Mac Bogert wrote this 2018 essay arguing that educational technology is a resource and a tool, not the focus of the lesson, using the Aslan Phenomenon and three ideas for reframing a teacher’s role. Below it, a 2026 update adds what UNESCO and an international student survey have found about technology in schools.
EdTech is a resource and a tool, not the focus of the lesson
“When teaching a rapidly changing technology, perspective is more important than content.”
by Mac Bogert
He also offered this jewel: “A tool is no better than the fool”. So, a better tool doesn’t improve results if the person using it hasn’t mastered the application of the new tool.
Teaching Meaning in an Age of Information
The internet is a tool for gathering and applying information. We all have access to the same limitless amount of data. Because of this universal access, teaching is less and less about information, more and more about meaning. When I was in school, that was not the case. My best teachers had access to more information than I did. My other teachers did too.
The difference between my best and the rest was a respect for connection. The best teachers focused on meaning and gave us students a paradoxical gift—the opportunity to struggle with understanding. While some teachers emphasized the importance of memorizing dates —1066, 1492, 1776, 1861, 1914, 1964— the best teachers regarded dates as navigation points, jumping off places to engage in a conversation within the context of the information.
Technology has changed the classroom before, say from chalk and the blackboard to film strips and overhead projectors. These advances, however, didn’t offer as perfect an opportunity to support a transformation of what teaching looks like.
Disruptive or Distractive Innovation
As Sonny Magana points out in Disruptive Classroom Technologies: A framework for Innovation in Education:
“Educational technologies can be either a disruptive innovation or distractive innovation; the dependent variable seems to be the manner in which the technology is used.”
Simply put, we can either see this disruption as a resource or a threat. A new generation of learners needs a new generation of teaching. Not a new generation of teachers. The technology won’t wait for a new generation of teachers; we need a new frame for how we define ourselves now. Students don’t learn simply from what we teach, but from our perspective—our expectations and assumptions about what learning should be. We can model agility, flexibility, and respect for learning by shifting how we manage our responsibility to lead, a process of challenging our own assumptions about teaching and learning.
The Aslan Phenomenon
As we grapple with using technology to support disruption and learning, let’s consider what Roger von Oech points out in A Whack on the Side of the Head.
He calls this the Aslan Phenomenon—learned behaviors that generate habits (of thinking as well as of doing) at a time and place when they make sense. Things change, but we keep operating within the same habits even though the reason for them is gone.
As a lifelong teacher, I’ve run into my own Aslan Phenomena more times than I can count. Sitting students in rows. Making sure they understand class objectives. Seeing myself as the resident expert. Asking the pro forma “Are there any questions?” rather than “I want two really good questions right now.” Following lesson plans, no matter what. The list goes on. And I try to help my adult clients do the same thing in their organizations, large and small, where Aslan Phenomena thrive.
Those of us responsible for learning can be skeptical of any assumptions or practices that happen in school even though the reason for them is gone. What are the “leftovers” in our assumptions about teaching that inhibit realizing the full potential of the technological toboggan ride? How can we change our thinking to take advantage of the energy of new technology and a new kind of student?
“The first rule of the jungle is eat or be eaten. The first rule of our role in any organization is frame or be framed”
Anonymous
Three Ideas for Reframing Our Responsibility
Three ideas power a new way of framing our responsibility, a new approach that can take advantage of rapidly evolving technology.
First, we can let go of the idea that we control what others learn. Each of us learns uniquely. Understanding is and always has been individual. We can influence what people memorize by rewarding them for parroting information. And information can be a powerful baseline for comprehension, but it’s not the same as understanding. We encourage others to gain insight when we serve as a resource rather than as a director.
Technology provides us the perfect platform to serve as navigators, consultants rather than directors. We don’t need uniform results (a leftover from the industrial approach to schooling); we do need uniform access. That includes a vital role for teachers who act as mentors and coaches in a community of learning that explores possibilities, some congruent, some divergent. Answers rather than the answer.
Second, we can welcome what we don’t know. Instead of being breathing encyclopedias, we acknowledge that learning is continuous, for everyone. Our insight grows through relationships between what we already understand and what we don’t. Wide-eyed and pleasantly surprised provides the habitat for life-long learning. Not just for students, but for all of us. Instead of “teaching” them, we can become trusted partners in learning, our experience a layer that enrichers their understanding.
We’ve all had the experience of being startled by a child’s mercurial adaption to technology. We can be comfortable with our role not because of what we know but because of our devotion to meaning.
Third, we can accept learning as dynamic. People learn through leaps of insight which are available only when we let go of information as the goal of learning. The platform we each carry, our pocket computer (we call them cell phones, but they’re computers with a phone app) is constantly morphing.
We need everyone’s input, every day. Though we can help provide a structure to make sense of the barrage of new information, new apps, new programs and a world of accelerating change, that structure will not be comfortably linear, but punctuated by quantum leaps and a necessity to see learning not as an activity but as a way of life, finishing school not as graduation but as commencement, and a life-long hunger for discovery and application.
“Teaching is closer to the kind of science, like engineering, computer science, or architecture, whose imperative it is to make the world a better place, a design science.”
We have seen in the past decade the impact of change on those who are stuck in Aslan Phenomenon thinking. Technology is not the answer to that trap, but a vehicle for a better kind of learning. It’s an answer to the question every teacher asks: “What resources can I find to help us all learn and grow?
For audiophiles, you can listen to a brief podcast on this topic. Simply click on the link below:
Technology is not the answer in education, and the evidence shows why use matters
Technology is not the answer to every problem in teaching, and Mac Bogert’s essay above makes the argument with a carpenter’s saying: a tool is no better than the fool. Studies and international reviews published since 2018 support the part of that point that concerns use. They also show why a leader who agrees with Bogert still has decisions to make about devices, training and rules in the building. Two sources are worth knowing: UNESCO’s 2023 Global Education Monitoring Report and the 2022 results of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA).
What UNESCO’s 2023 report says about tools and terms
UNESCO’s Global Education Monitoring Report on technology, titled Technology in Education: A Tool on Whose Terms?, found that views on technology’s role are sharply divided and examines both the solutions it offers and the harms that many proposed solutions may cause. It says technology reaches its potential only when three system conditions are met: access to technology, governance and regulation, and teacher preparation. In plain words, devices without trained teachers and clear rules do not produce the benefit, which is what Bogert means by saying the person using the tool matters more than the tool. The report’s page also notes a rapid rise in national rules limiting phones in schools, as governments see smartphones as a source of classroom distraction and a possible threat to student well-being. The page does not give counts or study results on this point, so the details are in the full report.
What PISA found about distraction
The PISA 2022 results, reported in Education Week in December 2023, add numbers. Across countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 65 percent of students reported being distracted by their own use of digital devices in math lessons and 59 percent by other students’ use. Students who were distracted by classmates’ devices in at least some math lessons scored 15 points lower in math than those who said it never or almost never happened. In the United States, roughly two-thirds of students said their own device use distracts them, and about 54 percent said other students’ devices did.
The limits matter. The figures come from student questionnaires, and the link is a correlation, so the survey does not show that device distraction caused lower scores. Even so, Education Week quotes the OECD report as calling for finding effective ways to limit the distraction caused by using digital devices in class. This is the practical side of Bogert’s argument. A tool that is a resource in the hands of a teacher with a clear purpose can become a distraction when the purpose is missing.
Applying Bogert’s ideas to decisions in a school
Bogert asks teachers to serve as navigators and consultants rather than directors, to welcome what they do not know, and to treat learning as dynamic. Each idea suggests a decision for a school leader.
- State the purpose before buying or assigning a tool. Write down what learning the tool is meant to support, and drop it if it supports none.
- Decide the rules for devices by lesson type. Some tasks need the device, others are better without it, and students and families benefit from knowing which is which.
- Invest in teacher preparation as much as in hardware, since UNESCO lists it as a condition for success.
- Look for Aslan Phenomena. Bogert borrows the term from Roger von Oech for habits that continue after their reason has gone. Ask which classroom routines, including device routines, exist only because they have always existed.
- Give teachers time to try new approaches and report what happened, so that the school’s evidence comes from its own classrooms.
School teams looking at artificial intelligence tools can use the same questions with the edCircuit AI in education guide, and those teaching students to use technology responsibly can start with the digital citizenship guide.
Further Reading
- Washington Post – Don’t confuse educational technology that helps kids learn — and doesn’t
- EdSurge – Understanding the Limits of Education Technology and Risk Taking in Schools
- TrustED – 5 #edtech myths debunked
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