The What of Choice Boards: Structure & Set-Up

A choice board is an organized menu of activity options that allows students to select tasks and learning paths to demonstrate their understanding. Various choice board layouts exist to meet specific classroom needs for differentiation and to build academic rigor. Let’s explore some popular options:

• Tic-Tac-Toe Boards – A 3 x 3 grid where students select three activities in a row, column, or diagonal. Check out this Canva template as an example of this layout. 
• Menu Boards – Students select one task from each category on the menu, typically an appetizer, entree, and dessert. Check out this Canva template as an example of this layout.
• Choose-Your-Own-Adventure/Branching Boards – These digital boards offer interactive paths, with each choice leading to new options. Check out this Canva template as an example of this layout.
• Must-Do/May-Do Boards – This format makes sure students tackle essential tasks (the “must dos”) while also leaving room for fun extension activities (the “may dos”). Check out this Canva template as an example of this layout.

The Why of Choice Boards: The Research-Backed Benefits

Choice boards and learning menus offer numerous benefits for differentiated instruction in these ways:

• Student engagement. Choice boards promote active participation, increase motivation, and foster creativity.
• Personalized learning. Choice boards provide tailored content options that address diverse learning styles and encourage student autonomy.
• Critical thinking. Choice board activities encourage decision-making, help develop problem-solving skills, and support higher-order thinking.
• Flexible assessments. Choice boards can serve as formative or summative assessments, allowing varied demonstrations of learning, and can be adapted based on student progress.

Educational research shows that giving students agency leads to better cognitive development and critical thinking. Choice boards are more than just a fun activity; they challenge students to think in complex ways:

1. According to Desi and Ryan’s self-determination theory, when students have autonomy over their learning, it boosts motivation and reduces behavioral issues.
2. Bandura’s social cognitive theory highlights that choice boards encourage intentional thinking. Students need to analyze what they know and select the best options for themselves, which builds metacognitive skills.
3. Studies on self-regulated learning, such as those by Barry Zimmerman, show that students who have ownership of their learning tend to set goals focused on mastery rather than simply aiming for good grades. Mastery-oriented students process information more deeply and are better at applying their knowledge in new situations.
4. Universal Design for Learning encourages multiple means of engagement, representation, and action and expression. Choice boards effectively meet these guidelines by providing the ability to differentiate by content (what students learn), process (how students learn), and product (how students show what they have learned).

The How of Choice Boards: Planning & Edtech Implementation Options

Here is a general framework for step-by-step planning when creating a choice board:

1. Start with the standard/objective. The key to an effective choice board is ensuring clarity in learning.
2. Determine the non-negotiables: Are there any essential tasks that students must complete?
3. Brainstorm a variety of activities. Be sure to consider DOK levels/Bloom’s taxonomy and to think in modalities: visual, auditory, written.
4. Structure the board layout to guide students’ choices for engaging in these activities.
5. Write clear directions and embed the resource links, then test them.
6. Set expectations for assessment with a rubric or other instructions.

If you need design support, consider searching for choice board templates in Canva for Education (reviewed here) or selecting from various options on SlidesMania (reviewed here). SlidesMania templates work in both Google Slides and PowerPoint. Teachers can share Canva designs with students via a public-view link or download the file as a PDF for a low-tech print option.

If you need additional content support, consider educational AI platforms such as MagicSchool (reviewed here) and Eduaide (reviewed here), both of which offer choice-board-specific chat tools. Alternatively, try these AI prompting tips from Control Alt Achieve for brainstorming choice boards in your favorite chatbot, or use this EduGem designed to work in Gemini.

Here are a few additional options you can use to make your choice boards even more interactive and engaging: 

• Genially (reviewed here) is an excellent platform choice for creating interactive “hotspots and branching paths; there are several customizable template options available with built-in interactive elements.
• Padlet (reviewed here) is a great option for creating a digital bulletin board where students can post completed choice board products for peer review. Consider using a submission form link so that students submit work blindly without distraction, then save the Padlet board link for a gallery walk once all students have finished their choice board activities.
• FigJam (reviewed here) is another wonderful choice for collaboration. Consider this FigJam for Education Pause. Play. Refresh. template, which includes spaces where students can share reflections and feedback on activities from the choice board.

Tips for Success

• Ensure every activity on the board, even the “fun” options, directly maps back to your learning intentions and requires the same level of rigor. Remember, when written purposefully, choice boards can push students to analyze and synthesize information deeply—but if some choices require lower levels of cognitive lift, passive learners will naturally gravitate towards the ones that require less effort.
• For students who struggle with decision-making, choice boards can lead to task paralysis. Consider limiting the number of options or providing time limits where appropriate. It might also be helpful to scaffold responsibility by guiding students towards specific combinations of activities rather than a fully open menu of choices.
• To take choice board activities to the next level, add a final reflection opportunity after students have created their learning products. Ask students to reflect on why they chose their specific learning path and how it helped them understand the content. This action builds students’ metacognitive capacity by helping them evaluate their own decision-making.

Choice boards offer a powerful way to empower students and make learning more engaging. We’d love to hear about your experience using choice boards with students in the comments below!

If you’re anything like most teachers, your go-to resources are the ones you already know, not necessarily the best ones, just the ones you trust to actually work when you open them at 9 p.m. on a Sunday.

That makes complete sense. When a link goes dead, or a site turns out to be paywalled, or a tool a colleague swore by suddenly wants a monthly subscription, you learn pretty quickly to stick with what’s reliable. Planning time is too short to spend on troubleshooting.

That’s kind of the whole idea behind TeachersFirst, not adding more to your plate but taking the “will this actually work?” question off it entirely. Every resource has been reviewed and vetted by educators, so you’re not randomly clicking and hoping to find something that works. But if you’ve only ever used TeachersFirst to search for a specific resource, there’s a lot more on the site worth knowing about. And this is where that reliability starts to show up in ways you might not expect.  

Here’s a tour of some features you might not have fully explored yet.

If trust is the reason you stick with familiar tools, these are some of the places where TeachersFirst starts to earn it.

If You’re Planning for Students

Special Topics Collections – There are more than 200 of these, organized around instructional strategies, digital tools, curriculum topics, and holidays and observances. Instead of scrolling endlessly, hoping something useful surfaces, you can browse a curated list of up to 30 teacher-vetted resources on a specific topic, ready to share with students or use to anchor a unit. Instead of scrolling through all our collections, explore one that particularly interests me: AI for Lesson Plans—a great example of the resources you’ll find.

Planning Calendar – This calendar links to collections and resources for upcoming events, so you can plan at any time. It’s a clickable, month-by-month view of holidays, anniversaries, seasonal events, and commemorations, each one connected directly to TeachersFirst resources and classroom ideas. You can glance a month or two ahead and find exactly the right materials without having to search separately. Upcoming OK2Ask professional learning sessions also appear on the calendar, so you can keep an eye on both curriculum planning and your own professional learning in one place.

Reading Treks – Whether you teach picture books, novels, or longer texts—or support students who need help building context—this resource is worth exploring. Reading Treks transforms books into interactive, map-based learning experiences using Google My Maps, designed to build the background knowledge students need to better understand a text.

As students explore a Trek, they interact with multimedia map points that bring settings, events, and historical context to life through images, video, and curated links. These supports help learners connect more deeply with the story, especially when prior knowledge is limited.

Each Trek also includes a teacher guide with instructional tips, discussion prompts, standards alignment, and extension activities for classroom use. Titles span grades K–12, from powerful picture books like Henry’s Freedom Box to secondary texts such as Farewell to Manzanar, and the collection continues to grow. It’s an engaging way to make complex texts more accessible and meaningful.

If You’re Missing a Thought Partner

Help! I Lost My Media Specialist – Yes, that really is the name—and while it may sound dramatic, this growing collection is truly a treasure trove for any teacher. These articles highlight the many ways media specialists support teaching and learning, from research and digital citizenship to creativity, collaboration, and beyond.

Whether you’re looking for fresh ideas or just a bit of extra support, you’ll find practical strategies, classroom-ready activities, and helpful background all in one place. Want to see what these articles look like in action? Explore Hey “Siri…what is AI? Introducing Students to Artificial Intelligence” or “Crowdsourcing Science: Using Citizen Science in the Classroom” for examples packed with background, strategies, and ready-to-use ideas. New articles are added regularly, making this a resource worth revisiting—no matter how much support you already have.

If You Want PD That Actually Fits Your Life

Book Studies and Book Clubs – If your past book clubs have lost momentum, these thoughtfully designed experiences offer something more. They offer rich, structured professional learning experiences that connect educators across the United States. Blending flexible, asynchronous learning with opportunities for live interaction, they weave research-based instructional strategies, practical application, and ready-to-use resources throughout. Participants build community, exchange ideas, and deepen their practice through engaging activities designed to support real classroom impact.

OK2Ask Live Workshops – These free, interactive virtual workshops offer hands-on learning focused on technology integration, instructional strategies, and classroom tools. Each session blends research-based practices with practical application, providing ideas you can use right away across grade levels and content areas. Participants receive curated resources and session materials to extend their learning, along with PDU certificates upon successful completion. Workshops are also approved for relicensure credit in Texas, Montana, Pennsylvania, and Illinois.

On-Demand: Recordings and PLUs – Have you missed a live OK2Ask session? The on-demand archive has recordings of previous workshops covering a wide range of topics, available to complete on your own schedule, and you can still earn a certificate. If you prefer something more structured, self-paced Professional Learning Units (PLUs) cover topics like classroom management, differentiated instruction, and instructional playlists, with the option to work through them whenever and wherever you have a few minutes.

If You Like to Stay in the Loop (Without Overwhelm)

The TeachersFirst Blog – Packed with practical ideas across grade levels and content areas, from edtech integration to effective teaching strategies you can use right away. Think of it as bite-sized professional learning—most posts take just 3–7 minutes to read and include links and resources if you want to dive deeper. It’s a great way to fit in meaningful PD anytime—or, if you’re a coach, to share a quick read and spark a conversation with a teacher. For a great example, explore “Test Prep Reimagined: Brain-Based Strategies That Improve Student Performance.”

The Edge – TeachersFirst Edge takes the guesswork out of finding the right digital tool for your classroom. Every review is written through a teacher’s lens — covering not just what a tool does, but what you actually need to know before using it: whether registration is required, what the safety and policy considerations are, whether collaboration is supported, and whether there’s a cost beyond the free version. You’ll also find concrete ideas for how each tool looks in practice with students. Tools are organized by category — AI, digital storytelling, assessment, timelines, and more — so you can browse by what you’re looking for rather than hunting by name.

Featured Sites and the Weekly TeachersFirst Update – Each week, the TeachersFirst Update newsletter delivers a curated set of resources organized around a single theme — sometimes calendar-driven, like Get Outdoors Month, and sometimes topic-driven, like a collection for educators navigating AI. Many of the resources in the Update come from that week’s Featured Sites, so if something catches your eye, you can head there to explore even more on the same topic. Subscribe at teachersfirst.org/tf-subscribe and let TeachersFirst do the searching for you.

Before You Click Away: One Small Tip

Every resource on TeachersFirst includes a review, and they’re worth reading, not just skimming through. Each one tells you the recommended grade level, a summary of the resource, ideas for classroom use, and tags to help you find related resources. You’ll also see icons indicating whether a site includes advertising, video content, or other things to be aware of before sharing with students.

The search tools themselves help you save time, too. You can filter by grade level, subject, keyword, or topic to quickly find relevant results, rather than sorting through pages of things that don’t fit your classroom.

A Good Use of Ten Minutes

If you’ve only ever used TeachersFirst as a search engine, it might be worth spending a few minutes in one of the areas above. You might find something that changes how you approach a unit, a professional learning opportunity that actually fits your schedule, or a resource that answers a question you didn’t know the site could help with.

What’s your favorite corner of TeachersFirst? We’d love to hear what you’ve found useful—reach out in the comments below.

The frustration is real. And honestly? Some of it is earned. But before we declare technology itself the problem, a coalition of seventeen national education organizations — including the NEA, AFT, and AASA — asked policymakers to distinguish between unsupervised, entertainment-driven screen time at home and the intentional, monitored use of technology in classrooms. That distinction matters enormously. And it’s one that often gets lost when the loudest arguments move faster than the evidence.

So here’s the harder question: Did we actually give it a fair shot?

You Did Your Homework

If you’re reading this, there’s a good chance you — or someone in your building — did things right. You looked at the evidence. You asked vendors the uncomfortable questions. You may have even checked whether a program aligned with the ESSA tiers of evidence, the federal framework that rates educational programs from Tier 1 (strong evidence from randomized controlled trials) down to Tier 4 (research-based rationale, study in progress). That kind of intentional procurement is exactly what good practice looks like.

Think of it like a prescription. When a doctor writes you a prednisone pack, the directions are specific: take six pills the first day, five the next, tapering down over a week. The dosage, the timing, the sequence — all of it matters. Skip days, cut it short, or take it whenever you feel like it, and you can’t expect the same outcome that produced those results in the first place. The medication isn’t the problem. The protocol is. In implementation science, this idea has a name: implementation fidelity — the degree to which a program is used as it was designed.

Edtech — and really any evidence-based intervention — works the same way. The Wing Institute describes implementation fidelity as a multi-dimensional construct that includes adherence to the program design, the quality of delivery, the dosage received, and the responsiveness to the learners in front of you. The evidence rating a program earned was based on all of those conditions being present. When we change those conditions, we change the outcome.

But here’s the part that doesn’t show up in the sales pitch: those conditions are typically created at the classroom and school level. And that’s where things tend to quietly fall apart.

The Gap Nobody Talks About

In their influential review, researchers Heather Hill and Anna Erickson found that poor program implementation is among the most common explanations for disappointing results in education programs — and it is chronically underreported, because most evaluations don’t collect the data needed to diagnose it. We see a tool “fail” without ever knowing whether it was actually implemented as designed.

A 2017 EdSurge analysis put it plainly: when researchers evaluate educational technology, they often ignore the implementation environment entirely — treating a program used at 30% of its intended dosage the same as one used fully and consistently. These researchers compared it to studying whether a medication works without checking whether patients actually took it as directed.

This is where the gap opens up. The gap doesn’t come from lack of effort — it comes from lack of visibility. Without some form of ongoing, reflective support — whether that’s a dedicated instructional coach, a professional learning community, a community of practice with colleagues, or sustained professional development over time — there is often no reliable way to know where your implementation has drifted from the intended design. The program looks like it’s running. It might even feel like it’s running. But without an external reference point, implementation drift is invisible from the inside.

The feedback loop doesn’t have to be formal or expensive. It does have to be consistent. A PLC that regularly examines student work through the lens of a shared tool. A community of practice where teachers compare notes on what’s working and what isn’t. Even a committed partner teacher who observes and debriefs with you twice a semester. What matters is that someone — or some structure — is helping you see what you can’t see on your own.

The 2–5 Year Reality Check

Here’s a number that tends to stop people in their tracks: research from the National Implementation Research Network at UNC consistently finds that it takes two to five years to achieve full implementation of an evidence-based program or practice. In practical terms, that means the first year is often about learning the system, the second about stabilizing routines, and only after that do you begin to see consistent impact. Two to five years — not two to five weeks, not a semester, not the time between back-to-school PD and winter break.

Most edtech adoption cycles don’t come close. A tool gets introduced in August, assessed by February, and quietly shelved before the following school year. And the difficult truth is that this often happens right at the inflection point — the moment when implementation is starting to stabilize, when teachers are building the muscle memory that makes a new practice feel natural rather than effortful.

Sustained support structures aren’t extras layered on top of implementation. They are the mechanism by which teachers calibrate their practice over time. A single PD day can introduce a tool. It cannot sustain fidelity across two school years. Without a professional learning community, ongoing workshops, or some form of continued reflection, implementation naturally drifts — and when outcomes disappoint, the tool takes the blame for conditions it never had a chance to meet.

When Time Gets Cut, Fidelity Goes First

A research review about the relationship between implementation and outcomes confirms what many teachers already sense: dosage — the actual time and frequency with which a program is used as intended — is a critical variable in whether that program produces results. The relationship isn’t always simple or linear, but what’s consistent across studies is this: when dosage drops significantly below the program’s intended design, the evidentiary foundation for expecting results drops with it.

This finding has a painful mirror image in the real world. A reading platform designed for 20 minutes of daily use becomes a twice-a-week rotation during testing season. Schedules shift — a new initiative lands, testing season compresses the calendar, a sub doesn’t know how to run the platform — the technology is usually the first thing to get dropped. Nobody announces it. No one logs it. It doesn’t show up in evaluation notes. It just… stops happening. And months later, when the data looks flat, the conversation turns to whether the tool is worth renewing.

The tool didn’t fail. We just didn’t give it long enough. Think of a low-and-slow pork roast — you can’t pull it at the two-hour mark and declare the recipe a failure. The meat doesn’t fall off the bone until it’s been in there long enough, at the right temperature, without interruption. That’s not a flaw in the method. That is the method. And when we make implementation decisions on a schedule that has nothing to do with what the research actually requires, we shouldn’t be surprised when the results don’t show up.

A Better Question for Next Year’s Planning

As you head into summer and start thinking about next year, try bringing a different question to your planning conversations — not “did this tool work?” but “did we implement it as designed, for long enough, with enough support to actually know?”

That question also reframes what it means to sharpen your own practice. Fidelity isn’t about following a script — it’s about understanding a program’s instructional intent well enough to make smart adaptations without losing what makes it work. Teachers who have that understanding can look at any tool and ask not just “am I using it?” but “am I using it in the way most likely to help my students?” That’s not a technology question. That’s a teaching question.

TeachersFirst Can Help

If you’re looking for a place to do that reflective work alongside other educators this summer, we’d love to have you join us.

TeachersFirst is offering a free six-week Core Instructional Practices series as part of our Summer Professional Learning opportunities. These Wednesday evening virtual sessions are designed to help you revisit, sharpen, and recalibrate the instructional strategies that anchor good teaching — the ones that hold up whether your students are working with technology or without it:

• Formative Assessment — knowing what your students actually know, in the moment
• Graphic Organizers — supporting thinking, not just decorating it
• Classroom Routines — the structures that make everything else possible
• Interleaving — spacing and mixing practice for deeper retention
• Vocabulary Instruction — building the language that unlocks content
• Structured Talk Activities — turning student conversation into learning

Can’t make it live? Every session will be recorded and available on demand. Whether you join us on a Wednesday evening or catch up on your own schedule, these workshops will give you a chance to strengthen the instructional core that makes implementation fidelity possible.

Browse the full registration catalog and sign up here: Summer Professional Learning

The technology isn’t the enemy. But it does need a fair fight — adequate time, sustained support, and the kind of reflective practice that comes from doing the ongoing work of growing as a teacher. We hope to see you this summer.

On May 28, 1937, President Franklin D. Roosevelt pressed a telegraph key in the White House to declare the Golden Gate Bridge “open to the entire world.” Automobiles rolled across a 4,200-foot span that engineers once said couldn’t be built. This May, that moment turns 89 years old—making now a perfect time to hand your students a pile of popsicle sticks, a roll of tape, and a problem that won’t solve itself.

Bridge-building is one of the oldest — and richest — maker challenges in the educator’s toolkit. It brings together physics, geometry, materials science, teamwork, iterative design, and real aesthetic decision-making. Whether you teach kindergarteners or AP Physics, whether you have a full makerspace or just a table and a budget of $5, there is a bridge challenge for your classroom.

Before students can design a bridge, they need to understand the problem engineers faced. Share these facts as a hook — they reliably generate questions that lead directly into engineering thinking.

The Timeline: From Impossible Dream to Wonder of the World

1872 — The Idea
The concept of bridging the Golden Gate Strait is first proposed — and widely dismissed as impossible.

1921 — A Proposal
Engineer Joseph Strauss submits a preliminary design costing $27 million. Public opinion begins to shift.

January 5, 1933 — Breaking Ground
Construction begins at the depths of the Great Depression. Workers blast rock 65 feet below water to set earthquake-proof foundations.

May 27, 1937 — Pedestrian Day
18,000 people are already in line at 6 a.m. By day’s end, 200,000 have walked the span — some running, some roller-skating, one on stilts.

May 28, 1937 — Open to Traffic (89 Years Ago)
President Roosevelt telegraphs the order from the White House, and the first cars roll across. The bridge is declared “open to the entire world.”

Classroom connection: Ask students — what does it take to build something everyone said was impossible? What problems did the engineers have to solve before they could even start designing?

Bridge-building isn’t just a fun Friday afternoon activity (though it absolutely is that). It’s one of the most curriculum-connected maker challenges available to educators across grade levels and subjects.

• It teaches real engineering process. Students can’t wing it. They define the problem, research bridge types, design before they build, test, fail, analyze, and iterate. This is exactly the engineering design process — and students experience it authentically, not abstractly.
• It makes physics tactile. Tension, compression, load distribution, and structural failure stop being vocabulary words and become things students can see, feel, and sometimes dramatically observe when their bridge gives way under a stack of textbooks. The concepts stick.
• It scales. A kindergartner can build a bridge from blocks to see if it holds a toy car. A middle schooler can calculate load ratios. A high school student can analyze truss geometry mathematically. Same core challenge, enormous range of depth.
• It’s genuinely interdisciplinary. History (who built the Golden Gate Bridge and why?), economics (it came in under budget — how?), art and design (why is it painted International Orange?), mathematics (geometry, ratios, force calculations), and ELA (persuasive writing: which bridge design should our city choose?) all connect naturally.
• It connects to real careers. Civil engineers, structural engineers, architects, urban planners, and construction managers — the Golden Gate Bridge employed all of them. Use this moment to show students what these careers look like in practice.

Let’s look at bridge challenges for every grade and budget. From a five-minute warm-up using a single sheet of paper to a multi-week design-build-test project, there is a challenge here for every classroom context. All are grounded in engineering design process principles and making.

K–3
The Paper Bridge Penny Test

3–6
Option 1: Straw Suspension Bridge
Option 2: Straw Suspension Bridge 2

5–8
Popsicle Stick Bridge Challenge

6–12
Bridge Engineering Design Challenge

All Grades
Golden Gate Bridge Crafts

A lower-prep, higher-chaos favorite: teams build bridges using only dry spaghetti, masking tape, and marshmallows. Constraints include a minimum span distance and a load test. Great for introducing iterative design in a single class period with minimal materials cost. Have more time? Keep the same materials and add a redesign round after testing.

Strong maker activities aren’t just about building — they’re about thinking. Use these questions before, during, and after your bridge challenge.

Before you build: What is a bridge really trying to do? What forces does it have to overcome? Why would anyone in the 1930s say the Golden Gate couldn’t be built — and what changed their minds? If you had to cross a mile-wide channel with strong currents, dense fog, and earthquake risk, what would you need to know before you started designing?

During the build: What’s going wrong, and why? What would you change if you could start over? Where is your design under the most stress? How is your team making decisions when you disagree?

After the test: What did failure teach you that success couldn’t? If this were a real bridge with real people crossing it, what would have gone differently in your design process? The Golden Gate Bridge came in under budget and ahead of schedule — what does that tell us about how the engineers planned? How does an engineer decide when something is “good enough”?

Looking for a way to make the activities cross-curricular? Link the theme to social studies and history. The Golden Gate Bridge was built during the Great Depression, providing thousands of jobs at a time of national crisis. Explore the political, economic, and social conditions that made the project possible — and what it meant to the people who built it. Eleven men died during construction; their stories raise powerful questions about labor, risk, and the human cost of large infrastructure projects.

For language arts links, have students write a persuasive memo to a fictional city council, arguing for a specific bridge design, or a first-person historical narrative from the perspective of a construction worker, engineer, or one of the 18,000 people waiting in line at 6 a.m. on May 27, 1937.

Linking to art and design is easy! The Golden Gate’s distinctive “International Orange” color was chosen by architectural designer Irving Morrow, who felt it would stand out against the surrounding landscape and fog. That decision wasn’t just aesthetic—it was functional. Have students explore the intersection of engineering and design: why does the visual design of infrastructure matter? How do color, shape, and visibility influence safety and use? Have them design the color scheme and visual identity for their own bridge before building it.

Math is another natural fit. Calculate the strength-to-weight ratio of completed bridges. Explore the geometry of suspension cables (catenary curves). Investigate scale: if your popsicle bridge represents the Golden Gate at a 1:1000 scale, how long should it be? How tall should the towers be? Even simple measurements and comparisons can turn testing results into real mathematical thinking.

Happy 89th Anniversary, Golden Gate Bridge! Check out TeachersFirst for more resources and blog posts related to making. May your students build something that surprises them — and may they learn more from the moments it collapses than from the moments it holds.

Strategy 1: The Power of the Brain Dump

Instead of encouraging students to reread their notes or class slides to study for a test, leverage the power of retrieval practice. Research shows that retrieving information from memory strengthens memory pathways more effectively than rereading and helps students perform better on complex tasks. 

The Strategy: 

1. Encourage students to do a “Memory Dump” on a blank sheet of paper (or digital equivalent) for 5 minutes before they even look at their review materials. The only prompt needed is the content topic or unit title.
2. Then have students pull out their review material to fact-check their brain dump. Have them correct any misunderstandings and then highlight or underline to color-code their recalled information:
   • Green: Things they remembered instantly (representing a high level of fluency)
   • Yellow: Things they remember after a few minutes of thinking (representing developing fluency)
   • Red: Key information they knew they needed to remember but couldn’t recall until checking notes or slides (representing the “gap” areas)
3. Students now have a clear path for studying:
   • They do not need to review the green information.
   • They can then turn the yellow information into flashcards for further review. Consider using Quizlet (reviewed here) or Cram (reviewed here) for digital options. Cram offers various review modes, including self-paced learning and spaced repetition, in which information is revisited at varying intervals.
   • Students focus their study time on the red information, potentially using Strategy 2 below to help solidify understanding. 

The Research Tie-In: Retrieval practice pushes students to actively produce answers rather than simply recognizing correct ones. Research highlights that retrieval practice greatly benefits long-term memory. In particular, spaced retrieval practice, such as a cumulative review “Memory Dump,” produces “desirable difficulty” because recall occurs long after the initial period of learning and forgetting. Research also suggests that retrieval practice can protect against the effects of acute stress, such as a high-stakes testing environment, on memory inhibition.

Read this TeachersFirst blog post for even more ways to tap into retrieval practice for test review. 

Strategy 2: Connect the Dots with Concept Mapping

Concept mapping can be a powerful tool for connecting prior knowledge with new learning. It involves using nodes to represent central concepts and links between nodes to represent relationships among them. In cumulative test review, concept mapping serves both as a creative form of retrieval practice and as a way to leverage elaborative interrogation—asking how and why concepts work or are similar/different. 

The Strategy Flow:

1. Provide students with a list of the semester/year’s big ideas that will serve as anchor nodes. Students can build their concept maps on paper or digitally; consider Canva (reviewed here) mind map templates, Figjam (reviewed here) for a collaborative option, or Diagramo (reviewed here) for a simple, no-account-needed option. 
2. Ask students to spend 10 minutes mapping from memory only to initiate retrieval practice.
3. Then ask students to spend 5 minutes filling in the gaps using their textbook, notes, or other review materials. Consider having students use a different color for this information to make knowledge gaps visible and help them focus future study.
4. Push students to write linking verbs on the connecting lines to define the relationships rather than just acknowledging them. Finding cross-links between content taught at different times will help with Strategy 3 on the test day.

When students spend time organizing information into a hierarchy, they move beyond memorizing isolated facts and begin building an organized mental filing system, ready for retrieval on test day.

But even when knowledge is well-organized, students must still manage the cognitive demands of accessing and applying it under pressure—especially in a testing environment. This is where Strategy 3 becomes critical.

The Research Tie-In: As noted in Chapter 3 of Smart Teaching, Stronger Learning, research consistently shows that concept mapping leads to better performance than more traditional study methods, such as discussion or reading summaries. Further, students who construct concept maps outperform those who simply read them. The use of linking words combines elaboration with retrieval practice, strengthening later recall.

Strategy 3: Practicing “Offloading” on Practice Tests

Cognitive Load Theory, developed by John Sweller, suggests that our working memory has limited bandwidth. Test anxiety can increase extraneous load, leaving little room for actual problem-solving. Cumulative review practice sets or tests provide an opportunity to simulate testing conditions and intentionally regulate cognitive load.

The Strategy:

1. Students can “offload” any high-stakes formulas, acronyms, or dates onto scratch paper or test margins before starting. For students who regularly engage in retrieval practice, this serves as a short-form brain dump, conserving cognitive resources for the higher-level thinking required to apply the recalled information to the test questions.
2. Encourage students to flag or note questions they feel stuck on. Rather than staying stuck, shifting that content to a diffuse mode of thinking allows them to continue making progress. Other questions may help trigger recall of the “stuck” material by connecting it to a big idea or by recognizing similarities or differences between two concepts. 

The Research Tie-In: Reducing extraneous cognitive load is critical for performance, particularly for students who struggle with executive function skills such as prioritization and time management. Research by Sian Beilock and colleagues indicates that anxiety can be a source of additional cognitive load and rob students of their working memory capacity. Starting with a brain dump builds confidence and helps students enter focus mode. When students flag and move on from difficult questions, they remain productive on new tasks while the brain continues processing the “stuck” problem in the background—referred to as diffuse mode thinking in Barbara Oakley’s Learning How to Learn.

By shifting from passive study strategies to active, brain-based approaches—such as retrieval practice, concept mapping, and cognitive offloading—we can empower students to approach high-stakes testing with greater confidence and less anxiety. These strategies do more than improve test scores; they help students organize their learning in ways that support long-term retention and mastery.

As you prepare for the final push towards testing season, consider integrating one of these routines into your review sessions—and share your results in the comments below.

This post asks a different question, and one I think is particularly relevant for educators and professional learning communities: not whether the argument is right, but how it worked so effectively. Horvath’s influence offers a case study in how audience targeting, format choice, and platform amplification can move a message far beyond the strength of its evidence. That case study connects directly to the communication skills we teach every day.

It started in our OK2Ask chat window. A teacher who has shown up every week for more than three years—someone whose engagement I know well enough to read even in text—typed a question that stopped me mid-session. She wanted to know what Horvath’s Senate testimony meant for her second graders. Before I could respond, several others had already asked to be included in any resources I could share.

These are educators who come voluntarily, week after week, because they care about getting it right. The fact that this question had reached them told me how far the message had traveled—and how effectively.

So let’s talk about how it got there.

He Knew His Craft

Before Jared Cooney Horvath studied neuroscience, he earned an undergraduate degree in cinema and television production. The book he published before The Digital Delusion was called Stop Talking, Start Influencing: 12 Insights From Brain Science to Make Your Message Stick—a practical guide to shaping messages for specific audiences. He runs LME Global, a consulting company focused on translating complex science into accessible communication for educators and organizations.

His Harvard Medical School credential—a research fellowship in neuroscience, not a degree in education—is real, and the neuroscience he draws on is his strongest academic footing.

But his communication expertise predates his neuroscience training. He had already studied, practiced, and written professionally about how to make a message land with an audience and stay there. That context matters for understanding what followed—because the skills he applied are ones educators recognize immediately. We teach them.

If you’ve ever asked students to consider how media messages are constructed and for whom, you already have the framework needed to read this story clearly.

He Knew His Audience

In November 2024, Horvath published his central argument not in a peer-reviewed journal or an education policy publication, but on Jonathan Haidt’s Substack platform, After Babel. That choice deserves attention—because it wasn’t just a distribution decision. It was an audience-identification decision.

Haidt had spent years cultivating a large, engaged readership of people deeply concerned about screens, social media, and children’s well-being. His book The Anxious Generation had primed that audience to be receptive to exactly the kind of argument Horvath was making.

When Haidt introduced Horvath’s piece to his readers—calling it “powerful and well sourced”—that introduction functioned as a trust transfer, extending Haidt’s credibility, to a new voice making a compatible claim.

Your middle school ELA students know this concept: identify your audience. Understand what they already believe, what concerns them, and what they’re primed to receive. Write to that reader—not to an imagined general audience, but to the specific person on the other side of the page.

Horvath did this with precision. He didn’t write a research paper. He wrote a compelling, accessible, emotionally resonant argument for readers already inclined to trust the platform delivering it.

It’s worth naming explicitly: concerns about children’s well-being and screen time use are legitimate. This post is not asking whether those concerns are real. It’s asking how a specific argument moved through specific channels to shape policy—and what that process looked like.

He Matched Format to Purpose — Every Time

The Substack post established the argument. The self-published book, The Digital Delusion, gave it permanence, scope, and the authority that a multi-hundred-page treatment confers. Each format was chosen for what it could do—not for what was most rigorous, but for what would reach and persuade the intended audience.

This is a standard your students learn early: match your format to your purpose and your audience. A text message and a formal letter can carry the same information, but they do very different things for the reader who receives them.

A Substack post reaches people already engaged with a topic. A book signals that an argument is substantial enough to sustain two hundred pages of treatment.

Think about the word choice in the title of his After Babel piece: “The EdTech Revolution Has Failed.” Not “my analysis suggests modest negative adjusted effect sizes in certain technology categories.” Not “the evidence on educational technology is mixed and context-dependent.” Failed. Present tense. Declarative. Final. That word choice tells the reader what to feel before they’ve read a single sentence.

Tone, word choice, and the feeling a message is designed to produce — these are tools of effective communication. They were all present and working here. This kind of craft analysis belongs in any serious conversation about why media literacy matters.

How a Substack Post Earns a Senate Invitation

This is the part of this story I find most instructive.

The Substack post and the book circulated. They were quoted, shared, forwarded, and discussed widely enough that Horvath—a neuroscientist based in Australia for over a decade, with no peer-reviewed research in educational technology—was invited to testify before the United States Senate Commerce Committee specifically about K-12 educational technology, a field outside his research expertise.

Pause on that.

How does that happen?

One plausible explanation is that audience-aware, purposefully crafted communication builds momentum that policy channels can respond to. Each piece of the message—the Substack post, the book, the interviews, the citations in parents’ social media feeds—reached its intended audience. Accumulated attention created the conditions for a Senate invitation.

The invitation didn’t validate the argument’s evidence base. But it conferred the appearance of authority—enough to earn a seat at one of the most visible policy tables in the country.

This is what effective communication can do at scale.

Your students learn to identify their audience and purpose, to craft messages that reach specific readers, to use language and style appropriate to their topic and their listener. Those skills, applied with professional sophistication across multiple platforms over months, can move an argument from a Substack post to a chamber of the Senate. That is not an abstraction. That is the pattern the publicly visible sequence suggests.

The Coalition That Saw It Coming

Two days before the testimony, seventeen national education and library organizations—including the National Education Association (NEA), the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the American Association of School Administrators (AASA), the National Association of Elementary School Principals (NAESP), the National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP), and the American Library Association (ALA)—sent a joint letter to the Senate Commerce Committee.

Getting those particular organizations on the same letter is itself worth noting. The NEA and AFT represent over four million classroom teachers and bring a labor-union identity and policy agenda. AASA, NAESP, and NASSP represent the superintendents and principals those teachers work with daily. These groups collaborate regularly on infrastructure and funding questions—such as E-Rate, broadband access, federal appropriations—but rapid consensus across all of them on a question of classroom pedagogy is not routine. It reflects how seriously the educators and leaders closest to classroom practice viewed what was coming.

Their letter was precise, professional, and carefully reasoned. They asked the committee to distinguish between unsupervised, entertainment-driven technology use at home and the intentional, monitored, carefully curated use of technology in schools. That distinction is exactly what decades of research and professional practice in educational technology supports.

This letter was written for a Senate committee audience. It was not designed for the broader public audience that had already been shaped by months of platform‑targeted communication. The coalition’s argument was better aligned with the research—but it arrived without the infrastructure to carry it as far, or as fast, as the narrative already circulating.

The Testimony, the Clip, the Cascade

What happened next is worth understanding as a sequence, not just a single event—because cumulative amplification matters more here than any one moment.

Horvath testified before the United States Senate Commerce Committee in January 2026. The chamber itself did communicative work: a witness at a table, senators leaning forward, the formal architecture of a hearing room. That visual language signals authority and importance before a single claim is evaluated.

The testimony was clipped and uploaded to YouTube, where it reached over two million viewers (NBC News, March 2026). Those clips were shortened again for multiple social platforms—thirty seconds, credential and conclusion, with little context or qualification. Then quoted on other platforms. Forwarded between colleagues. Shown at school board meetings.

Each format shift altered the argument. As the message moved from long‑form writing to testimony to clipped video, the evidentiary scaffolding narrowed while expressive emotional certainty remained intact. This is a pattern students need help learning to recognize: format does not merely carry ideas—it reshapes them.

By March 2026, lawmakers in at least sixteen states were debating legislation to restrict or ban educational technology in classrooms (K-12 Dive, March 2026). Some proposals were sweeping—banning digital devices from elementary classrooms entirely, prohibiting digital textbooks, or capping all technology use at 45 minutes per day regardless of subject, grade level, or instructional purpose. Two states had already signed legislation into law.

Richard Culatta, CEO of ISTE+ASCD, argued that proposals failing to distinguish math software from Netflix or assistive technology from TikTok “guarantee that the students who can least afford to fall behind will be the ones hurt most.” A New America policy analysis reached a similar conclusion from a different angle: blanket bans miss the mark precisely because they make no distinction between harmful and beneficial uses—the same failure the coalition letter had tried to prevent.

At no point in that chain—from Substack post to enacted policy—did the argument appear to pass through the kind of independent expert scrutiny that peer review requires.

What moved instead was a message whose clarity and expressive emotional conviction survived compression, while its complexity did not. By the time that message reached policy spaces, its momentum was strong enough that the coalition letter—despite its professional weight and evidence base—could not slow it. This fall, teachers who have spent years learning to use technology thoughtfully will be preparing for policies shaped by that trajectory.

What This Means for What We Teach

We teach these communication skills because they are powerful. This story shows that power in action.

Audience identification. Purposeful format choice. Strategic word selection. Platform amplification. Confidence paired with credentialing. These are not abstract concepts. They are the mechanics through which ideas travel, gain authority, and shape public response—executed with precision by someone who had studied communication craft explicitly before he ever picked up a neuroscience textbook.

These are also the same constructs we ask students to grapple with every day: audience awareness, purpose, evidence evaluation, and the difference between credibility and authority. When students analyze how an argument is shaped, circulated, and reframed across platforms, they are practicing the same critical reading, writing, and media‑literacy skills embedded in ELA standards, civic education goals, and research‑based argument instruction.

If you teach these skills, this story belongs in your curriculum—not as a cautionary tale about one specific claim, but as a live case study in how communication works, and why teaching students to analyze media messages is as important as teaching them to create them. There’s more to say about that companion skill — and the next post in this series takes it up directly.

The teacher who paused during our OK2Ask session and asked what the testimony meant for her students was already practicing exactly what we hope learners will do: slow down, examine a claim carefully, and look for the fuller picture before acting.

The message traveled a long way to reach her.

The fact that she questioned it when it arrived is the point.

In appreciation of all you do, here are some free, practical tech tools you can use right away to save time and simplify your workflow. But here is the most important instruction: Pick just one to try this week. That’s enough. Teacher appreciation should never feel like you are being asked to add one more thing to your already lengthy to-do list.

Save Time Where It Matters Most

Time is your most limited resource. Even saving 10–15 minutes a day adds up to nearly an hour each week. These tools help reduce the time-consuming work of planning and grading:

• MagicSchool AI (reviewed here) – Generate lesson plans, rubrics, and parent communications quickly and easily. Paste your standard to receive usable, standards-aligned content in minutes. For example, creating a rubric for a creative project no longer has to be a drawn-out chore. You can have a solid draft ready before your coffee even cools.
• Diffit (reviewed here) – Create multiple reading levels from the same text, freeing you from rewriting or hunting for new materials for different learners. If you find a perfect primary source written at a tenth-grade level, Diffit can simplify the vocabulary for your fifth graders in 30 seconds—even adding summary questions to match.
• Canva for Education (reviewed here) – Use templates to quickly build slides, worksheets, and visuals. You don’t have to start from scratch, and the “Magic Switch” feature can turn a presentation into a handout instantly.

Take One Thing Off Your Planning List

Some tools work best when they remove small, repeated planning tasks. The goal here isn’t a whole new routine—just finding small ways to save time inside the one you already have.

• Padlet (reviewed here) – Create bell ringers or quick response activities. Students can post ideas in seconds, and you get instant visual feedback on the room’s understanding.
• Google Forms (reviewed here) – Create one “universal exit ticket” template. Instead of rebuilding it every day, just duplicate it and change the header.
• Book Creator (reviewed here) – A flexible way for students to show understanding through audio, video, or text—without you designing three different assignments.

Use Ready-to-Go Prompt Templates

You don’t have to reinvent the wheel every time you open an AI tool. Creating a few “golden prompts” for tasks you do often—and keeping them in one place—saves you from typing the same directions again and again.

To help you get started, here are some AI prompting templates. They include several proven frameworks, along with example prompts you can adapt right away.

The Power of Google Gems

Google Gems are available for free to everyone with a personal Google account. You can find them in Google Gemini by locating the left-hand sidebar and choosing “Explore Gems.” 

Think of a Gem as a digital teaching assistant you’ve already trained to work the way you do. By setting one up once—for example, a parent communication helper or lesson architect—you skip the repetitive task of explaining your grade level or tone every time you open the chat.

Want to explore Google Gems more deeply? Visit the TeachersFirst OK2Ask Session Archive to watch an on‑demand professional learning workshop that walks through creating and using Google Gems thoughtfully in classroom contexts.

The Micro-PD Mindset

You don’t need long, grueling training sessions to learn something new. A few focused minutes can be enough.

Try the 10-minute rule: If you can’t see the immediate benefit or learn the basics of a tool in ten minutes, it might not be the right time-saver for you. That doesn’t mean it’s a bad tool—just one for later.

Collect those “later” ideas in a parking‑lot document to revisit when you have more space. Wakelet (reviewed here) is an excellent tool for curating and organizing resources.

Explore the Tech Tool of the Month posts here on the TeachersFirst blog. Each post highlights one tool, explains the why, and offers classroom ideas you can use tomorrow. Recent highlights include Adobe Podcast (reviewed here) and Wordwall (reviewed here) for quickly finding and creating review games.

Teacher Appreciation Week is about recognizing your work—but it’s also about supporting it. If one tool mentioned here saves you 15 minutes this week, that’s 15 minutes you get back for yourself. 

You already do incredible work. We hope these tools make that work just a little lighter. 

What is one tool you’ll try this week? Let us know in the comments!

As Autism Acceptance Month comes to a close, it’s a meaningful time to reflect—not just on awareness, but on what acceptance looks like in everyday classroom life. Awareness opens the door, but belonging is built through daily choices: the routines we establish, the language we use, and how we design learning environments to support neurodivergent learners while ensuring all students feel seen and included.

Acceptance isn’t about singling students out or creating separate systems. It’s about human‑centered practices that make learning more predictable, accessible, and emotionally safe for everyone. Small, intentional adjustments can support neurodivergent learners and improve learning conditions for all students. Below are five practical classroom shifts you can use right away, each paired with a tech tool to make implementation easier—and worth carrying forward well beyond the month of April.

Shift #1: Move from Ambiguous Transitions to Predictable Routines

The “Hidden” Rule: We often assume students know exactly how long an activity will last or what materials they need to have ready when class begins. Transitions can be stressful for many learners. A visual schedule reduces anxiety, supports executive functioning, and helps students anticipate what’s coming next.

Tech Tool: ClassroomScreen (reviewed here)
ClassroomScreen makes it easy to display a visual agenda, timers, icons, and reminders. You can adjust schedules on the fly, and students can see changes in real time—no surprises, no confusion. It also allows students to quickly see what materials they need to have ready.

Try these ideas:

• Post the day’s flow at the start of class on a whiteboard or screen.
• Use icons for younger learners or multilingual students to visualize schedules and routines.
• Preview routine changes in advance so students know what will be different from the usual routine.

Shift #2: Move from Enforced Stillness to Regulated Engagement

The “Hidden” Rule: Teachers often interpret fidgeting or standing as off-task behavior, even though it’s sometimes how students regulate their focus. Many learners can’t remain still for long periods. Incorporating purposeful movement supports regulation, reduces stress, and improves attention.

Tech Tool (Elementary): GoNoodl (reviewed here)
GoNoodle offers short, structured movement breaks that feel purposeful and fun — perfect for transitions or energy resets.

Tech Tool (Middle & High School): Include strategies from 4 Stress-Relieving Exercises for Teens and Students That Can Be Done at School. This article offers simple, age‑appropriate exercises, like shoulder rolls, wall push‑ups, and grounding stretches, that older students can do discreetly at their desks or during transitions. These moves are age-appropriate, accessible, and focus on self-regulation.

Try these ideas:

• Build brief movement into your routines. A simple change, such as including a movement minute between activities, gallery walks for presentations or demonstrations, or “find someone who…” activities, helps create movement in the classroom.
• Offer fidgets or chair bands to keep students’ hands occupied, support focus, and relieve stress.
• Normalize standing, stretching, or pacing during independent work time.

Shift #3: Move from Constant Sensory Input to Intentional Resets

The “Hidden” Rule: Free time isn’t always restorative. Noisy or chaotic spaces, such as the playground or cafeteria, can be exhausting for students who experience sensory overload or emotional fatigue. Quiet recovery time helps prevent escalation and supports self-regulation. Everyone benefits from structured reset moments.

Tech Tool: A Soft Murmur (reviewed here)
A Soft Murmur creates offers customizable ambient soundscapes—such as rain, waves, or white noise—to create a calming atmosphere in the classroom.

Try these ideas:

• Offer students a pass to a calm corner with headphones.
• Use ambient sound and a countdown timer during transitions to give students a mental break and prepare for the next activity.
• Build two‑minute reset moments into your daily schedule after demanding tasks.

Shift #4: Move from On-the-Spot Verbal Processing to Multimodal Visible Thinking

The Hidden Rule: We often associate intelligence with quick verbal responses. Many neurodivergent learners think deeply but need more time to process or alternative ways to express their ideas. They may struggle with rapid verbal processing or on‑the‑spot responses, so making thinking visible and allowing time to respond reduces pressure and gives all students multiple ways to participate.

Tech Tool: Padlet (reviewed here)
Padlet allows students to share ideas using text, images, audio, or video—making participation flexible and inclusive. It’s perfect for warm‑ups, exit tickets, brainstorming, and collaborative thinking, and it levels the playing field for students who need more processing time and different ways to express their thoughts.

Try these ideas:

• Use Padlet for silent discussions, post a weekly question about a current unit, or ask students to share their favorite study routines.
• Create a Padlet sandbox for students to post questions anonymously, and if necessary, set Padlet to moderate posts either manually or with AI before posts are visible to others.
• Offer multimodal ways to contribute, such as sticky notes and reaction cards, and create collaborative activities that require one contribution from each student.

Shift #5: Move from Standardized Output to Flexible Demonstration of Mastery

The “Hidden” Rule: We often assume that fairness means everyone doing the exact same task in the exact same way. Choice builds confidence, reduces performance anxiety, and honors differences in communication and learning styles. When students can choose how they demonstrate learning, they’re more confident and more engaged.

Tech Tool: MagicSchool (Choice Board Generator)  
MagicSchool’s choice board generator makes it easy to create differentiated, multimodal options aligned to your lesson goals and Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles. You can customize, export, and adapt boards for different learners to match any learning objective.

Try these ideas:

• Include as many options as possible for students to share ideas and information, such as written, oral, and visual (e.g., drawings).
• Provide multiple project formats that allow students to share information through infographics, presentations, poetry, or models.
• Let students choose how they show understanding. Provide clear rubrics for projects, but include flexibility in the format so students can share their understanding.

These five shifts aren’t specific to autism. They are effective teaching strategies that support autistic students, strengthen access for neurodivergent learners, and improve learning for everyone through clearer routines, flexible participation, and predictable ways to engage.

As Autism Acceptance Month comes to an end, consider which of these shifts you’ll continue using moving forward. What unspoken rules are worth making visible in your classroom every day? I’d love to hear how you are carrying this work beyond April—let’s learn together in the comments.

If you’ve been in those conversations, you already know the name: Dr. Jared Cooney Horvath, whose argument that educational technology actively harms student learning has traveled from a Substack post to a Senate testimony clip viewed over two million times on YouTube to proposed or enacted legislation in sixteen states — all in roughly eighteen months. Whatever you think of his argument, the effect on educator communities has been real. Teachers who have spent years learning to use technology thoughtfully are second-guessing themselves. Coaches who have built their practice on research-based frameworks are being asked to defend ground they didn’t think was contested.

Central to Horvath’s argument is international test score data from the OECD — the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, which administers the PISA assessments used to compare student performance across countries. His claim, stated plainly, is that students who use computers heavily at school perform worse on those assessments, and this is evidence that educational technology harms learning. It sounds like a straightforward reading of the data. It isn’t.

Does Screen Time Actually Hurt Learning? What the OECD Data Really Shows

Here’s what the OECD actually found — in its own analysis of its own data. The 2024 OECD report Managing Screen Time, which draws on PISA 2022 results, distinguishes between using devices for learning and for leisure, a distinction Horvath’s presentation ignores entirely. Students who spend one to five hours per day on digital devices for learning score twenty PISA points higher in mathematics than students who use no devices at all. The negative correlations — the ones Horvath presents as evidence that technology harms learning — are tied to leisure use. Social media. Unsupervised browsing. Entertainment during class time. Not a teacher using an adaptive reading platform with a struggling reader. Not a student working through a purposefully selected math application. The OECD’s own conclusion, in plain language: students who use digital devices moderately for learning tend to perform better and report a greater sense of belonging at school.

There’s one more detail worth knowing. That 2024 report was published in May 2024 — six months before Horvath’s most widely shared piece appeared. The updated data was already available. The distinction the OECD draws between learning use and leisure use was already in the literature. Presenting the OECD data without that distinction, at a time when a huge audience was primed to receive an alarming conclusion, is not a neutral analytical choice. It’s the kind of choice that media literacy teaches us to notice.

Here’s what I think this conversation deserves: not a quick reassurance, and not a dismissal of legitimate questions about technology use in classrooms. It deserves a look at what the research actually shows. Because there is quite a lot of it — decades of peer-reviewed, rigorously designed studies examining whether educational technology improves student learning. And the picture it paints is considerably more nuanced, and considerably more encouraging, than the narrative that’s been traveling at viral speed.

Let’s look at what the evidence actually says.

The Research Base Is Deeper Than You’ve Been Led to Believe

One of the most consistent features of Horvath’s argument is the framing that educational technology simply doesn’t work — that decades of implementation have produced little or no learning benefit. That framing does not hold up to a careful look at the research literature.

Start with a foundational meta-analysis from the North Central Regional Education Laboratory. In 2003, Waxman, Connell, and Gray synthesized findings from 42 studies involving approximately 7,000 students, calculating 282 separate effect sizes across cognitive, affective, and behavioral learning outcomes. Their finding: teaching and learning with technology produces a small but statistically significant positive effect on student outcomes compared to traditional instruction alone — with a mean effect size of 0.41 (p < .001). That held across cognitive outcomes, yes, but also across measures of student engagement and behavior. Technology integration, when studied rigorously, doesn’t just show up in test scores. It shows up in how students engage with learning.

The picture holds when you move to literacy specifically. A 2011 meta-analysis by Cheung and Slavin at Johns Hopkins University examined 85 studies involving more than 60,000 K-12 students, focused squarely on reading achievement. The overall finding was positive — educational technology generally produced meaningful improvement in reading outcomes compared to traditional methods. But Cheung and Slavin found something more specific that’s worth sitting with: the strongest effects weren’t associated with basic computer-assisted drill programs. They were associated with innovative technology applications paired with extensive professional development. The technology mattered. The teacher’s preparation to use it well mattered more.

That finding connects directly to more recent, targeted research. In 2020, Hillmayr, Ziernwald, Reinhold, Hofer, and Reiss published a comprehensive meta-analysis in Computers and Education — a peer-reviewed journal — examining 92 studies of digital tool use in secondary school mathematics and science, covering grades 5 through 13. Their overall effect size: 0.65, statistically significant (p < .001). That’s not a small finding. But the moderating factor that stands out is the same one Cheung and Slavin identified a decade earlier: the provision of teacher training on digital tool use significantly increased the overall effect. When educators understood how to use the tools in the context of their content and their students, the tools worked better. Notably, the effect was larger when digital tools were used alongside other instructional methods — not as a replacement for them.

This brings us to two more recent and more specific studies in this conversation, both of which examine the youngest learners and both of which deserve to be far better known than they currently are.

In 2021, Kim, Gilbert, Yu, and Gale published a meta-analysis in AERA Open — a peer-reviewed journal of the American Educational Research Association — examining 36 rigorous studies of educational apps for children from preschool through grade three. Ninety-two percent of those studies were randomized controlled trials, which is the gold standard in research design. The finding: meaningful positive effects on both literacy and mathematics outcomes for our youngest learners. These weren’t passive screen-time studies. They were studies of intentional, purposefully designed educational applications used in structured learning contexts.

And in 2024, Silverman, Keane, Darling-Hammond, and Khanna published a meta-analysis in the Review of Educational Research — one of the most respected peer-reviewed journals in the field — examining 119 studies of educational technology literacy interventions specifically in K-5 classrooms. Positive effects across reading, comprehension, and writing. Silverman’s framing of what the research actually asks us to do is precise and important: the right question isn’t whether educational technology works. It’s which products, with which characteristics, under which conditions produce meaningful learning. That’s not a defense of every app on the market. It’s a call for the kind of careful, evidence-informed selectivity that good technology coaching has always been about.

Five meta-analyses. Preschool through high school. Literacy and STEM. Consistent positive effects — strongest when teachers are prepared, when tools are chosen thoughtfully, when technology complements rather than replaces good instruction.

That is the type of research base Horvath’s argument bypasses.

The Frameworks Your Practice Is Built On

Here’s something worth naming directly: the field of educational technology has been doing serious, peer-reviewed work on the question of how to use technology effectively for decades. Two frameworks in particular represent that work, and if you’ve been integrating technology with any intentionality, you’ve been working within their logic — whether you used those names or not.

The TPACK Framework: Why Technology Knowledge Isn’t Enough

TPACK — Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge — emerged from the research of Mishra and Koehler in the early 2000s and has since accumulated a substantial body of peer-reviewed study across content areas and grade levels. The framework’s core insight is both elegant and practical: technology knowledge becomes meaningful in a classroom only when it is genuinely integrated with a deep understanding of the content being taught and the pedagogical strategies that serve that content and those students. A teacher who knows what she’s teaching, knows who she’s teaching it to, and knows how a specific tool can serve both — that is categorically different from undirected screen time. TPACK gives us the language to articulate exactly why intentional, content-driven technology use is not the same as parking students in front of a screen without purpose or guidance. Much of the current policy debate treats those two practices as equivalent. The research does not support that.

The Triple E Framework: A Practical Classroom Test for Every Edtech Tool

Dr. Liz Kolb’s Triple E Framework, developed at the University of Michigan and validated by independent research as both reliable and valid, adds a practical classroom-level lens. It asks three questions about any technology-integrated lesson: Does the technology meaningfully engage students with the learning goal — not distract from it, not entertain alongside it, but genuinely engage with it? Does it enhance student understanding in ways that would be harder to achieve without it? Does it extend learning beyond what the classroom and the school day could otherwise provide? The framework’s organizing principle is four words: learning first, technology second. Not technology always. Not technology instead of teaching. The question the framework asks is always whether the tool is serving the learning goal — and if it isn’t, you choose a different tool, or no tool at all.

These aren’t aspirational documents. They’re peer-reviewed, widely implemented, and grounded in exactly the kind of research that shows up in the five meta-analyses above. When the coalition of seventeen education and library organizations — including the American Federation of Teachers, the National Education Association, AASA, NAESP, NASSP, and the American Library Association — wrote to the Senate Commerce Committee two days before Horvath testified, they made precisely the distinction that TPACK and Triple E are built around. They asked lawmakers to “distinguish between largely unsupervised, entertainment-driven technology use at home and the intentional, monitored, and carefully curated use of technology in schools.” That is TPACK in plain English. It’s Triple E with the academic framing removed. It’s what forty years of coaching has taught me to recognize when I see it in a classroom.

What This Means for Your Classroom and Your Coaching

The anxiety circulating in educator communities right now is understandable. A message arrived with impressive packaging, at a moment when educators were already tired and already uncertain, and it spread very quickly. Some of what Horvath raises about distraction, about undirected screen time, about the cognitive conditions that support deep learning is grounded in legitimate neuroscience and worth taking seriously. The concern that technology has sometimes been adopted too quickly and implemented poorly is real and widely shared among thoughtful people in this field.

But the leap from those legitimate concerns to the conclusion that educational technology should be removed from students’ hands — a leap Horvath makes based on evidence that, read in full and in context, does not support that conclusion — is not one the research justifies. The five meta-analyses above don’t prove that every piece of educational technology in every classroom works well. No honest researcher would claim that. What they show, consistently, is that technology integrated with intentionality, with appropriate teacher preparation, with clear learning goals, and with the right tools chosen for the right purposes — produces meaningful positive outcomes for students from preschool through high school, across literacy and STEM, across a wide range of contexts and demographics.

If you are making deliberate decisions about when and why technology serves your instructional goals — if you’re asking whether a tool engages, enhances, and extends learning before you put it in front of students — the research is on your side. The OECD is on your side. The coalition of professional organizations that represents your colleagues is on your side. You don’t have to navigate this alone. Edtech professional development grounded in these frameworks, not vendor demos or sit-and-get sessions, is what OK2Ask has been designed to provide.

The teacher who raised her hand in our OK2Ask session to ask what Horvath’s testimony meant for her second graders was doing the right thing. She paused. She asked. She looked for resources before she acted. That instinct — to examine a claim before accepting it, to seek evidence before changing practice — is exactly what good teaching, and good technology coaching, and good media literacy all require.

The research on educational technology has been doing the same thing for decades. It’s time more of us knew what it found.

Resources and References

Frameworks

• Mishra, P., & Koehler, M.J. (2006). Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge: A framework for teacher knowledge. Teachers College Record, 108(6), 1017–1054. | tpack.org
• Kolb, L. (2017). Learning First, Technology Second. ISTE. | tripleeframework.com

Research cited

• Waxman, H.C., Connell, M.L., & Gray, J. (2003). A Meta-Analysis of the Effectiveness of Teaching and Learning With Technology on Student Outcomes. North Central Regional Educational Laboratory.
• Cheung, A.C.K., & Slavin, R.E. (2011). The Effectiveness of Education Technology for Enhancing Reading Achievement: A Meta-Analysis. Center for Research and Reform in Education, Johns Hopkins University. ED527572
• Hillmayr, D., Ziernwald, L., Reinhold, F., Hofer, S.I., & Reiss, K.M. (2020). The potential of digital tools to enhance mathematics and science learning in secondary schools: A context-specific meta-analysis. Computers and Education, 153, 103897. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2020.103897
• Kim, J., Gilbert, J., Yu, Q., & Gale, C. (2021). Measures matter: A meta-analysis of the effects of educational apps on preschool to grade 3 children’s literacy and math skills. AERA Open, 7. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/23328584211004183
• Silverman, R.D., Keane, K., Darling-Hammond, E., & Khanna, S. (2024). The effects of educational technology interventions on literacy in elementary school: A meta-analysis. Review of Educational Research, 95, 972–1012. https://doi.org/10.3102/00346543241261073
• OECD (2024, May). Managing screen time: How to protect and equip students against distraction. PISA in Focus, No. 124.

The full case study this column draws from:

• Okoye, R. (2026). “A Media Literacy Lesson Hiding in Plain Sight.”

Poetry is everywhere: in music, nature, traffic, pain, laughter, and growth. It shapes us personally and culturally. As teachers, it’s our job to help others discover poetry they connect with. If you haven’t fully engaged with National Poetry Month yet, don’t worry—April 28th is National Great Poetry Reading Day (#GreatPoetryReadingDay), a whole day dedicated to reading, writing, analyzing, and enjoying poetry. I can’t wait.  

I believe poetry should be part of daily classroom conversations and taught weekly to students. On poets.org, the Academy of American Poets’ website (reviewed here), you can sign up to receive a daily emailed poem. This is an easy way to broaden students’ exposure to poetry while introducing new ideas. Often, Poem-A-Day gives you the poem, an audio recording of the poem, and information about the poet—all valuable entry points for readers.

Here’s an example of Poem-A-Day featuring “Our Books of Delights” by Arielle Herbert on April 15, 2026.

Now that we’ve explored the importance of poetry, you may be wondering: How can we honor National Great Poetry Reading Day with our students? Below are some lesson ideas and tools—each reviewed and contextualized by TeachersFirst—that can be used to help students read, listen to, write, and perform poetry in meaningful ways.

• Poetry Read-a-Thon (reviewed here) – From the Academy of American Poets, this activity encourages students to read as many poems as possible within a set time. After reading, students write brief responses reflecting on each poem—focusing on a favorite line, its meaning, or the emotion it evokes. Decide whether students track poems individually, in pairs, or as a group, then invite them to share at the end. 
• Poetry Everywhere (reviewed here) – This poetry collection from PBS LearningMedia (reviewed here) is an excellent listening resource for grades 6–12. Explore this site too for poetry-enhancing materials. I love the Transformation: Get Lit and the Power of Poetry collection too!
• AI Poem Generator (reviewed here) – Poem‑generator‑io introduces students to a variety of poetic forms. Students can enter a few ideas and generate a haiku, then use the same ideas to create a limerick. This makes it easy to compare poetic forms and examine how meaning changes across structures. 
• Living Nation, Living Words (reviewed here) – This educator’s guide from the Library of Congress offers a rich collection of current Native and Indigenous American poetry and cultural connections for students to explore. Have students find their favorite poem and research the poet and the culture from which it comes. 
• #TeachLivingPoets (reviewed here) – This is one of my favorite poetry resources. It’s a collection of poets, poems, and classroom‑ready lessons created by living poets—which is refreshing, considering how often students encounter poetry written exclusively by long‑past voices. Students are introduced to contemporary poets they could actually see perform, making poetry feel current and alive. One standout feature is the March Madness Poetry Brackets, which highlight spoken‑word poetry throughout the month and invite students to experience daily poetic performances. 
• TeachRock (reviewed here) – To integrate poetry and music, start with a song featuring meaningful lyrics. After listening, distribute the lyrics and ask students to identify poetic devices such as metaphor, simile, or repetition. Discuss how those devices shape meaning, then invite students to bring in their own song selections.
• Poetry in Translation (reviewed here) – This Academy of American Poets lesson guides students through reading translated poems and considering how language and culture influence meaning. Ask students to write a short reflection explaining how translation could affect the poem’s meaning or tone. Recommended for grades 11–12. 
• Voice (reviewed here) – This multi‑lesson unit explores spoken and written poetry, examining how voice is created and how poetry functions as social commentary. A strong fit for high school classrooms.
• Poetry Out Loud (reviewed here) – This is a perfect closure to this lesson highlight list. A national recitation contest for students in grades 8–12. You can host a classroom or school‑level version or participate in the full program. Through memorization and performance, students gain a deeper understanding of their chosen poem—and it’s a lot of fun.

Planning ahead for National Poetry Month 2027? Students in grades 5–12 can participate in the Dear Poet Project. Students read and listen to poems by award‑winning poets, then write letters responding to the work. Some students may even receive replies, and all participating letters are published in a summer PDF. Letters for the 2026 project are due by May 15, 2026.

No matter how you choose to celebrate National Great Poetry Reading Day, take action and honor this timeless art form. Mark April 28 on your calendar now, and invite students to share how they celebrate—through social media using #GreatPoetryReadingDay or within your classroom’s online space. Join them in celebrating and sharing. You lead by example! I can’t wait to see your #GreatPoetryReadingDay stories.