What happens when teachers move from using productivity tools to building their own? Teachers have more productivity tools than ever. Learning platforms like Google Classroom and Microsoft Teams organize assignments and communication, while Nearpod, Edpuzzle, Kahoot!, and Wayground turn lessons into interactive experiences. Canva speeds up the design of classroom materials, and AI assistants like MagicSchool AI, Brisk Teaching, Diffit, Microsoft Copilot, and NotebookLM help t

When I worked as a web developer, a feature was never "done" just because it looked right on my screen. It had to pass testing on every browser, every device, and for every user. Now that I teach and coach teachers on technology, I notice we rarely hold learning materials to the same standard. A lesson looks polished, so we post it. But a lesson some students can't read or navigate isn't finished. It just hasn't been tested yet. So, I tested one. As a peer evaluator, I audite

Everyone is running behind, and that's the point! If you feel like you can't keep up with technology right now, you're not alone. Neither can policy makers. Rules are still being written for technologies that have already evolved into something new. Experts call this the pacing problem: technology changes faster than the rules around it can adapt. Now shrink that down to a school building. If policy makers with dedicated staff and budgets can't keep pace, what does that mean

The year was 1997, and the computer lab was the most exciting room in my school. Our class would line up, walk down the hall, and file into a room of humming desktops. We each got a turn, and we made every minute count, because that room was the only place many of us could use a computer at all. A lot has changed since then. In the 2024–25 school year, about 88% of U.S. public schools reported providing every student a school-issued device, such as a laptop or tablet, through

About three years ago, I gave my 8th grade students access to an AI tutor chatbot built through SchoolAI, one of several platforms I experimented with alongside MagicSchool AI and Playlab. Some students used it exactly as I had hoped, working through confusion, asking follow-up questions, and extending their understanding. Others did what I feared: they copied the AI’s responses and moved on. That tension became the center of my work for the next three years. The potential wa