Stone Age or Techno Dystopia: How Districts Can Pave a Healthy Middle Ground for Edtech

What neuroscience has to say about classroom edtech

Student grades and behavior have seemed to deteriorate over time, with many teachers and researchers directly citing edtech as the problem. But when attempting to remedy such issues, districts often go about it entirely differently. Some aim to get rid of or extremely limit use of computers for certain grade levels, while others take a more individualized approach.

After understanding the neuroscience of learning, you can foster a research-based approach within your district that understands the benefits and efficiencies of various edtech resources while ensuring adequate and effective analog learning time.

Are physical reading and handwriting really better than digital?

Reading comprehension must be taught and trained throughout people’s lifetimes. It’s a reflex that, for most, begins in the classroom. An important caveat is that reading must be practiced with as little edtech as possible. Why is this? Reading physical print materials is simply easier for the brain to understand.

In a 2026 study by the University of Tokyo, researchers found that when comparing participants reading either paper or electronic books, brain scans showed a bottlenecking in the frontal lobe of electronic readers. The frontal lobe is key for reasoning, learning and information recall. Researchers believed that because of physical page turns, the paper readers were better able to organize the narrative in their minds, thus answering questions about the material more efficiently and effectively.

Whether in a classroom or professional meeting setting, the ability to physically highlight and underline key information can also help this process. When readers have a tangible way to sort, select, and organize information, they are able to engage with it more deeply. Leaders may encourage environments of physical rather than digital reading, including printed textbooks and handouts, to help with student comprehension of classroom material.

Have you ever watched a TV episode or film and realized you couldn’t remember half of it afterwards? This is the same as watching educational material without notetaking, as well as typing versus handwriting notes. The information simply goes in one eye and right out the other, so to speak. Repetition is the simplest way for the human brain to learn, and notetaking allows direct repetition of information. Interestingly, the neuroscience behind handwriting versus typing notes seems to echo the pro-analog findings of reading physical over digital media.

In a 2025 study, researchers scanned the brains of individuals either handwriting or typing notes and found that the information students record by hand is processed in the memory centers of the brain, among several other regions, and the handwriting helps to provide structure and organization to the information (just as physical page turns when reading). However, when typing, the brain was found to “light up” far less than writing. The brain was ingesting and regurgitating information through the keyboard, but participants couldn’t digest the information.

Encouraging your district to work towards handwriting in the classroom as much as possible, save for commonsense examples like typing later drafts of essays and practicing coding, can also help to improve student outcomes.

Dopamine detoxes help restore classroom engagement

Lastly, behavioral issues in classrooms have always been a problem…even when knuckle rapping and dunce caps were a thing! However, a pressing issue teachers and principals are facing is the attention crisis. Students are more bored with learning than ever before. What started in the late 2000’s and 2010’s as Why bother learning it when I can look it up? has turned into AI can look it up and do it for me.

Artificial intelligence (AI) exacerbates the issue of information retainment in electronic reading and writing, both inside and outside of the classroom setting. Recent studies have found that increasingly relying on AI to make decisions and solve problems has decimated those portions of the brain in people who do so over time. Handing these vital information-based practices over to a computer might be efficient, but it is ultimately harmful to adults and students alike.

Worse, students inside and outside of the classroom have grown so accustomed to classroom instruction comprised of electronic games and videos, as well as filling every small break with the usage of a cellular or other electronic device, that regular instruction with notetaking, active listening, and conversation engagement have become increasingly boring to students.

Though students have always celebrated rolling in the TV cart to watch “Bill Nye the Science Guy,” “Magic School Bus,” or other educational media, the easy dopamine rush from engaging with stimulating electronic devices and media throughout the school day, and outside of it, has created an environment of constant stimulation, addiction to dopamine, and an inability to focus on less stimulating stimuli. As a result, students develop and experience symptoms of heightened irritability, difficulty concentrating, anxiety or restlessness, sleep problems, and difficulty completing schoolwork, most of which can be easily misdiagnosed as ADD or ADHD. However, the symptoms are almost the exact same as those of drug addiction withdrawal.

The rising dopamine detox community (online, ironically) has claimed that taking breaks from such heavy usage of technology has helped to improve these feelings of restlessness and anxiety. A school culture shift toward dopamine detox could also help to improve focus and behavioral issues related to attention difficulties.

When is the right time to use edtech?

Because the number one factor in student achievement is the teacher, time spent engaging with their teacher through face-to-face instruction should be replaced with technological learning as little as possible. Teachers take a human-centered approach to learning that cannot be replicated by technological devices. Thus, encouraging print reading (including read-to-self, read-to-someone, and “popcorn” style), handwriting, in-person presentations, and discussions within the classroom, activities that increase interactions among everyone in the classroom, can help reduce the addictive and otherwise negative tendencies that technology may create.

But reducing edtech use isn’t that simple. In most districts, technology has become central to classroom instruction and management. The question arises, “Which forms of edtech should be reduced in your district and which are vital for modern school administration?”

There is a difference between classroom edtech and administrative edtech. The prior is a very broad term that could include any electronic learning format or accessory: laptops and tablets for typing, educational videos, and even the overhead projector. The latter is more specific: a software program or set of programs that teachers, administrators, and leaders use to schedule, communicate with parents, submit grades, visualize data, and more. In the classroom, however, minimizing digital edtech seems to reap greater rewards for students and teachers alike.

Pro-tech and pro-learning: how schools can implement intentional edtech

Working with fellow district leaders to guide how technology is used in the classroom can directly impact student outcomes in your district. Encouraging principals and teachers in your district to engage students in analog activities can help foster not only deeper engagement with classroom material, but can also help reduce emotional and behavioral struggles. However, this is not to say that laptops should never be used and educational videos should be outlawed.

All classroom edtech isn’t created equal. Student Information Systems (SIS) used by students, parents, and teachers allow for data visualization to improve outcomes, efficient communication with families, and more. Figuring out the right edtech ratio for your district can help shape a pro-technology culture, but also a common-sense, pro-learning environment that aims for all students within a district to succeed.