Category: Technology

(This is my sixth post in a series of entries I’m using to participate in Blaugust for 2026.)

There’s an interesting read on The Hechinger Report where Jackie Mader has written an article about game sites that avoid school web filters.

(The Hechinger Report, interestingly enough, releases articles under a Creative Commons license. That’s super cool of them, and one of the reasons they’re in my RSS feed reader.)

As is my trend for Blaugust, this isn’t a summary of that article, I’m using it as a jumping off point.

I have a love-hate relationship with games in my classroom.

Also internet filters.

Also, the internet.

Also, computers in general.

All for the same reason, in fact – these things that can be powerful tools for learning are also a student’s go-to for distraction. As someone with unmedicated ADHD, I know the struggle is real.

The difference is in the directions, as with most tools.

I don’t just toss my students at Luanti, I set up a modded server and direct students to complete a task, often one that requires teamwork.

I have students produce game review videos where OF COURSE they have to get some b-roll of them playing the game, but they also have to write up glows and grows (positive and constructive criticism, if we’re being fancy), script things out, record their audio, and overlay everything in post-production.

Many of the reviewed games are hosted on websites that do their best to avoid school filter blocks, which I allow so long as the content is not inappropriate for school. Students will ask what is and isn’t fair game, and I usually say “Imagine I’m showing your review to [Principal], because there’s a good chance I’m going to show it to [Principal] and your parents if you choose poorly.”

That’s usually enough guidance for a 6th grader to make the right call without going over the Student Code of Conduct in detail.

Heck, I’ve had students designing games for close to 20 years. The tools we use have changed, but the core concepts remain.

There’s plenty of reasons to block websites in school, and I’m glad it’s not my job to decide where the line is drawn, but I’ve found in my own little corner of education the easiest path forward is to take the distraction and turn it into a curriculum-based lesson.

I did the same thing with phones, back before my school banned them, but that’s another topic full of mixed feelings for a different post.

(This is my fourth post in a series of entries I’m using to participate in Blaugust for 2026.)

I recently read an article with a similar name to this one that I’ll not link here, because it made me angry enough to draft a rebuttal.

This is not that rebuttal. This isn’t even a tribute.

Instead, this is my own list, different from the other one, and limited to five things simply to keep this post shorter than a novel. I could go on. I could nitpick. I would rather not invite that poison into my soul this morning.

(And yes, these are in a numbered order, but what that order should be has changed on a daily, sometimes hourly basis for me. I might adjust it after I’ve written all five. I might not.)

#5 We call it EdTech

TL;DR: I don’t like that it’s shoved over to be a separate thing when technology use should be in everyone’s domain.

There’s plenty of reasons to use labels, but doing so fits things into neat little boxes when the world is not so easy to organize.

I’ve been my school’s “EdTech” teacher for as long as it’s existed, and with that comes a concept held by too many people that I hold a fiefdom over all that has blinking lights and LCD screens.

We’ve moved away from that a bit in the past 6 years (I wonder why…) but the problem persists, with teachers using class Chromebooks for unsupervised “independent study” time because they’re not “techy” enough to do more.

In truth, any technology is a tool that makes life easier for those who are using it. (If it’s making life harder, someone’s doing something wrong.) The first of our ancestors that learned a pointy stick kept their food from running away was using technology. It should not be mystified just because now a lot of it has rocks we tricked into doing math.

There are plenty of people who make loving tech their whole personality and try to build walls up so anyone not on their level doesn’t get to be “in the know” and learn how to use the tools. Those who just want things to work don’t need to help build those walls.

#4 We Let Capitalism Lead It

TL;DR: Nothing in education should be a for-profit enterprise, because that shifts priorities to making money, not supporting students.

Schools, traditionally, are underfunded. Underfunded schools do not traditionally have a lot of money to spend on technology. Therefore, schools will frequently look for the free and/or cheap options.

This means the schools will have tons of open-source software running on refurbished hardware, right? Hahaha, my lab is an outlier and does not get counted.

No, a lot of the tools we use are “freemium” to get us hooked before charging for more features, or ad supported, or have data collection, or are provided at steep discounts so that students (and teachers) get locked into the “but I’ve always used [thing]” mentality.

Look at what Apple did in the 1990s. All of those Mac labs existed for a reason, and it helped keep them afloat for years.

Google’s doing the same thing with Chromebooks, and they don’t even need to deal with hardware or marketing to make it happen.

Sure, to be in my school system they have to promise to not collect any data on our students, but this is Google. If they have someone locked into their ecosystem by 3rd grade then as soon as that kid creates a non-student account the data collection and selling begins.

Adobe makes me the angriest, though, as even my own colleagues in the past have said their students needed Adobe Creative Suite to be successful. Why? It’s the industry standard. Why? Because everyone uses it. Why? Because it’s the industry standard.

There’s no such thing as a free lunch, I know. Using open source software in my lab requires me to do more work installing and maintaining things, but my students will still know WHEN to make the cut from one scene to another.

#3 We Lowered Our Standards

TL;DR: Some tools we use are garbage, but we still use them because they’re “educational.”

A long time ago I was really into a handful of Christian Rock bands. Alas, only a handful, because the rest were … developing their skills. Christian Rock was a small enough niche that a band could get their foot in the door and be on the local Christian Rock radio station with a level of quality one could not find on any pop, country, or oldies station because the bar for those was too high.

Most “educational” programs I’ve played with have either been heavy on the fun with a glaze of flash cards on top or heavy on the flash cards with showing a point total to make it “gamified.”

I’ve had far more success taking tools never meant to be limited to the classroom and having students make things with them. Kdenlive isn’t a video editor for kids, it’s a video editor. The lesson is in learning how to use it, and it doesn’t need a cartoon mascot for that.

(Although Tux Paint has a cartoon mascot and is super fun, so there’s always exceptions.)

#2 We Abandoned Old Successes

TL;DR: Things that work well don’t have to be dumped just because we found a new thing.

Remember when blogging and podcasting were big in education? No, not recently, I mean the first time, back in the ’00s, before some of my coworkers were born.

How about game based learning? Gamification? (You know those aren’t the same thing?)

Each of these was a trend that was popular for good reasons that just faded away to obscurity, not because it got worse but because the next new trend showed up and there was only so much time in a school day.

#1 We Jump on Bandwagons Because They’re Bandwagons

TL;DR: If not adopting AI will have me get left behind, then I will leave you to join the lemmings and be here when the bubble has burst with my cognitive skills intact.

I’ve seen a lot of fads come and go: ’80s hairstyles, Bitcoin, NFTs, and candy colored computers are just some of them. You can still find fragments left behind, but they are all shadows of their former selves.

AI is one of these trends, with companies relabeling rather tame algorithms as “AI” because that’s the buzzword of the day.

It disgusts me that so many EdTech “leaders,” some of whom I respected in the ’00s, have seen this as the next big thing and hitched their wagons to it.

Gotta make a buck somehow, if your income is public speaking and book sales, I guess.

Whenever I converse with an AI advocate, I get the same talking points:

• “You’re not teaching your kids what they need to know.”
  • My students know how to make movies. Yours know how to write a prompt and have a program steal other movies and mash them together to make something that looks the same as every other AI generated piece of slop. Our classes are not the same.
• “It gives you more time for the important work.”
  • Everything AI generates is subject to errors, and people are getting in trouble when those errors slip through. It takes me less time to make a thing than it does to double-check the output from a plagiarism engine.
• “It helps students learn.”
  • Citation needed. (I’m never provided any when I ask.)
  • Any time the work is done for my students, they don’t learn. My kindergarten students don’t learn their passwords in classes where the teacher types it for them, but in my class most of them have it down in two weeks. They learn by doing. If AI does the work from them, what are they learning?
  • I teach HTML coding. AI can write code, but AI written code is very hard to maintain. I can look at my hand-coded websites and edit them. My students can do the same. Yours can, what, ask the AI to do better this time?
• “It’s cheaper than paying an artist.”
  • Theft usually is. Knowing how to steal is not the flex you think it is. Telling an art teacher that kids should know how to steal from artists is certainly a choice.

One last thing about the AI bandwagon that is spreading like a cancer: The people making money in a gold rush are the ones who sell the shovels.

The established shovel makers aren’t building more factories. They see the bubble for what it is, and don’t expect it to last long enough for a new factory to pay for itself before the bubble bursts.

When that happens, I’ll be here – still teaching how to make cool things without typing prompts into a souped up spellchecker, while others have forgotten how to do anything without asking an AI for advice first.