The digital delusion: teacher’s shift to tech-free lessons shows promising results

But having just devoured The Digital Delusion - How Classroom Technology Harms Our Kids’ Learning And How To Help Them Thrive Again by educational neuroscientist Dr Jared Cooney Horvath this summer, the Humanities teacher has taken action to reclaim her classroom and bolster the quality of learning underway.

Much of the research findings shared in the book struck a chord, Horton says.

“Some of the main statistics that really smacked me in the face was that that it’s between 24 and 38 minutes that is typically spent off task per hour when using laptops in the class setting.

“And that on average, it’s about six minutes before students start to drift to unrelated digital distractions – and that’s what I was noticing in the class last year when I was doing explicit instruction or trying to create some form of dialogue around some of the legal concepts…

“You could definitely see that there was that high level of distraction in the classroom,” the teacher from St Catherine’s School in Melbourne reflects.

Inspired to implement some changes, Horton kicked off Term 1 this year with a ‘call to action’ presentation, highlighting Horvath’s most compelling messages about edtech and its impact in the classroom.

“Just try to get some collective buy-in from the students, so then if they knew the benefits of [going tech-free], then they could make that informed decision themselves.”

Recently Horvath warned that we risk further eroding children’s cognitive development if the expansion of edtech into classrooms continues as it is currently.

In a written testimony to the US Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, the expert argued that if federal policy keeps incentivising large-scale digital adoption in schools without demanding “independent efficacy evidence, privacy protections, and developmental safeguards”, we may cause long-term educational harm and compound the damage already done to children’s brains.

According to Horvath, while in some limited circumstances digital tools can boost ‘surface-level’ skill acquisition, in most academic contexts screens only slow learning, diminish depth of understanding and weaken retention.

This is primarily because they are engineered to capture attention, fragment our focus and speed up task switching, he said.

Now every Thursday, students in Horton’s Legal Studies class leave all laptops and digital devices behind. Engagement levels have shifted significantly in the right direction as a result, she reports.

“The only tech we use is the Powerpoint board if we’re going through some summary [work],” she says.

“So the girls are handwriting things, they’re coming in with their pre-written notes, and I’m making it a lot more interactive on those days, so making sure I’ve got printed case studies [to analyse].

“We’re doing a lot of modelled and guided writing – getting the girls up and actually participating in constructing responses together, and I’m doing that through using mini whiteboards and doing some more low-stakes writing.”

Without notetaking happening via screens, Horton has noticed lessons are less disrupted and her instruction is more sequential.

“They’re more willing to ask questions about what’s being discussed at the time, as opposed to 10 minutes later once they’ve copied their notes down on their computer, or they’ve tuned back in.

“So, it’s keeping the content on track and that natural progression of a lesson, rather than having to then jump back and forward between things.”

Humanities teacher Nicole Horton says her Year 12 Legal Studies lessons have benefitted from the removal of digital devices.

Horton hopes that by the time the class starts its Unit 4 area of study later in the year, every lesson will be a tech-free affair.

Encouragingly, her students have increasingly been receptive to the change.

“I’ve found that as the weeks are going on, some of the girls are electing to come in tech-free for the other two days that I have them a week ... that’s been a gradual thing,” Horton says.

“The girls are noticing that they’re understanding a little bit better, and their structure in their writing is coming through a lot earlier than I’d say in previous years when I’ve had Year 12 – they seem be getting a lot out of it.”

Ensuring students work from a physical textbook is another thing Horton is being much more intentional about. Science of learning research supports this, she says.

“When you read something on a laptop versus when you read something on a physical hard copy, [we know that] our brain creates that mental map of where that information’s anchored on the page.

“So when it comes to sitting [say for example] an exam, your brain associates that particular content with where it sits on a page – the issue with laptops is that because you scroll upwards on the textbook that spatial anchor gets lost…”

As a former primary school teacher, Horton says frequent checks for understanding have also become much more of a focus in her practice this year.

“Sometimes in a secondary school, because we’re so focused on getting through content, checking for understanding takes a bit of a side seat.

“I’ve just really tried to be more intentional on those and making sure I am having them every 5-6 minutes throughout, even if it is just a quick multiple choice on something we’ve just covered, to make sure that I don’t have to re-teach something.

“In previous years, I've thought that the whole class understands it and then moved into the practice SAC and they have no idea…”

In a recent Substack article which unpacks the actual value technology brings to learning, Horvath notes that edtech was introduced to education as “a gateway to exploration and creative expression”.

“It was promoted as the means by which classrooms would move beyond the supposedly outdated traditions of memorisation and repetitive practice into a future of personalised, self-directed discovery,” he writes.

“Accordingly, it’s more than a little ironic that digital tools show their strongest benefits when used for the very practices they were meant to replace: rote memorisation and skill drilling.”

This speaks to the power of ‘marketing hype’ in the sector, but it also says something important about learning itself, he contends.

“Learning is often effortful, difficult, and sometimes tedious. It requires repetition and sustained practice to succeed.

“Rather than viewing these characteristics as flaws to be engineered away, we may be better served leaning into them and designing instruction that works with (rather than against) the biology of how learning actually occurs…”