Three Simple Steps Schools Can Take to Resist Disruption
Straightforward, Actionable Changes Schools Can Make Right Now
Last week, I called on schools to demonstrate the institutional courage needed to protect the best interests of our students. In an era defined by disruption, the most vulnerable – children – are exposed to the greatest risks. Unlike today’s technologists, who have grown accustomed to running risky experiments on a global scale, schools needn’t play with children’s development as well.
They have an opportunity to model a higher standard of conduct than our “greatest innovators”. Schools can act upon their fiduciary responsibility to students by adopting the Precautionary Principle in procuring and using educational technology. They can exemplify the care and responsibility we hope to see in our students as they grow. They can offer their students a stable alternative to the volatility of today’s marketplace. (If you missed last week’s argument, read it here first.)
Philosophy matters, but teachers and administrators need concrete starting points. Here are three simple changes schools can implement immediately – no budget, no approval process, no overhaul required.
As we head into the holidays, the new year offers a natural reset point for schools to enact these changes. While these recommendations are far from comprehensive, they are actionable starting points that demonstrate institutional will. They signal that schools can model something different, something better.
QR Codes Force Device Dependency
The Problem:
QR codes require students to have their phones out and active, directly contradicting the phone-free policies many districts are implementing. They appear on hallway posters, they’re used in schoolwide assemblies to survey students, and lesson plans employ them for student feedback and participation.
This creates inequity; students without smartphones or data plans are excluded from participation in systems the school itself designed. It normalizes constant device consultation, training students to reach for their phones reflexively.
The Objection:
“But QR codes are convenient! They save time and paper!”
The Response:
Convenient for whom? Not for the students whose attention we’re trying to protect and cultivate. We can’t privilege our workflows over students’ developmental needs. Convenience for adults isn’t the metric that matters. Student development is. When we adopt tools that reduce friction, we must ask ourselves: Who benefits?
Paper alternatives aren’t regressive, they’re intentional. And intention is exactly what’s been missing. Schools model values through their infrastructure choices. If we believe phones are problems in classrooms, why design systems that require them?
Ultimately, the “efficiency” argument is the same logic that led to the intrusion of dubious educational technologies that we’re now trying to reverse. We must remember that the market imperatives of speed and efficiency make for poor learning conditions. Slow and deliberate attention to detail lays better foundations for educational achievement. The alternatives are straightforward:
The Alternative:
For sign-ups to sports teams, clubs, and activities, hold in-person information sessions, use paper sign-up sheets, and have actual conversations with students.
For surveys, conduct verbal polls during advisory or homeroom periods, hold focus groups, and distribute paper forms when necessary.
For event information, print flyers with complete information on them and use the school’s PA system to share the details.
The Benefit:
Each of these alternatives creates opportunities for face-to-face interaction and embodied community. If moving information offline requires more in-person meetings with students, that’s the point – real human connection is the goal. When schools use paper and in-person methods, every student can participate: no smartphone required. It teaches our students that participation in school life, and the rest of life by extension, doesn’t require digital mediation.
Removing QR codes removes one more reason for students to need their phones during school hours. By making this easy and simple change, our schools model an institutional commitment to reducing device dependency. They demonstrate a healthier, more human alternative.
Schools Can’t Condemn What They Promote
The Problem:
Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, and TikTok cause documented harm to adolescent mental health. Yet schools, the very institutions entrusted to nurture and protect their development, regularly use these platforms for communication and marketing. Despite teenagers’ own awareness of these harms and new regulations like Australia’s social media ban, many schools continue to operate institutional accounts. Schools can’t credibly advocate for healthy digital habits while actively promoting platforms designed for addiction.
Their presence on these platforms signals endorsement and normalizes their use. If they participate in engagement metrics – likes, shares, comments – they model the behaviour they should discourage among their students. Social media platforms monetize attention. They harvest data to optimize for engagement over wellbeing and sell that data for profit. Public institutions like schools should not be complicit in directing students and families toward these systems.
The Objection:
“But parents expect updates! We need to communicate! We need to meet families where they are!”
The Response:
Social media is not necessary for communication; it’s one option among many. Schools communicated effectively with their communities for generations before Instagram. Email, school websites, newsletters, and parent portals are all viable and effective alternatives. They aren’t inferior; they’re more intentional.
“Meeting families where they are” shouldn’t mean meeting them on platforms that harm children. Schools are authoritative institutions. They have expertise in child development. They can, and should, leverage their expertise to exemplify a higher standard for the communities they serve.
Remember that today’s parents of school-age children grew up before social media existed – they understand the alternatives. Moreover, not all families use social media. Making it a primary channel of communication excludes those who have opted out.
The Alternative:
Create a news section on the school website that includes photos and updates. Send weekly or monthly email newsletters to families. Use text message alerts for urgent information and closures. Lean on your parent portal system for grades, attendance, and assignments.
The Benefit:
This sets a professional standard that families deserve. It demonstrates that institutions can choose not to participate in the attention economy, providing students with an authoritative alternative that they may choose to emulate. It creates space for our youth where the pressures of social media don’t follow them.
Digital Check-Ins Fragment Community
The Problem:
Mentimeter polls, Kahoot warm-ups, and Google Forms mood checks feel interactive, but fragment the transition into learning. These platforms require devices to be active and accessible at moments when our students’ attention should shift toward human interaction with their teacher and their peers. Like social media, these are commercial products optimized for engagement metrics that serve their business model, not student learning.
Mentimeter, Kahoot, and Blooket borrow engagement tactics from social media with instant feedback, visible responses, and gamification. They train students to view their device as a stimulating mediator of classroom participation, making it more difficult to justify their absence when necessary.
The Objection:
“But these tools are engaging! They’re fun and they help students feel seen!”
The Response:
Engagement ≠ learning. Platforms like Kahoot and Blooket privilege those who respond quickly, think fast, and perform well under artificial time pressure – skills that have little to do with deep understanding.
If the goal is to foster community and connection, why mediate it through screens? The ubiquity of screen-based technology has brought about a crisis of loneliness. Schools can be bulwarks against the rising tide of social isolation. If we want to build community, start by talking face-to-face, facilitate shared embodied experiences, and focus on connection, not metrics.
The data these platforms generate serves administrative convenience more than student needs. Real community happens through eye contact, voice, and physical proximity – the embodied connections that build trust.
The Alternative:
Start class with a verbal check-in students can answer aloud (think-pair-share, circle format, etc.) Use the first two to three minutes for silent transition; allow students to settle, organize materials, and prepare mentally. Ask students to give you a thumbs up/down, or write a quick reflection on paper, to gauge understanding. For formative assessment, use exit tickets on paper that don’t require real-time device access.
The Benefit:
Reducing the use of these platforms reduces device dependency at crucial moments when attention should be gathering, not scattering. It models human interaction that doesn’t require digital mediation. It creates space for embodied community rather than performative engagement. It eliminates commercial platforms from the rituals of the classroom.
All three recommendations ask schools to choose intentionality over convenience, connection over metrics, and students’ developmental needs over administrative ease. These three changes are simple, they cost nothing, and they require no special training. They can be implemented immediately – the new year is an ideal reset point. And though they won’t solve the attention crisis alone, they send a clear message to students and their families: schools can choose differently.
Each recommendation removes one vector of device dependency where schools inadvertently reinforce the attention economy’s grip on our youth. This is what institutional courage looks like – not waiting for perfect solutions or comprehensive policy, but leading the way with easy changes now.
These are first steps. They demonstrate that schools can resist disruption rather than merely adapting to it. Share this with colleagues, bring it to department meetings, and present it to administration. Start in January.
These three steps are only the beginning. If you’ve implemented similar changes at your school, or if you have other practical recommendations, I’d love to hear about them in the comments. This conversation grows stronger with more voices.
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