There are many tech tools making their way into kids’ classrooms: Chromebooks and iPads, Canvas and Powerschool, ChatGPT and Claude. Is that a good thing? Depends on who you ask.
Some states are passing laws to limit in-school screen time. Rep. Angela Arsenault, a Democrat from Williston, supports these measures, saying Vermont should better regulate the use of tech like chatbots and smartphones in schools.
Providing the tech perspective is Sara Kloek, vice president of education policy at the Software & Information Industry Association, a non-profit that represents the interests of EdTech companies. Educators Michael Berry, director of curriculum and technology for the Montpelier Roxbury Public Schools, and Brian Burgess, a speech pathologist at Harwood Union Middle and High School, also provided insight.
Due to phone connection issues during the live show, we've included a transcript of the conversation with Brian Burgess. It's been lightly edited for clarity. Burgess was speaking on behalf of himself, not on behalf of the school.
Mikaela Lefrak: You work in a lot of different classrooms in your job as a speech pathologist. What are the most common types of technology that you see kids using?
Brian Burgess: Typically, it's largely the Chromebooks, so the laptops — each individual student has one. Harwood did away with cell phone access last year, and that's been great, but we've definitely seen Chromebooks have kind of taken over that role as far as distractions go.
Mikaela Lefrak: So, you said that there was a ban on cell phone usage in schools last year, and that's been great. Why do you say that?
Brian Burgess: It's just kind of encouraged student interactions among themselves. Much less, at least at first, there was much less classroom distraction. They were not allowed to have them out the halls, so we're seeing people interact with each other instead of having their heads constantly down and their fingers twiddling away.
Mikaela Lefrak: There have been some positives, but I believe you also had just said that Chromebooks kind of filled in some of those gaps for kids. And I imagine, I mean — kids are so smart, they must, some of them, have figured out ways around the ban. Could you speak to that a bit?
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Brian Burgess: Sure, so the classroom teachers all have access to programs that are supposed to limit students ability to access inappropriate websites, including social media and gaming websites. But I work directly with a handful of them, and they are very clear that there are a lot of ways around those protections. I just walked through the library about half an hour ago and kids were watching movies on YouTube and whatever else—things that they're not supposed to have access to, but they've managed.
Mikaela Lefrak: What capacity do you and your colleagues there at the school have to police those actions? When you walk through the library and see kids watching movies, what are you supposed to do, and what can you do?
Brian Burgess: We try to discourage them from it. You know, hey, 'let's shut it down, you must have homework to do.' Just kind of gently reminding them of what the expectations are. And quite a few of them will respond favorably to that and say, 'oh my bad.' And they'll shut [the computer] really quick. Others, there's definitely push back and you get some attitude. But the expectation is also that as soon as I walk away, I'm sure those things are opened right back up again. And it's tricky for the classroom teachers where they're responsible for teaching the content, and they can't necessarily walk around to every student throughout class to make sure that they're on the website, that they're supposed to be engaged. Kids are smart. The students are smart. When the when the teacher is getting close, they'll shut a window, or they'll switch to another screen. And there's ways around it.
Mikaela Lefrak: Have you noticed a positive or a negative impact on kids' critical thinking skills as some of these tools, like AI chatbots have grown in usage and in their own abilities in the past couple of years?
Brian Burgess: I'm really glad you brought that up. As a speech pathologist, you're dealing with language and cognitive abilities. As far as critical thinking goes, the technology is absolutely having a negative impact. And when people talk, when they throw around the term 'critical thinking,' you're generally talking about students' ability to make connections, perspective-taking and communication. And especially with those — the perspective taking and communication — that kind of falls into my realm. Also with executive functioning — organization impulse control, working memory, self monitoring and emotional awareness — these are all things that are absolutely taking impact from more or less constant use of technology.
Mikaela Lefrak: So you said that you've noticed an impact on kids memory?
Brian Burgess: The working memory, absolutely. Working memory, loosely defined as being able to hear information and be able to immediately apply that information to whatever problem, whether it's math, English, if you're talking about vocabulary, the teacher's social studies lesson and then they ask you a question about what they what they just presented. Working memory allows you to store the information and then apply that to your response to the question, and working memory has taken a huge hit from the reliance on the technology. Basically, it's impeding a student's ability to think for themselves.
Mikaela Lefrak: Have teachers figured out when kids are using AI to work on things in class or on their homework? Can they use AI detection software, or is that something that they don't have capacity for, or the ability to do?
Brian Burgess: From discussions with teachers, the access is there. And from what I've heard, teachers will put in part of an essay, for example, into AI detection software, and it will pull up a percentage of whether or not the AI thinks it was AI-generated. But they've learned from students writing styles — if they're using a perfect sentence structure, for example, but previously hadn't been able to pull that off. So it's definitely at play, and just as much as the students are using it, teachers are trying to combat it. But when we talk about the number of students versus the number of teachers involved, it's hard to regulate completely.
Mikaela Lefrak: One more question for you, Brian, before we let you get back to the classroom. Have you seen any benefits to the this growing use of technology in the classroom, particularly in kids' fluency with tech that us adults are still struggling to learn? We're about to have a discussion that will hit on a lot of the different concerns that adults have about the use of tech in classrooms, some of which you've enumerated, but I do wonder if there are any positives.
Brian Burgess: It's interesting because, in a very sneaky way, students' abilities to problem solve using the tech, just like for every solution we might come up with, students often seeing a step ahead of us in that regard, kind of getting around the safeguards that we put in or the tools that we apply. So strictly in terms of problem-solving, I think there is some positive there, but it needs to centered [phone line cuts out]...to the world wide web of information. There's a lot of good information out there. The trick is helping students figure out ways of deciphering or distinguishing between good information, reliable information, and information that's either just patently false or unhealthy, quite frankly.
Broadcast live on Tuesday, May 12, 2026, at noon; rebroadcast at 7 p.m.
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