Why Your School Should Have a Tech Summit This Year

Alexa Garvoille admits she was part of the problem.

At the STEM high school where she teaches creative writing, faculty were increasingly asked to attend mandatory, professional development trainings on the appropriate use of AI. The general tenor of the Zoom meetings skewed pro-AI, but incorporating generative large language models into her classroom practices felt at odds with her values as an educator. So while she attended every session, she couldn’t help feeling marooned and a little resentful; was she an outlier, she thought, the only one who felt this way?

She’d soon find out she wasn’t alone.

One training session in particular sent a smoke signal to leadership; a crack was forming in the once-collegial working environment. As the professional development (PD) unfolded, staff broke away, engaging in heated discussions among themselves. Without any dedicated space to begin working toward a shared set of values about the role of AI in school, unaired grievances and dueling perspectives spilled over into the Zoom chat. Early adopters defended AI’s merits while skeptics pushed back, posing ethical and existential questions about how this rapidly evolving technology might impact teaching and learning.

Jokingly, a few participants suggested that “the next PD should feature a cage fight between one of the AI adopters and myself,” Garvoille wrote on her Substack.

These unresolved technology questions are a growing problem in schools across the country, says Marc Watkins, a lecturer at the University of Mississippi and founder of the Mississippi AI Institute for Teachers. For educators, a pressure to adopt AI tools with no “clear mandate to use them” and no “resources to resist them” can result in institutional incoherence—schools in which AI policy splinters into dozens of fragmented classroom experiments as teachers make decisions in isolation.

The consequences of the inconsistency are generally borne by students. Educators may decide to “close their doors and do what they want,” says Kristy Zaleta, a K–12 chief of schools and performance and former school leader. “Hopefully they’re doing the right thing by kids, but sometimes you get somebody with a really strong opinion based on misinformation, or they haven’t had their capacity built in a way that meets the needs of students.”

CAN WE JUST TALK?

The controversy is no longer just about AI.

Many schools, influenced by declining NAEP and PISA test scores and the thinking of technology skeptics like Jonathan Haidt and Jared Horvath, are now actively rethinking the role that laptops and tablets play inside K–12 classrooms. As with any decision of consequence, leaders are fielding perspectives from every imaginable angle.

A handful are already drawing a line in the sand.

In April, the Los Angeles Unified School District’s school board struck the first major blow, unanimously passing a resolution to restrict students’ time spent in front of screens. Lawmakers, too, are taking a stand: Legislators in 16 states have recently introduced bills “that would limit education technology, or edtech, in public schools,” reports Tyler Kingkade for NBC News.

But inside school buildings, the reality is much less cut-and-dried. While some educators are planning to revert to a screen-free classroom, others see laptops as tools that can support research, enable collaboration, and extend the ways students demonstrate what they’ve learned. In the absence of a shared framework, classroom decisions are often little more than a reflection of personal preference.

As tempting as it is to follow the trends and strike a blow against tech overreach, “students don’t need fewer tools,” argues Andrew Marcinek, director of information technology at a preparatory school. “They need better-prepared teachers, clearer pedagogical purpose, and adults who have done the work of deciding why a screen is in the room before it gets there.” Leaders have a narrow window to do that work before opinions calcify completely. Well-designed technology summits that promote open discussion can surface perspectives from across the school, building consensus around best practices while uniting staff around a shared vision.

The aim is not for every classroom to function identically; variation in approach is to be expected. Healthy dialogue begins with the “idea of everyone at school understanding why we have technology,” Marcinek says. “What’s our ‘I believe’ statement around technology as a community: as a parent, as a student, as an administrator, as a teacher? What do we all believe about this?”

TERMS OF ENGAGEMENT

At Garvoille’s school, to help clear the air, the faculty senate proposed a resolution. For two hours, staff would gather in the gym for a faculty-led dissection of their differences on AI. “There were just enough chairs for the faculty, so you couldn’t sit all the way in the back,” Garvoille recalls. “There was nowhere to hide.”

One representative from each department crafted a 750-word position statement summarizing their colleagues’ questions, concerns, and current departmental practices. The documents were shared ahead of time and read aloud at the event, with 30 minutes set aside at the end for open discussion.

Formal discussions about developmentally appropriate, productive technology use are “going to be different based on your particular situations and what signals are there,” says Victor Lee, faculty lead for AI and education at the Stanford Accelerator for Learning: informed by factors like the structure of the school, the goals of the participants, and the specific needs of the culture and community. “It’s not one-size-fits-all.”

Plan adequate time: It’s common for leaders to underestimate the optimal amount of time for important meetings, writes organizational psychologist Roger Schwarz in Harvard Business Review: “Do the math—to calculate how much time the team will need for introducing the topic, answering questions, resolving different points of view, generating potential solutions, and agreeing on the action items that follow.”

This step is crucial, enabling team members to calibrate their expectations, “adapt their comments to fit within the allotted time frame, or to suggest that more time may be needed.”

Develop norms: Drafting some simple norms for the meeting, or asking staff to make suggestions, ensures that everyone has shared expectations of how they’ll interact, writes workplace expert Amy Gallo in Harvard Business Review.

For example, the principle that “we focus on the issues” reminds everyone to home in on “the problems being solved, not the personalities involved.” Additionally, making the space as tech-free as possible, Garvoille suggests, prevents participants from disappearing into their cell phones or multitasking on their laptops.

Consider the format: For teams simply looking to kick-start conversation, consider a faculty-led edcamp model. On Post-it Notes, staff might respond to a series of prompts like these: “What’s on your mind? What are you struggling with? What are you trying to navigate?” suggests technology integration specialist Don Sturm. A teacher team then synthesizes the major themes and schedules discussions around them.

For a more focused meeting, propose and circulate an agenda with thought-provoking questions; consider sending a short survey beforehand to let staff flag topics that are on their mind.

Publish artifacts: Meetings of this scope should be documented. Consider creating and distributing records that capture the meeting’s major insights and next steps, says educational technology specialist Kathi Kersznowski: “Here’s where we were. Here’s what we decided last time. Are we still feeling this way? Where do we need to go from here?”

Clear documentation ensures that everybody has something to look back on for planning purposes and future review.

WHAT’S ON THE DOCKET

When developing an agenda, classroom educators, administrators, tech integration specialists, and researchers raise a number of common questions and concerns:

Get specific: High-level AI guidelines need to be “broad enough to fit an entire K–12 district, which means they’re often “very general,” explains high school English teacher Jen Roberts. That gap creates an opportunity for teacher input, Lee suggests. Consider starting the conversation with something open-ended that allows participants to address pressing issues, like “Is there anything in the school’s current approach to AI that feels unclear?”

If academic integrity is a real pressure point, for example, then “unpacking what the learning goals are, the fit of current supports, as well as the realities of what’s going on in kids’ lives and where kids’ concerns are should be an open conversation,” Lee says. Prompts like “What do we want students to be able to do without resorting to AI?” can get the ball rolling.

Discuss educator usage of AI: Using AI to “brainstorm for a new unit is quite different, in my view, from outsourcing all your grading and feedback,” writes high school English teacher Marcus Luther. Discussing the differences between constructive uses of AI in an educator’s workflow (as well as approved tools) versus the practices that feel murkier can help establish clean guardrails for everyone to follow.

Interrogate screen time patterns: Many schools are deeply interested in how much time students spend on screens each day.

The more germane question, Marcinek says, is “What are students doing with technology, for what purpose, with what guidance, and to what end?” Evaluating screen time in layers (rather than as a singular number) provides much more nuanced insight into how devices are actually used inside of the classroom. For example, Kersznowski suggests, there’s value in asking high-level questions like, “On a typical day, about how much total time do students spend using iPads?” As well as, “What are the primary purposes for iPad use in your classroom?”

Seek out best practices: Consider having teachers walk their colleagues through specific lessons where technology is beneficial, as well as where they believe it serves as a roadblock to learning.

Straightforward questions like “What constitutes a high-quality use of technology in your classroom?” and “What types of learning experiences should not involve devices?” can also help staff align on shared standards. Similarly, asking, “What level of device use would best support your instruction?” opens up cross-departmental lines of communication.

Highlight pain points and concerns: Actively prompting educators to pinpoint the technical, operational, or behavioral friction they face when using technology can surface gaps where more support, or better alternatives, may be needed. For example, you might ask, “What type of challenges do you face when using laptops with your students?”

Address the elephant in the room: Inside classrooms, the benefits of technology are often overshadowed by “the ongoing issue of off-task behavior,” writes edtech adjunct instructor Julie Daniel Davis. Sharing what classroom management practices are actually working—from clear expectations and routines to consequences—can help a team build a common playbook for managing tech usage in the classroom. For example, should school-assigned devices be closed or off as a default—only turned on when the teacher asks?

Be honest about tech sprawl: Which tools do staff actually need, and which are just adding noise? High school teacher Andrew Simmons puts it plainly: The challenge is “not so much figuring out how to use products that teachers might find inherently helpful but accommodating the cascade of tools that aren’t.” Marcinek has seen schools accumulate a laundry list of options with no clear purpose. Taking an inventory of what you have, why, and how it’s being used can help clear the field.