Rethinking Tech for Deeper Learning

This edition of Margin Notes is guest written by Danielle Passno, Assistant Head of School / Director of Teaching & Learning

My eyes wandered the room of slack-jawed Upper School boys gazing into their laptop screens. I was searching for the right question—the question that might help them see what they were losing. “Is your laptop helping you learn right now?” I whispered to the boy sitting next to me. He looked at me for a beat, closed his laptop, and turned his eyes to the action in the room. I had this private, one-question conversation seven more times. All but one boy closed their laptops. 

After that, everything changed. What had been a near-silent class—slow-moving, admittedly a bit boring—suddenly became alive with chatter and debate. Whereas the two boys in the room not on laptops from the start—one doodling and taking notes with a notebook and pen and the other making copious notes on a write-on tablet—had been sustaining the class conversation, as soon as the laptops were away, all the boys pitched in. Some got to their feet to try out an idea on the board that they could not quite explain without a diagram. Others heckled them playfully, offering alternative ways to make sense of what they had presented. Their mouths split into smiles. They laughed. It was fun. Something else was also happening among all this joy; the boys were learning.

When I first started teaching, we wrote our student reports on triplicate in our neatest script—sending home one copy to the family in an envelope, filing another copy in our assigned classroom, and giving the final copy to the principal. This was less than 25 years ago. The teaching profession has changed in remarkable ways over those two decades, largely because the students that walk into the classroom have been conditioned by ubiquitous screens and media in a way that was not present in 2002. Laptops, like all technological advances throughout time, contribute to academic life in so many positive ways—the ability to edit and rewrite sentences is worth a laptop’s price alone, in my book; however, every technological advance is two-sided, with the ability to both give and take away. 

Laptops, or more accurately portals to endless streams of media, rob our students’ attention. Toggling between apps or tabs every ten seconds trains the brain to expect and anticipate task switching, the exact opposite of the focus required for deep learning. Likewise, our students struggle mightily against the desire to only receive information passively thanks to the brain training of interminable video loops that provide small hits of pleasure every six seconds. Access to social media and streaming entertainment has not only changed our students’ brains but also how we must use tools to educate them.

My first question for any tool, technology, or resource is will it cause deeper learning? When I see students use laptops as note-taking devices at Browning, I do not often see deep learning happening because too often the laptop becomes a tool of distraction. When laptops are used more purposefully—for simulations in physics or for editing an analytical paragraph after being given actionable feedback from the teacher—the learning is evident. Thus, for a student to learn deeply, using a laptop needs to become a deliberate choice instead of the default action of starting his work. 

At Browning, we want to gain even more data on how laptops as a notetaking tool impact our students’ learning. Next year, we hope to run a trial period for some students to see whether taking notes on a write-on tablet produces more engagement and focus for the student, from his perspective. We will explore other avenues as well because studentship—the skills needed to maintain attention, stay organized, and find motivation—is part of the promise of a Browning education. Given the ubiquity of laptops and phones in all of our lives coupled with the one-to-one laptop expectation that is the law-of-the-land for most independent schools, the suggestion that Browning should limit such a tool is bold and counterculteral. We are a school that uses evidence to ensure we meet our mission, and when we see evidence that tools we use buck our commitment to both relationships and learning, we are not only obligated but excited to see what we can do to make a Browning education second to none.