School digital curriculum has its detractors

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By Stacy Gittleman

Mark, a veteran English and journalism teacher in an Oakland County school district, has just about had it. In his 18 years of teaching, he has witnessed the ever-increasing reliance on curriculum delivered digitally and its impact on teaching in classrooms where every student has their own device. Technology has become a barrier between his lessons on writing, literature, grammar, and sentence structure and the students who need to learn them.

When his students are on their laptops or other devices, they are constantly tempted to open another tab on their web browsers that has nothing to do with the lesson. They have learned to work around the filters installed, even on school-supplied laptops, iPads or Tablets.

To supervise device use, Mark uses a software program called GoGuardian. GoGuardian runs either on his laptop, enabling him to watch what every student is doing on their screens, or on the class Smartboard, where every student can keep an eye on what the others are doing.

“That way, every student can see what every other student is looking at on their laptop, and no one wants to be called out or told on for playing a game or watching a YouTube video during class,” Mark said.

But all this monitoring and supervising what their students are doing – or not doing – while on their screens is one more layer that gets in the way of teaching.

“By the end of the year, (the teachers) have had it,” Mark said. “If I have to always be monitoring what students are doing on their individual laptops, I cannot walk around the room and give support and guidance to individual students. And how is that teaching? You just end up spending most of your instruction time making sure your students are staying on task.”

There was a time when the introduction of screen technology was thought to be the most common-sense approach to modernize the American classroom and bring students the skills they needed to thrive in the 21st century.

If your district could afford to purchase wired and then wireless technology as an on-ramp to the information superhighway, it was seen as an asset. But modernizing the classroom in some districts was also viewed as an inequity by others who could not afford the upgrades.

Then came the COVID-19 pandemic and with it, months-long lockdowns and remote learning that pivoted completely to screens. And for families not fortunate enough to have a dedicated device for each child, or a decent Wi-Fi connection, it cut off a lot of kids from learning.

To increase accessibility, the federal government passed the $7.2 billion Emergency Connectivity Fund in March 2021 to help America’s families without home internet. It also helped schools and libraries increase their capacities to conduct online and remote learning. The money was used to pay for laptops, tablets, modems, Wi-Fi hotspots, routers, and other broadband devices. By February 2022, the program had provided more than 10 million electronic devices and nearly five million internet connections, totaling $4.62 billion, to more than 11,000 schools and 900 libraries.

Six years out of the height of the pandemic, educators, child development experts and psychologists are wishing that our children’s lives were not so wired. All this screen time is negatively impacting every aspect of child development. The federal government that enabled our school districts to get all this technology into our children’s hands is now reversing course.

On January 15, 2026, the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, chaired by Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA), held a full hearing titled “Plugged Out: Examining the Impact of Technology on America’s Youth.” The hearing presented correlations between a child’s mental, cognitive, and social growth and how these factors are impacted by habitual screen time.

According to the committee, children aged eight to 12 years use screens for over five hours daily, and teens use screens for over eight hours daily. That is about half their waking hours.

Overall, teens were sleeping less than the recommended minimum of seven hours a night, and this sleep loss was also attributed to the amount of time they spent at night on screens.

As smartphone usage hit saturation points by 2012, there was a sharp rise in teen mental health disorders such as anxiety and depression. Between 2011 and 2019, mental health experts said there were increased emergency room visits for self-harm. It doubled among 15- to 19-year-old girls and young women and quadrupled among 10 to 14-year-old girls. The suicide rate in these adolescent age groups doubled over this same time. By 2023, one out of five children had a mental or behavioral problem diagnosis, and there has also been a rise in teen suicide rates.

Academically, the congressional hearing pointed to 2012 as the year of a global decline in test scores and literacy rates among 8th and 12th graders.

Expert witnesses referred to a study showing that high school students in the United States are using their phones for about an hour and 10 minutes during the school day, mostly for social media and watching videos.

Researchers said that since the 1800s, when academic and cognitive achievements were first recorded, each generation surpassed the one before it.

Until Generation Z.

This is the first generation, on a global scale, that has underperformed their predecessors at every benchmark, testified neuroscientist and educator Dr. Jared Cooney Horvath.

“Gen Z is the first generation of modern history to underperform us on basically every cognitive measure we have, from basic attention to memory to literacy to numeracy to executive functioning to even general (Intelligence Quotient), even though they attend school for more hours each week than previous generations,” Horvath told Congress. “The answer appears to be the tools we are using within schools to drive that learning. Across 80 countries… once countries adopt digital technology widely in schools, performance goes down significantly to the point where kids who use computers about five hours per day in school for learning purposes will score over two-thirds of a standard deviation less than kids who rarely or never touch tech at school.”

Horvath said that because of these findings, some Scandinavian countries have limited digital learning platforms to high school students. “Those countries just looked at the data [on ed tech] and said, ‘Let’s go back to learning,’” Horvath said. “Whereas the United States says, ‘How can we make it work better?’ I could ask you, ‘How do I make Anthrax better?’ Maybe the answer is you don’t. You go back to not using it.”

Whether or not they tuned into the congressional hearing, school districts of all sizes are taking the cue and getting back to basics in the classroom.

The Los Angeles Public School District, one of the nation’s largest, announced in late April that it would eliminate the use of laptops and tablets in all elementary grade levels.

In tiny Mesik, located in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, the elementary school rolled out a no-screens policy for its 250 elementary school students. They are going back to notebooks, pencils, and only printed books after their literacy rates fell to the bottom 20, 30, or 40 percent on recent national test scores.

As of December 2025, Michigan ranked 44th in the nation in terms of childhood literacy rates.

Debbi Daniels is a longtime eighth-grade language arts teacher in Southfield Public Schools and has seen this literacy decline firsthand.

Daniels said she has noticed among her students a shrinking capacity for imagination. They struggle with creative writing and storytelling assignments, even if they are given writing prompts and cues. She attributes this deficit to screen time exposure.

Also disrupting the flow of learning in the classroom are all the glitches that come with a high-tech classroom. Daniels said many of her teacher colleagues are tired of fiddling with bad Wi-Fi connections or iPads or Tablets that quickly run out of battery life.

They want to bring back learning handwriting and cursive that improves fine motor skills, eye-hand coordination, and has proven to be a brain booster. They also notice that because of screens, kids do not know what to do with themselves during lulls or downtime in class.

“Sometimes, I’ll be setting up for a lesson in class, and kids will ask me, ‘What should I do?’ I tell them to take out a book or talk to their friends until I am ready,” Daniels said. “But these kids don’t even have this social skill because they are so used to talking and texting through their phones. They are so programmed to watch short videos on TikTok or Instagram. Their attention span is shot. The kids do not know how to be bored, and for creativity, boredom is a good thing.”

To counter this, at least 33 states and the District of Columbia now require schools to ban or restrict students’ use of cellphones in school buildings, according to a report in Education Week.

On Feb. 10, 2026, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed Senate Bill 495 and House Bill 4141, designed to improve focus during class time by minimizing digital distractions. The bipartisan-supported legislation requires all Michigan school districts to create action plans to keep cell phones away during class, with exceptions for emergencies and academic use. The legislation aims to help students focus more on their schoolwork and encourage healthier habits with screen time and social media use.

Since Whitmer passed the law, Daniels said her school’s principal has purchased boxes where students place their phones as soon as they enter class. This will be officially implemented beginning in the fall, Daniels hopes. But for now, even with the law in place, a phone in a backpack or jacket pocket will still sometimes buzz or ping in the middle of class, even during an exam.

“The kids get annoyed when I ask them to give me their phone,” Daniels said. “And when they complain, I tell them that this is now the law.”

The Michigan Department of Education (MDOE) is strongly supportive of the new policy.

“The Michigan Department of Education recognizes the challenges that smartphones can pose in our classrooms,” said Ken Coleman, MDOE spokesman, in an emailed statement to Downtown. “Data released last year from the National Center for Education Statistics showed us just how significant the problem of cellphones in schools has become. Nationally, 53 percent of public-school leaders feel that their students’ academic performance has been negatively affected by cellphone usage. More than two-thirds feel that cellphones have hurt their students’ mental health and attention span. We are grateful that the legislature and the governor also recognize these challenges and that they have taken this step to help our educators and students succeed in the classroom.”

Dr. Tiffany Munzer, a developmental behavioral pediatrician and digital media researcher at the University of Michigan, said the youngest children from ages zero to five must be read to and spoken to as early and often as possible to foster literacy and stay away from screens to benefit their overall cognitive and physical growth.

Her work is driven by the questions that families often present with related to digital media, parenting, and young children’s development.

Munzer is the lead author of the 2026 policy statement Digital Ecosystems, Children, and Adolescents for the American Academy of Pediatrics.

It recognizes that in today’s commercialized and addictive “digital ecosystem,” there are consistent links between more time spent with digital media and less optimal child development, learning, social relationships, and emotion regulation.

Munzer became interested in this line of study during her 2013-2019 medical residency, when parents visiting the clinic asked questions about their very young children’s exposure to digital media and what it meant for their development.

“At the time, we didn’t have the answers to those questions because it was such a novel form of technology,” Munzer said. “At our clinic, we work with the youngest children, from infants up to age five, and their parents. When it comes to developing a child’s brain socially, emotionally and cognitively, parents and caregivers are in constant communication with that child, either by talking to them, or reading a book to them and talking about what’s in the book as you read, from counting animals on a page or mentioning shapes and colors.”

Though Munzer’s expertise does not lie in educational research, she said teachers are answering their professional calling and are always trying to do what is best for their students. It is not the fault of teachers, but the technology and software programs marketed and sold to school districts as educational tools that can be linked to distractions in class and declines in literacy.

“Even if this software is running on school-approved laptops and other devices, children find ways around the firewalls and other prevention mechanisms and can load games and other applications that are not part of the prescribed educational materials,” Munzer said.

She said this is an even greater challenge for patients coming to her clinic with attention deficit disorders or who are on the autism spectrum.

Their brains are just more curious, and they explore their digital environment more deeply,” Munzer said. “It is just easier for them to fall into avenues of content that are not aligned with the classroom material. It is the biggest problem that we’ve heard from our patients and families. It is very tricky to navigate learning in an online digital environment when so many extraneous distractions are so easily accessible.”

Munzer continued: “We have designed these systems that rely less on a student’s own impulse control and more on a teacher’s limited ability to watch over the screens of 25 students, and that teacher is just trying to teach the content of their day’s lesson. They don’t have the bandwidth to monitor every child’s laptop.”

Munzer is also the medical director of “Reach Out and Read Michigan,” an evidence-based national intervention program that provides free books for at-risk young children across the country.

She added that Michigan’s low ranking in childhood literacy can be attributed to poor investment in early childhood education and family support, and it needs a multi-pronged approach.

The first steps can be as simple as reading a book to the smallest of babies, making eye contact with them, and speaking to them to create a language-rich environment at home.

To Munzer, books are diagnostic tools that should be included in every well-child visit. She regards their importance just as much as vaccines, height, and weight measurements. At every well-child visit to her clinic, a family receives, at no cost, a developmentally appropriate book to bring home. And because there are seven checkups in a child’s first year, that means seven touchpoints to monitor the caregiver-child relationship in terms of appropriate cognitive and language development.

“Handing a book to a parent and child often unlocks this ‘magic moment’ between them that we’re privileged to observe. We can see how they naturally interact over the book and then affirm, ‘You’re doing an amazing job talking with your child—this is exactly how they learn best.’”

When technology is used in the right way, it can be a boon to a student’s love for learning.

Elizabeth is a special needs teacher in Birmingham schools for middle school students and a mother of children in the district.

She said technology can be helpful for children on the autism spectrum or those with attention deficit disorders. For example, children can get an extra boost from computer applications that record and capture their thoughts when speaking into a device as they brainstorm ideas for a writing assignment.

Speech-to-text applications can also help children with their executive functioning skills, helping them organize their schedules to stay on top of assignments and deadlines.

Other platforms, when coupled with a printed novel or textbook, can be read aloud to a student while they follow along to reinforce audio-visual reading comprehension. There are software platforms that can even take books geared for higher reading levels and make them more understandable at that child’s grade or reading level.

“Technology in the schools is a double-edged sword,” Elizabeth said. On one hand, it is a tool to support a student’s learning. For the kids who come to me, technology, when used properly, supports their confidence and independence.”

Elizabeth is also a believer in traditional methods of learning, such as copying notes off a board to reinforce the connection between the mind and the body.

Even in a technology-heavy world, she said the multi-sensory act of handwriting, which requires physical and mental acuity, supports learning and is an important part of brain development. And though it may slow some students down, it is overall a better way of retaining new information.

But social media applications, videos, and games pose tempting diversions from learning, Elizabeth added.

“Many of my students become extremely distracted very quickly,” she said. “I will tell them to be on one (website), I’ll turn my head, and in a second, they are on a completely different site they should not be on, and that’s on a school-sanctioned device. It is hard for them to stay focused and engaged. We don’t have the technology to block every single website they should not be on, and even if we did, they would find ways to get around it.”

Elizabeth also warned about the emotional pitfalls of social media. She has seen bullying, peer pressure, and the dreaded perception as a middle schooler that you are being excluded from a party, outing, or clique, commonly known in the adolescent world as Fear of Missing Out, or FOMO.

“Technology should not be eliminated in the schools, but as educators, we need to be more intentional and clearer with the structures in place,” Elizabeth said. “In Birmingham, phones are not supposed to be out, but not every teacher follows this policy, and really, what are the consequences? It is so hard to enforce.”

Joe Leibson, a middle school Spanish teacher at Birmingham Covington Middle School, has steered away from centering his lessons around computers. His students prefer it that way.

At first, he was excited to try out new customizable educational software products, such as Nearpod, to customize language lessons. He even presented at an educators’ conference back in 2015 on how computer software programs could be incorporated into teaching foreign languages.

These days, his students prefer to learn how to speak Spanish offline.

“Often, they tell me that they have been in front of a screen a lot of the day, and they need a change,” Leibson said. “As a language teacher, a lot of kids would tell me, I don’t want to do something on a screen right now. So my approach has been a lot more just communicative, so a lot more speaking and listening. After all, this is a class where kids are learning how to have a conversation, listen, and respond to each other in a different language. So being off a screen for my class makes sense.”

Administrators at Bloomfield Hills Schools are paying close attention to national trends and viewpoints regarding technology in the classroom and are reviewing changes and usage policies for the 2026-2027 school year.

Bloomfield Hills Schools officials released several emailed statements to Downtown.

“Technology use in our classrooms is an important and evolving topic, and one we are actively discussing within our school community,” said Bloomfield Hills Schools Superintendent Rick West. “As part of our strategic planning process during the 2025–26 school year, I have spent time visiting schools and engaging with students, staff, and families. A consistent theme in these conversations has been the importance of finding the right balance with technology, particularly in the younger grades.”

West is also watching what directions are handed down from the state level as legislation concerning technology use by grade continues to be introduced.

“Being thoughtful and intentional about how technology supports teaching and learning is a key component of our strategic plan, which will be launched for the 2026–27 school year,” West said.

Todd Bidlack, assistant superintendent of learning services, said the district remains grounded in research and responsive to the evolving needs of its students. Personal electronic devices such as cell phones are not allowed for elementary and middle school students during the school day. At the high school level, students store their cell phones in a designated area during instructional time.

Bidlack said the district’s libraries show the value of reading fiction or doing research with physical books while at the same time making available digital resources.

“Especially in our younger grades, hands-on learning and the use of physical materials, such as workbooks and manipulatives, remain an important part of daily instruction,” Bidlack said. “As an example, over the last few years, our district has heavily invested in our classroom libraries to ensure each classroom is outfitted with rich texts that support our instruction. Additionally, our Bridges math curriculum in elementary school is highly hands-on and rich in the use of manipulatives, ensuring students build deep conceptual understanding through active learning experiences.”

Bidlack added that the district will never move away from reading physical books. Instilling the enjoyment of sitting alone with a book, from the time a kindergartener settles in their favorite corner of the classroom to read to a high school student who gets immersed in a novel, will always be a core mission for the district.

Technology is only one of many tools that support academic instruction in Bloomfield Hills Schools.

“Our focus is on using it thoughtfully to enhance, not replace, strong teaching and learning practices in an inclusive manner,” Bidlack said. “For example, we have seen the meaningful impact of assistive technologies that help meet the diverse needs of our learners, including students at Wing Lake Developmental Center, allowing for more personalized and equitable learning experiences.”

Samer Alsayed Suliman, the district’s director of technology services, said at the elementary grade level, the district is reevaluating the balance of technology use and traditional hands-on learning. Starting in the fall of 2026, K-2 classrooms will move from a one-to-one device model to a two-to-one model. This reflects how instruction is delivered in these grades and enables more purposeful use of the technology.

“Across all grade levels, technology supports instruction; it does not drive it,” Suliman said. “Teachers have flexibility in how and when devices are used, and expectations are in place to keep students focused and engaged. We recognize that managing attention in a digital environment is a real challenge, which is why we combine classroom practices with technology controls to support appropriate use.”

Suliman said in the lower grades, the district utilizes filtering and security systems on devices like iPads and Chromebooks designed to promote a safe and age-appropriate digital environment for students and staff, in accordance with applicable laws and guidelines.

At the high school level, students typically bring their own devices, with district-provided options available to ensure access for all students.

“We also recognize that students are growing in a digital world, and part of our responsibility is to prepare them to navigate it successfully. That includes developing the ability to use technology productively, stay focused, and apply it in meaningful ways that support learning,” added Suliman.

In an interview with Downtown, Sharon explained that she has been a social worker in many public-school districts for 29 years and now works in Bloomfield Hills Schools. From her observations in working in schools in the age of increasing digitization and online environments, Sharon said children are way more distracted, anxious, and less engaged than children she taught decades ago.

She has observed a steep drop off in creativity and curiosity, and the loss of abilities to independently seek information and apply critical thinking for written assignments. Grammar skills have “gone out the window.”

“Students are always thinking about what’s on their cell phone,” Sharon said. “Even if the phone is away, tucked into their jacket pocket or backpack, they are missing the fact that they cannot check on it. They are just not as fully present anymore because they’re thinking about what they’re missing on their device.”

Sharon said this lack of being present even occurs during one-on-one sessions with students, who may peek at their phone in the middle of their conversation.

“Even though students are not allowed to have their phones out during class, there is this anticipation of waiting for the time of passing between classes that they cannot wait to get their hands on their devices,” Sharon said. “So, students come off as if they have attention deficit disorders. I think they are addicted to their phones and other devices.”

Troy School District has always attempted to be on the leading edge of useful implementation of technology in its classrooms, according to Dr. Richard Machesky, Troy superintendent of schools, in an interview with Downtown.

“But we have also been sensitive to technology’s challenges and are trying to strike a balance.”

Machesky said about a year and a half ago, the district’s board of education, some staff, and community members read The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist and professor of Ethical Leadership at New York University’s Stern School of Business.

Like the witnesses at the January congressional hearing, Haidt pointed to 2012 when smartphone ownership became pervasive, and childhood migrated from unstructured indoor and outdoor play to something that was mainly experienced through a screen. According to Haidt, it has detrimentally rewired the brains of a generation of children.

“After reading that book together, we are constantly thinking and balancing the presence of technology in the classroom, its advantages and drawbacks,” Machesky said. “We bring into consideration what keeps their attention span and think about anything that may negatively impact a student’s ability to learn.”

Machesky said that there are many advantages to accessing information via the internet in older grades. He said that more educational publishers are releasing exclusively digital products, although they are beginning to offer more products in both digital and analog formats.

“In some ways, our hands were forced because many educational resource publishers shifted away from textbooks and would only offer digital resources,” Machesky said. “This pushed school districts to revolve classes wholly around technology, because that’s where the resources were headed.”

Machesky said when the board of education reviews curricula for purchase, they now look at products where they can bring both digital and printed versions into the district.

“We have also moved towards making available hard copy resources in all our classrooms to balance things out,” Machesky said. “But the value of having curricula on a digital platform is that teachers and students can personalize the material. It allows students to be more creative. And understanding how to use technology as an educational tool is an essential skill for students to build for succeeding in higher education and for their careers.”

Joseph Krajcik, who is the Lappan-Phillips Professor of the Department of Teacher Education at Michigan State University’s College of Education, agrees that technology is merely a tool. Its effectiveness to help or hinder a child’s education depends on how it is used.

Krajcik has received national accolades for his contributions to science education. From 2015 to 2023, he was commissioned by the George Lucas Foundation to author a multiple intelligences science curriculum that integrates a child’s lived experiences in the world with scientific experimentation. The curriculum, distributed in both digital and printed formats, is intended to spark a love of science learning through experimentation, reading, and discussion.

Krajcik said it does not matter whether a student is reading from a printed book or on a screen. What is most important is the quality of the materials and the level of investment and engagement that the student has with the learning material.

In fact, Krajcik argues that reading about the sciences online may be a preferred way of getting information. In that medium, a teacher can take a base lesson and add hyperlinks for further exploration and reading on a topic.

“I see technology as tools, and I do not think the tools are the problem in education; it is the way they are being used,” Krajcik said. “Using the tool to just push information to kids is not a productive way of teaching. But if we use the tool to engage our students in productive work and let them struggle and problem solve, it can be beneficial. I would never paint this as a black and white picture.”

Speaking from a science and mathematics standpoint, Krajcik said there has always been the presence of technology in classrooms.

Take the humble calculator, for example. Krajcik said it is a great tool to solve more complex problems. But before it is introduced to a student, they must have a grasp of how to perform simpler equations manually, understand the process of how to solve an equation, and gain mastery of that on their own before incorporating the calculator or other computing capabilities to solve more complex problems in math and the sciences.

“Kids learning math and science need to engage in the process and struggle a bit to understand how things work,” Krajcik said. “For example, when studying water quality and phosphorus levels and how they affect water quality, you can run the numbers through a computer modeling tool, or you can introduce this experiment in real-world environments first. The teacher needs to let the student explore, struggle, and solve that problem in a real-world environment and then run their models and theories on a computer.”

Krajcik said literacy lies at the core of scientific exploration and problem-solving. Science demands the ability to read a text to glean information. Krajcik said the fact that the state’s reading levels are far below where they should be also contributes to a child’s lack of understanding and enthusiasm for the sciences.

Krajcik continued: “As an educator, I find it strange that a great emphasis is placed on literacy, but there is no effort made in how to integrate that literacy into all the disciplines, such as science. Students don’t really have a formal science education until the sixth grade. And if their literacy skills are not adequate by the time they reach the sixth grade, that is when they can fall behind in the sciences.”

One way to entice that spark for a love of reading is to present that student with something in the sciences that sparks their curiosity, prompting them to want to read and learn more.

“What I see in science education at the elementary grade level blows my mind,” Krajcik said during his field research and classroom observations. “What should be happening at the elementary school level is harnessing a child’s curiosity about the world and using that to find out more through reading for context and information. But that is not happening. Teachers are not integrating the learning of science with reading, where you are reading for a purpose – to glean information. But we are not seeing that happening.”

Krajcik said what would be ideal would be to let elementary children experience a “phenomenon” in science, such as discovering something in nature or the weather, and then returning to the classroom eager to read about it to learn more.

“Experiencing science gives kids a little bit of a background in something that will make them want to learn more and give them a reason to read. But we don’t see that pattern happening in the way we teach our students now.”

Elizabeth Keren-Kolb, a clinical professor of education technologies and teacher education at the University of Michigan’s Marsal Family School of Education, said educators have been either working with the latest technological innovations or pushing them off to the side ever since the days of the slide rule and the appearance of the typewriter.

As the author of several influential books, including Learning First, Technology Second: The Educator’s Guide to Designing Authentic Lessons, she reminds us that for over a century, there has always been technology in one form or another in American classrooms. evolution.

Keren-Kolb said when it comes to technology use in the classroom, from a historical lens, the pendulum shifts back and forth, from overuse of the latest and greatest technology to receding to tried-and-true traditional methods.

From a practical standpoint, a lot of what drives this is recent purchases allocated in a school district budget.

“History has shown us that screen technology trends in the classroom tend to be very cyclical,” said Keren-Kolb. “The pattern goes like this: There is this brand-new or emerging technology that everyone gets excited about, and there is a push for schools to get it. So, schools acquire the needed funding for the technology, whether it be film strips and all the way up to today’s iPads and Tablets, and money is poured into it.”

She continued: “Then administrators tell the teachers they must use the new technology because, after all, the district just spent all this money on it. Right away, teachers find glitches and problems. Kids cannot access the Wi-Fi from their devices, or the devices will not charge, for example. And that causes a lot of frustration.”

She continued: “Depending on the teacher, the tool may wind up pushed aside, unused in the heap of other technology tools that trended, or it may be central to a teacher’s lesson planning and classroom management.”

No matter what guidelines come down from state or district education administrators, or what technology is introduced into a school or district, Keren-Kolb said the teacher is the most important decision maker on how much or how little exposure a student gets to the technology.

“The other big important factor for me as a clinical professor is equity, and that is a hard thing for people of middle and upper socioeconomic classes to wrap their brains around,” Keren-Kolb said. “Access to screen technology at school can be a great equalizer for more vulnerable students and their families who do not have the same resources at home.”

Because of the equity factor, she believes in a smart approach to the availability of the use of screens in the classroom.

“The most vulnerable students in our schools need access to technology and gain exposure and a mastery of basic literacy skills to be productive in our society,” Keren-Kolb said. “There’s almost nothing in our society where you don’t need basic digital literacy skills.”

Still, at the youngest grades, Keren-Kolb acknowledges that reading printed books aloud, penmanship, writing things down by hand, copying notes manually, and computing basic math problems on paper are beneficial for brain development.

But at times, learning disabilities such as dyslexia and dysgraphia make it a struggle for some students to write things out by hand or capture their thoughts quickly enough on writing assignments, she countered.

“Students at times need to glean skills on technology alongside the skills gained by writing it down by hand, which are all foundational literacy skills,” Keren-Kolb said. “They must know how to read and write, and in their upper years (of high school) how to compose an email to a prospective employer,” Keren-Kolb explained. “They need to know how to type out a five-paragraph composition on Google Docs and use all the spelling and grammar features to review and correct their work. Right now, I have college students who do not know how to type and are lacking keyboard skills. They must be savvy in both digital and nondigital spaces.”

Keren-Kolb said even before the age of screens in classrooms, students have found ways to not pay attention in class. Some daydreamed or dozed off, passed notes to friends, or doodled in their notebooks. In the classes she teaches, and something she teaches to her student teachers as they head out into the field in local schools, she said teachers need to set an intention of proper use of screen time at the beginning of each class. For example, she has a “laptop lids down” policy whenever a guest lecturer visits their class or if they are having a classroom discussion that does not require referring to their digital device.

Modeling this behavior of not being distracted when in class or in the presence of a classroom community is an essential part of learning, Keren-Kolb stressed.

“Teachers are just as guilty of taking out their phones to check something in the middle of class, and I advise my student teachers to model behavior for students – check your phone on your break. Not having our cell phones out or our laptops closed shows each other we value one another’s time and opinions, and making eye contact and making connections in class is a very important part of learning.”