outs were replaced with Nearpod interac-
tive presentations, and vocabulary lessons
were uploaded to Quizlet and available to
students through smartphone and tablet
apps. Student scores were easily down-
loaded from these sites and transferred to
my gradebook, greatly reducing my work-
load and increasing teaching efficiency. For
a time, it seemed that there was absolutely
no downside to this technological revolu-
tion, and I embraced its rapid progression.
Unfortunately, the digital age delivered
a swift, yet massive, epistemological shift,
driven in part by the Common Core State
Standards and Smarter Balanced Assess-
ment Consortium. Although nearly every
district in the country would suggest other-
wise, justifying the massive expense of digi-
tal integration, it has become increasingly
apparent that this change might actually be
detrimental to the education of our students,
and perhaps, to their mental and physical
health as well.
The classroom has been dramatically
transformed and, indeed, students have
changed along with it. W hat is most
frightening is that it seems no one has
paused to ask if this is actually a beneficial
change, especially to the digitally aroused
developing brain.
Navigating the shallows: Brains at
the end of their arms
The current group of sixth graders, born
mostly in 2005, are the first kids who grew
up completely inundated with the imme-
diacy of digital “infotainment.” The iPhone
was introduced just in time, and just the
right size, for mom and dad to quickly place
it in their 2-year-old’s hands to help quiet a
tantrum, sooth a scraped knee, or lull them
to sleep at naptime. This is the first group
of kids, perpetually overstimulated by the
ubiquity of electronic screens, that have
never learned to become a captive to their
own imagination. Many of these kids have
never been bored.
I started noticing a distinct change in
my students in just the last few years, and
I believe it closely parallels most districts’
Chromebook/iPad adoptions, coupled with
the pervasiveness of smartphones. Our sys-
tem is rapidly changing from educating chil-
In less than four years, my classroom has been
transformed into a veritable digital paradise.
dren most efficiently with proven pedagogy,
to presenting interactive digital kibble dis-
guised as deep work.
Previous generations were expected to
memorize “The Preamble to the U.S. Con-
stitution” or the “Bill of Rights,” repeat-
edly write vocabulary words until com-
mitted to long-term memory, and strictly
read and follow the directions for a chem-
istry lab. Chromebooks and smartphones
allow students the freedom to use Google
as a replacement for rote memorization,
spellcheck instead of repetitive practice,
and YouTube as a substitute for didactic
reading. This degenerative habit greatly
restricts the depth of students’ education
and, more important, could alter their abil-
ity to focus and learn.
Bloom’s taxonomy. Step one:
Remember
Since the adoption of Common Core
State Standards, numerous education ex-
perts and administrators have argued that
memorization is no longer a valid instruc-
tional tool – even though it’s impossible to
graduate medical school or earn a law degree
without well-honed memorization skills.
Yet, research on neuroplasticity contradicts
their assumptions. Brain researchers have
found that “the more times an experience is
repeated, the longer the memory of the ex-
perience lasts.”
Repetition encourages consolidation. In
1970, when noted neurophysiologist Eric
Kandel and his team examined the effects
of repetition on individual neurons and
synapses, they discovered something amaz-
ing. Not only did the concentration of neu-
rotransmitters in synapses change, altering
the strength of the existing connections
between neurons, but the neurons grew en-
tirely new synaptic terminals. The forma-
tion of long-term memories, in other words,
involves not only biochemical changes but
anatomical” (Carr, p. 184).
On the surface, removing rote memori-
zation from curricular expectations, or at
least reducing the reliance on memorization,
seems justified in today’s technologically
omnipresent era. After all, children have
access to this information on tablets and
smartphones almost as fast as they could re-
call it from memory. This shallow habit not
March | April 2019
23