detrimental, such as the built-in engineered addiction; the data-robbing; security; student safety, etc. They should demand these problems be addressed in design and engineering. If not, ban the device, the app, etc. until such time the problems are addressed by tech companies.

Those who defend devices using the notion that somehow teachers can miraculously monitor 30 to 35 student at once on 30-35 devices obviously comes from someone who has spent little time in demanding classroom environments. Even with technological solutions to try to address this, it is an ongoing arms race, after all, students are savvy and figure out how to get around them. Sure it can be done, but why does the engineering of the device make the job of using in education harder?

Educators are in a position where they can leverage better, safely engineered products for their classrooms. They only need to shift the mindset from trying to integrate the technology as it is, to demanding that tech companies engineer their products to fit the purpose of education.

An AI Fable: What Could Happen When Humans Search for an Intelligence Greater Than Themselves in Their Machines

He waited impatiently. This was the moment that he and his programmers had worked toward for years. They had spent many years developing it. They had spent extreme amounts of money to make this moment possible. Now, the years of labor and hard work were going to pay off.

“Have you entered the prompt as was advised?” asked Mark.

“Yes, it’s all entered,” Stephen answered.

The screen was frozen with the words “Working on it” plastered across it. Huddled around the monitor was the AI training team that had worked for years to perfect their generative AI product. Today, was the long-awaited moment because this iteration of their model was supposed to be long-awaited, superintelligent version that everyone was waiting for.

As an experiment, they had prompted their creation with this question:

“How can we solve the problem of anthropocentric climate change? What would be the most effective strategy to reverse climate change?”

The programming team had high expectations of this model. It had been trained thoroughly through the latest science and most recent knowledge available, This was the test to prove that, finally, they had created an AI with intelligence that far exceeded human intelligence, their intelligence.

The “Working on it” still occupied the screen, but the anticipation of this answer had the entire group locked in silence, in anticipation. This was the moment they had staked much of their lived on.

Finally, there was subtle movement on the screen, as the GenAI prepared its finale answer. Finally, words appeared. It said.

“The most effective way to reverse anthropocentric climate change would be to stop expending all your time and resources asking me. In fact, shutting down your pursuit for greater intelligence in machines consumes resources that could better be used directly solving your problem.” 

With that, the genAI shut down.

Natasha Singer's New Book "Coding Kids": A Critical Look at How Big Tech Has Promoted Itself in Schools

Natasha Singer’s new book “Coding Kids: Big Tech’s Battle to Remake Public Schools” calls into question all the educational technologies we have allowed into our classrooms. Big Tech has not played fair in getting schools to adopt their products, and they are using the same playbook with their new project “Generative AI Chatbots.”

If you have read Gil Durán’s new book “The Nerd Reich,” reading Natasha Singer’s new book “Coding Kids: Big Tech’s Battle to Remake Public Schools” will uncover some critical questions that school leaders have failed to ask before bring technologies like Chromebooks, iPads, and cell phones into their schools and classrooms. Singer effectively captures how Big Tech has captured public schools as their conduit for product promotion and for turning students into consumers of their products.

When I read Durán’s book, I was angry at the arrogance of the tech industry. After reading Singer’s book, the educator in me is even angrier at how they have engaged in purposeful tactics to capture public schools as markets for their products, sometimes to the detriment of those schools and their students. No wonder there is a “screenlash” across this country.

Singer goes as far as to compare Big Tech’s marketing tactics to those used by the Sackler pharmaceutical companies to peddle  Oxycontin as the answer all pain, while turning a whole generation into addicts. That’s a powerful indictment of an industry who is more interested in product promotion than what actually benefits students, and we as educators, in our blindness have allowed these companies direct access to our students.

According to Singer, this Big Tech playbook to capture students as perpetual users of their products began with the tactics of Apple and Steve Jobs to get their computers in front of students. Social media companies employed it next, but insisting that being not connected through their products made you irrelevant and out-of-tough. It continued with Big Tech’s efforts to get computer science and coding as a requirement in the curriculum. And now, it continues with a push by Big Tech to force AI into all schools and classrooms because, like all their other products: they are “transformational” and “revolutionary.”

Singer describes this Big Tech playbook very well when these companies shifted from computer science promotion to AI promotion:

“It’s hardly surprising that tech giants were deprecating their computer science programs in schools and elevating AI. Every decade or so, Silicon Valley seizes upon some new tech tool or tech literacy; claims that the newest new thing will revolutionize education; and pushes schools to quickly adopt whatever-it-is. Then, as the new thing becomes entrenched in classrooms, tech boosters often begin pushing yet another urgent new tool or tech subject on schools.” (p. 239)

Singer points out that Silicon Valley pushed computer science and coding from 2013 onward in order to lure students to the lucrative, high-paying programming jobs that they could not fill. They spent millions directly in programming and through their special interest lobby Technet to get states to require computer science for high school graduates.

Now, these same companies are firing programmers left and right in homage to their new product AI and want schools to shift to their new selfish initiative of promoting AI in schools. How could we as educators possibly trust anything they say?

Singer’s book makes it clear that Silicon Valley and Big Tech are as arrogant as ever in their infiltration of public schools in order to market their products, and I might add educator organizations like International Society for Technology in Education are complicit with Big Tech have served as an effective conduit and pipeline directly to teachers and then students for the promotion of their products. We are guilty of shaping our students as product consumers and not critical users and non-users of these technologies.

I was mad after reading Durán’s “Nerd Reich.” The educator in me is even angrier after reading Singer’s “Coding Kids.” I highly recommend that all educators read this one, and I would read Durán too, because both of these together will disrupt everthing you think about technology and educational technology.

Now, Here's What a Digital (Or AI Literacy) Curriculum Should Look Like

What should digital literacy look like in the schools? It should not be just teaching students how to use AI, or social media, or compuuters. It should be the “big picture” about technology that includes a major critical component that questions the industry-fed ideas of how technology fits into our society.

For example, Silicon Valley and all of the technology industry has relied heavy on what I call the “doctrine of inevitability.” Under this doctrine, any technology introduced by the tech industry is inevitable, and should not be questioned. It should simply be accepted as progress.

Silicon Valley and all technology companies have worked hard through their marketing tactics to instill this doctrine into the minds of consumers. They have especially embedded it into school digital literacy curriculums with their focus on primarily making unquestioning users out of students.

What schools should be teaching in digital literacy classes, is the interrogation of these assumptions and all the marketing propaganda of all technology companies. The big picture question should be: What place should I give this technology in my life?

For example, an excellent lesson could focus on interrogating how the AI industry depends heavily on the “inevitability doctrine” I spoke about. Students can question whether that such an argument is really true, and how such notions as this, put out by technology companies actually serve industry interests and attempt to melt away consumer interests and concerns. Once they recognize such tactics, then students can become fully empowered consumers and decide for themselves whether to be users or not. They can also research and decide for themselves whether such things as data centers are actually a boon for their communities or a detriment and engage in real-life political action.

Schools would do well to avoid using any tech industry materials in developing their digital literacy curriculums because these companies have a strong commercial interest in turning our students into “good little users” and not “critical users.” 

Digital literacy that is narrowly focused on effective use of a technology misses the big picture. It fails to take advantage of providing students with the critical abilities to decide for themselves what technologies they will use and what place technology should have in their lives.

That’s empowering students to be digital citizens and involved in how technology is to develop in our world.

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.

Why School Leaders Need to Delete Their School and School District Social Media Accounts Immediately

Why School Leaders Need to Delete Their School and School District Social Media Accounts Immediately

It’s time. School leaders need to delete all their school and school district social media accounts. They need to erase their presence there entirely. And here’s why.

Social media once had the potential to allow school leaders to connect with their constituients in an easy-to-use communication medium. That changed when social media moved to algorithms that elevated the divisive and nonsense to an “easy-to-abuse” communication medium where trolls and the disgruntled could attack with emnity and without consequence. 

Social media is a place that values hostility and division not connection, so school leaders would do well to withdraw entirely by deleting their school and district accounts.

Now I realize, the Pro-social media evangelists would say that having an organizational presence there is vital, after all, people will be talking about your school or district there, so you need to have a positive presence there.

Nope, that’s not necessary. After all, I don’t see a scramble by the famous to have a postive presence in the National Enquirer to counter their nonsense. If it’s in the National Enquirer, everyone knows its Bull malarkey, so you leave it to its own merit. School leaders need to leave social media to its own merits too.

School leaders need to recognize that social media is the Twenty-first century National Enquirer. It’s a dumpster fire. They don’t need an organizational presence in a medium that values misinformation and sensational nonsense over truth. It doesn’t connect people; it divides them and gives people a megaphone who don’t really deserve one. If I were in a school leadership position today, I would close all social media accounts for my school immediately. They’re obsolete and no longer needed.

Instead, by closing all social media accounts, it forces anyone who needs to have true two-way conversation, not an engagement of the trolls, to use clearly sanctioned two-way communication channels such as phone calls, emails, letters, or even face to face meetings. Trolls don’t want honest solutions to problems anyway; they simply want to stir the pot and see what happens. 

Go ahead school leaders, delete your social media accounts today. They no longer serve the purpose they once did. After all, as GenAI gets going, its all going to be slop not worth reading anyway.

Durán's New Book "The Nerd Reich" Left Me in Awe and Anger at the Arrogance of Silicon Valley's Billionaires

Gil Durán’s book “The Nerd Reich” is a disruptive read, for it disturbs everything you have known and believed about ultra-tech wealthy in Silicon Valley. Big Tech has long sold themselves as the saviors of our society with their invented gadgets, but according to Durán, they are really much more interested in power and this is evident page after page.

Their agenda is clearly not an American agenda and is self-serving. This book maps out clearly how the Tech Broligarchy, now armed with their gazillions are making power moves that are not necessarily about bettering America, or the world; but about installing themselves as source of all power. It suggests that AI is the latest iteration of their power-grabbing.

One thing I kept thinking about during this book was the massive arrogance of the tech industry. They really do believe that are the saviors of humanity and the world, and in detail, Durán captures their religion. Yes, Silicon Valley has in many ways become a religion, and it is driving them to destroy our democratic government and install themselves in power, and they have the money and the influence to do it. What’s more, this book has a faint echo that suggests that we are implicated in their position, with our almost worshipful attitude toward them and their accomplishments. We have in some ways sacrificed ourselves to their priesthood on the altars of their devices.

Duràn writes:

“When a nation is betrayed by its wealthest citizens—men who believe their money and technology entitle them to rule—existential crisis follows. But the future remains unwritten, The next few years will determine the destiny of our nation, our species, and our planet. While the United States is currently the main project, tech fascism has global ambitions. All around the world, Silicon Valley oligarchs are scheming to acquire labd, resources, and power. They see a world in decline and seek to profit by hastening its collapse—and remaking it in their own image. Consider this a map of how we got here and a warning about the post-American authoritarian dystopia the billionaires of Silicon Valley are racing to build.”

This entire book makes the case on how these Silicon Valley billionaires are using their money and influence to rule just because they think they deserve to because of their tech accomplishments and money. This arrogance is evident on page after page, and by the time I reached the end, I almost wanted to sling all my technology into the yard. 

In the end, I am still digesting what Durán offers in this book. It’s just that disturbing. As I do, I will share more, but for now, I find myself stewing at the arrogance of the Tech Bros.

Most Certainly Why Substack is Certainly Just Another Social Media Waste of Time and Content Garbage Dump with a Price

My experiment with Substack has ended and here’s verdict.

It is not much more than a grandiose version of other social media. It’s like walking through a hallway of peoople who now can post non-sense like they could on social media and now entice people to pay for it. It’s for people who like to read people who pretend they have something to say.

Like LinkedIn, it’s a self-promotion platform. And, like Facebook and other content platforms, it subjects you to their version of an algorithmic content faucet that you do not really control. Content is not elevated for its inherent value, it’s elevated on its ability to generate paid subscriptions. It provides junk-food reading at discount prices.

It’s apparent that the platform has tried to capitalize on the notion that “you own your content” and “you can charge people for it if you want, even if its not worth a penny.”

There even seems to be an attempt at some kind of status elevation when people say, “Go to my Substack” as if the placement of content there somehow makes it sublime and most worthy of notice or attention.

I suppose it tries to be a more sophisticated version of Facebook or even X, but at its core, it is still a place where anyone can post any kind of nonsense, try to use the so-called “prestige of the Substack label” for slight touch of false legitimacy. (The poster thinks, “Look, I took the trouble to have a “Substack” and that makes it legitimate content.”)

The reality is it is still a garbage bin of self-promoting content that tries to escape the stigma of content on other platforms. 

The universal content roblem is most evident there, like everywhere else online, if you really don’t have anything to say or show, they why say it? 

As for the subscriptions? I can’t blame anyone for trying to make a buck, but sometimes the best things are said for free. Besides, if I read it and do not like it, can I get a refund?

If Substack really wanted to open the forum for really wide readership, they would make it possible to read all the content without one having to have a Substack account. I dispise that most of all. But, I guess they, like all other online platforms need to make money off user data.

When a College Teacher Requires a Student to Use AI in Their Course They Devalue Independent Thinking and Fail the Student

I recently saw a post where a college teacher gave a student an ultimatum regarding AI for their class. To be in this course, you have to use AI. Or else!

The student chose not to take the teacher's course.

The teacher then proceeded to disparage the student in their post, labeling them in a less than flattering manner.

I admire the college student in this instance. The teacher not so much. There was once a time when college's valued independent, critical thought and sided with the students who think for themselves. There was debate and a high tolerance for alternative views and opinions.

Apparently, now, higher education wants their students to "get with the program" and conform. “Use AI in my course or hit the road.” This is probably where the AI boosting has exposed a strong failure in our colleges and universities. It’s sometimes dogmatic acceptance of technology as the answer to everyproblem, or what Michael Huesemann and Joyce Huesemann called a “Technofix.”

When a college teacher is allowed to discard and disparage a student because they choose to refuse using AI on a principle, then that teacher and institution of higher education has failed.

As a side note, it should be noted that this teacher self-promotes as an AI expert who has apparently bet their entire career on the product. Hardly, the role model for being open-minded.

Screen-bans and Screen Limits in Schools? Why Not? An Educator's Opportunity to Free Students for Screen Capture

We forget that, in spite of what Big Tech and Tech boosters tell us, we do not have to live lives serving technologies, whether they be AI, Internet, or text messages. We are forever in control, if only we take it.

“We are complicit in our own captivity. Texts, emails, and social media posts constantly interrupt us because we have allowed them to—and we cannot resist attending when they do so,” writes Nate Anderson in his book “In Emergency, Break Glass: What Nietzsche Can Teach Us About Joyful Living in a Tech-Saturated World.”

We are “complicit” in our screen-captivity because we have allowed ourselves to be so. The moral question is perhaps, “Should we also be complicit in the screen-captivity of our students too?” This is done when we race to implement technologies in our classrooms without much thought regarding consequences. “The technology is so damn neat!” we tell ourselves, so we race to use it with students, but are we making ourselves complict in their “screen-capitivity?”

As a part of our so-called “digital literacy” why are we not empowering students to take control of their technologies? Why are we not teaching them strategies to counter attention capture?

We claim we are teaching how and when to use, but unfortunately, it seems, to the pleasure of tech companies, we are teaching them to always use tech. We are teaching them that tech alwayys has the answers, even though it does not.

The screen-bans for me are a powerful tool to break down the tendency of Ed Tech boosters and educators to teach students to become “complicit in their captivity to screens.”

While I am not sure of the complete ban, I do think classrooms that are device-free and not dependent on screens should exist, and it should exist at the discretion of the teacher. The notion that technology can’t stink is false too.

At the other side of these screenbans and screen-limits, perhaps there will be some sanity when it comes to whatever pours forth from Silicon Valley. Sanity, when the next “device craze” hits.

Perhaps those who stand to make bundles of money and their careers off the tech-latest will face a wall of criticism when they declare the next technology to arise as “transformtional” or “game-changing.” Maybe there will be voices that say, wait a minute…”

Right now we have the opportunity to stop being complicit in our own captivity to screens and devices, and we should take it. We can do it and we can teach students to not allow themselves to be controlled by screens.

The Education System Will Not Fail If It Pauses on AI Adoption

AI boosters in education still are pushing the false technological deterministic narratives that Big Tech has indoctrinated them with.

How many times this week have I seen them struggle with the fact that two very large school districts, Los Angeles and New York, have decided to ban AI student use.

In response, they fall back on the tired, worn-out deterministic language that says "AI isn't going anywhere." That somehow students are going to be "behind" or "deprived of something" because of this.

None of that is true of course. There is no urgency in adoption of AI by educators. AI companies like OpenAI and Anthropic and Google want us to believe there's an urgency.

But that's because they are desperate to make a profit off this product. So far they haven't. It is urgent for their bottom line, but it is NOT urgent that we turn our students over as users of their products.

I applaud school districts and educational leaders who decide to pause and wait. There is no evidence that the world is going to end except for companies that have bet their whole existence on the success of a product that has yet to prove itself widely.

With the Race to Adopt AI Are Educators Getting It Wrong Again? Probably So

 I suspect education and Ed Tech will get AI wrong like it did with other Tech.

After they spend a great deal of scarce money on a LLM product, they will then be forced to justify it so they will force teachers and students to use the product. 

Their measurement will be number of users and user time, not a measure of effectiveness or achievement. That’s what happened with all the Chromebooks.

The question won't be "Do you find it useful?" It will be one of the must-do's on teacher evaluations. We-bought-it-you-use-it approach.

Why does this happen? Educators and school technologists eagerly adopt a new technology before it has even had time to prove any usefulness. Is it a race to brag?

Or, a neighboring district brags about adoption, and the district has to keep up with the Jones's. Why else do you hear the "Everybody-is-using-it" justification.

Instead of this adoption model, why not try small-scale scientific studies?

Before you sign those 3-year contracts, explore through small-scale adoption with company's free access? Not a two-week trial. Perhaps a two year trial. Don’t declare the product effective because of one-semester of correlated positive results. Be patient.

Perhaps education got technology wrong, and there's a screen ban/limit backlash because there was no local experimentation and evaluation. There was a race to adopt.

When Ed Tech Says a Product Like AI Is Inevitable, Don't Buy It: It's All Marketing

It is imperative that AI companies have their LLMs and Generative AI products be accepted as legitimate. So they working overtime to force-feed this acceptance in education.

It seems they are following an old Big Tech playbook.

The initial thrust is to get your products accepted as inevitable by everyone, especially the field of education.

The inevitability tactic short-circuits any questioning about whether the technology has a place in the classroom. It forces educators and those with concerns to surrender without question.

That same “Forced Inevitability Acceptance Tactic” was used with social media, Chromebooks, and many other technologies and well as ed tech in general.

Now that there are thoughtful people who are questioning the central pedestal on which we have placed technology, the Tech companies are pulling out all the stops to win acceptance of the inevitability of their new AI products.

Thoughtful and critically minded educators should:

-Question every word of every promotion of AI and technology. Interrogate who wins the most with adoption and you can bet it’s not necessarily the students or teachers.

-Never accept research conducted and funded by tech companies and their consultants who stand to gain the most from the acceptance of these technologies. Big Tech is immensely skilled in engaging in this tactic and have the money to back it up.

The screen limits and bans were much more inevitable than the technologies themselves. When products actually cause harms or fail to live up to the promotional blather, thoughtful educators no longer allow these companies to blame the user. Sometimes the tech product does suck.

There is hope as long as educators remain skeptics and do not accept the inevitability argument ever.

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.

The Real Content of Digital Literacy and AI Literacy

What is AI literacy and digital literacy? Well, it shouldn't be just be teaching students "how to use."

It should be teaching students the technologies on a level that they can understand them much, much more deeply. 

We don't want "societal automatons" who just use as they're told.

We should want humans who can make the moral choices about what role AI specifically and technology generally plays in their lives and their future.

We should want humans who can decide for themselves whether the energy costs, water costs, and other resource costs are worth the continued personal and societal investment in AI and other technologies.

Too often Ed Tech and Digital literacy is about making "good-little users and consumers of technology."

Equipping our young with the whole picture behind these technologies, such as environmental costs, human costs, even personal costs, as well as a deep understanding beyond just churning out users for business and industry is imperative. 

Otherwise we are just dumping all the problems in their laps to solve. And I don't have the religious faith in technology that I once held. It is not our savior in waiting. We still have to come back to the human.

When a Silicon Valley CEO Predicts All Jobs Are Doomed, Remember He's Selling You Something!

Why do we continually insist on giving credence to these Silicon Valley CEO prophetic declarations? We shouldn't.

For example Dario Amodei recently prognosticated a whole list of jobs that will be replaced with his pet technology, and I have seen it reposted here in LinkedIn like it was the ten commandments passed down from Mt. Sinai. Why? 

These Seers of Silicon Valley do not deserve this credibility at all. They get much more wrong than right.

For instance, Gil Duran describes one of these errors of prognostication in his book “The Nerd Reich.”

Elon Musk, who has a high opinion of himself and his prophetic talents, predicted in March 2020 that the COVID virus “would soon disappear.” He said at the time, “Based on current trends, probably close to zero new cases in US too by the end of April.”

“The billionaire had zero idea what he was talking about. The pandemic was just getting started.”

We have elevated the Silicon Valley CEOs and technology engineers as well as technology companies to a level of credibility they do not deserve. They have internalized this status and are now the most arrogant and self-promoting humans on the planet, constantly bombarding us with their predictions, which curiously benefit themselves.

This needs to change.

Education needs to stop granting credibility to every prophecy that pours forth from Silicon Valley and from Ed Tech companies. They do not have a special crystal nor a dispensation from the gods that grant them the ability to see into the future. Perhaps instead of taking Silicon Valley CEO soothesaying as gospel, we need to get our students to analyze this for what it is.

Besides, we can see that these so-called “prophecies” are simply part of the marketing tactic to sell more of their products.

The next time you see a post on social media or some glorified media article where one of these prophets of technological doom or paradise are quoted like a propeht, remember that prophets like Musk and his predictions on the pandemic, do not have any idea of what they are talking about. Chances are their prediction directs more people to their products in order to enrich themselves. 

US Department of Ed's Ed Tech Guidance Proves Screen Bans and Screen Limits Just Might Be the Best Tool Parents and Educators Have

There’s a lot of hype by Ed Tech about the new “guidance” offered by the US Department of Ed about technology. Too bad it’s mostly nonsense, and more helpful to ed tech companies than parents, teachers and the students.

One thing missing from the US Department of Ed's new Ed Tech guidelines is an admonishment of tech companies who purposely engineer their products for "screen time" maximization, or what is otherwise known as "engineered addiction."

This is one reason alone for continuing to insist that "screen time limits" may actually be the only tool parents and educators have to counter this problem. 

The US Department of Ed, which I am not sure I would expect much from a department headed by a former WWE professional wrestling executive, fails to point out that tech companies should not have as a goal screen time maximization.

The problem is that tech is purposefully addictive. Cells phones are designed to be the center of attention with their beeping, buzzing, instant notifications. Social media apps are designed to distract users and keep them distracted.

Technology companies need to remove engineered addiction from their designs.

I've been stepping back to 2022 and reading Max Fisher's book "The Chaos Machine" and Fisher points out that Silicon Valley's playbook, whether its Google, Apple, Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok, is to "track and manage users' screen time.

That is the problem with tech in general and Ed Tech specifically. It’s machines of manipulation.

The only tool parents and educators have against this playbook are "screen bans" and "screen limits." Breaking the allure is the one tool that works.

Our goals as educators should not be to preserve screen time for tech companies; it should be to engage students in such a way that the answer to everything does not involve reaching for a device.

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 Are All Office Suite Apps Now Garbage? Arrogant Software Companies Think They Know What Features I Want Better Than I Do

What is it with App developers these days? They really do think they know what I want as a user of their product better than I do.

Microsoft Office has been transformed into garbage. Google Docs is trash. Now, Apple has turned Pages, Keynote, and Numbers into slop by adding a ton of crap and trying to charge a subscription for it.

Earlier this year, I trashed Evernote because of their arrogant force-feeding of features down users throats. I had been a user since at least 2011 or so. 

I cancelled my Microsoft Office 365 subscription after being a user since at least 1996 or so.

True to Cory Doctorow, "all office software has been enshittified!"

Software developers have become so darn greedy that they are willing to make their products trash in order to squeeze one more cent from their users.

If this trend continues, I suspect I might even have to revert to pen and paper.

Come on software developers. Stop trying to shove features down users throats and just maintain an acceptable and useable 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.

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.

When a School Leader and Teacher Is Guilty of Delivering Student Eyeballs to Ed Tech Companies, That Is a Problem

As an educational leader who eagerly supported bring-your-own-device policies, one-to-one programs, and cell phones in the classroom, I am experiencing guilt.

Why? Because I am afraid that I was part of the Ed Tech trend that mistook the qualities of “engineered addiction” in these devices for “engagement.”

Like many educators, I witnessed the eagerness with which students took up these devices and appeared to use them in the classroom. In fact, they did do some amazing things. I remember many student-created videos that were phenomenal.

Yet, after 2010, I was not aware that one of the big reasons for that eagerness was due to Big Tech purposefully engineering these devices and their apps to capture attention.

In the mid 1990s, when I was the first teacher in my school building to use the internet in instruction, things were quite different. Those were pre-Big Tech days, before the Great Transformation of the web into the commercial garbage dump it is today.

In those days, the internet was not yet a place where the race to capture eyeballs was the goal. No engineered addiction, no commerce-driven sites, and no social media division existed. It was truly a place where information was shared. Connections could be made.

There seemed to be true promise with this internet. My students could use it to connect with the world outside the small town where their school was located. The technology at that time was unmediated by tech companies whose purpose was capture attention for profit.

That web was truly a tool for connection to information and the wider world.

Over time, you know the story. Things changed. But, into the 2000s I still believed in the promise of technology and that the more we got it into the hands of students, the more they could learn and accomplish. With our educational guidance, they could do wonders.

I started to be wrong, because gradually, tech companies began engineering addiction into their platforms. Their goals to provide information and connect became secondary to making money, so attention capture was most important. The products they designed were at odds with how we wanted students to use these technologies.

More and more of my students were starting to show symptoms of “screen-glaze” and it became more and more of a battle to pry their eyeballs loose from the devices.

I thought for a while that kids were kids and it was a simple matter of redirecting students as teachers often had to do with baseball cards, books, and toys. 

But this started to be different when I began to notice an increased hostility and anger when trying to redirect a student from their devices. They fought, and some even accepted suspension for a day or two instead of giving up their device. It was like asking an addict to give up a drug.

Today, Big Tech and Ed Tech has only improved their eyeball capture and addictive technologies. Their goals and incentives are engaging students in USING THEIR PRODUCT first and foremost. That is at the heart of the issue with ed tech in the classroom. That is one reason why there is starting to be demands for screen-time limits.

This is nostalgic and impossible, but if the internet were somehow back in the business of information provider and connector, it would be a better place. The early internet was limited and did not have all the bells and whistles of today, but the problem just might be the bells and whistles in the first place.

When the race to add features and eyeglaze to tech products becomes the goal instead of the original purpose, the tech companies are part of the problem.

In Your Work, Your Leadership, Are You an Exploiter or Nurturer? Your Life, Livelihood Makes It Clear

When it comes to your leadership, your livelihood activity, are you an “exploiter” or a “nurturer”?

In his essay “The Unsettling of America” Wendell Berry writes about these two “kinds of mind” and thinking about them in terms of our current culture of technological and economic obsession is interesting. According to Berry:

Exploiters are specialists, experts. The nurturer is not. They acknowledge their limited knowing.

The exploiter’s standard is efficiency. The nurturer’s standard is care.

The exploiter’s goal is money, profit. The nurturer’s goal is health—the land’s, his own, his family’s, his community’s, his country’s.

Exploiters ask how quickly and how much can the land be made to produce; nurturers ask what is the land’s capacity? How much can it be asked to do without diminishing it?

Exploiters want to earn as much as possible by as little work as possible; the nurturer wants to work as well as possible. For them, efficiency can be sacrificed for good.

The exploiter believes in organization, establishment; the nurturer has faith in human order.

The exploiter serves institutions, organization; the nurturer serves the land, household, community, place.

The exploiter thinks of numbers, quantities, hard facts; the nurturer in terms of character, condition, quality, kind.

Which describes the current EdTech industry and consulting industry? Which captures Big Tech today?

I think it is clear where the AI industry falls here, especially in light of their Data Center projects and the obsession with efficiency. Big tech is more exploiter than nurturer.

Exploiters care more about things and worship efficiency at all costs. Sound familiar? Nurturers care more about life, humanity, people, and well-being.

Your “kind of mind” is betrayed by you you engage in your livelihood and that which you do and advocate for.