I recently watched a friend spend fifteen minutes trying to sync a "smart" water bottle to an app just to track their hydration. They grew increasingly frustrated as Bluetooth failed, firmware updated, and accounts required re-verification. Finally, defeated, they simply took a sip.


I see this exact same scene playing out in our classrooms and staff rooms every day. Many educators, including myself, are quietly asking: is technology hurting the process of learning and teaching? We are living through a crisis of pedagogical categorisation. We have collectively decided that because computers are powerful, they must be universal. We have taken tools capable of modeling protein folding and simulating galaxies - and we are using them to complicate the act of writing a sentence, assigning a chapter of reading, or asking a colleague a simple question.

I am deeply concerned that our reflexive reach for a digital interface in schools is not just inefficient; it is actively degrading the learning and teaching process, burying the spark of curiosity and the necessary burden of administration under layers of unnecessary abstraction.

The Trajectory of Artillery vs. The Trajectory of Assignments.

Hark back to the dawn of the computing age. The original behemoths - the ENIACs and the Colossuses - smelled of ozone and hot vacuum tubes. They weren’t built to host quizzes or generate behavior reports. They were forged in the fires of necessity to do what the human mind physically could not sustain.

They were built to calculate ballistics trajectories for artillery in seconds rather than hours. They were specialized industrial power tools. You didn't use them unless you had a problem big enough to justify turning them on.

The Great EdTech Abstraction

So, how did we get from calculating missile trajectories to forcing a six-year-old to navigate three different login screens just to draw a picture of a cat?

The answer lies in the seductive power of abstraction. As computers became friendlier and glossier, "There’s an app for that" morphed into a mandate for the modern classroom. We began to view non-digital teaching methods as inherently inferior, archaic, or "traditional" (said with a sneer). We assumed that adding a microchip automatically added value.

Why is EdTech Sometimes Inefficient?

The tragedy is that for a vast array of learning moments and administrative tasks, the computer is the absolute worst tool for the job. Why is EdTech sometimes inefficient? Because it demands structure where learning and teaching is often messy and organic. It demands inputs where a student needs discussion. It demands attention to its own maintenance - updates, charging, Wi-Fi, passwords, random logout - that distracts from the learning at hand.

When a teacher uses a complex digital platform to solve a problem that requires simple human connection, they are importing the computer's inherent complexity into a delicate situation. When they use a digital platform to schedule an appointment with a parent rather than picking up the phone, they are putting the logistics before the benefit. They aren't cracking the nut of the issue; they are smashing it with a digital sledgehammer and spending the rest of the day cleaning up the pieces.

We need to figure out how to balance digital and analog learning and teaching methods. We need to recognize when to pick up the £400 tablet or switch on a £5000 interactive screen, and when to just pick up a whiteboard pen.

The Appropriate Use of a Powerful Tool in Education

Computers remain miracle machines when applied to the domains they were designed for. We should embrace them wholeheartedly when the pedagogical or administrative need fits the digital capability.

Computers are SUITABLE in Education when:

✅ The Concept is Invisible or Dangerous: A student can use a simulation to split an atom, mix volatile chemicals, or walk through a 3D model of the circulatory system.

✅ Data Volume Exceeds Teacher Capacity: An AI analyzing reading patterns across a whole trust to identify specific phonemic gaps that a single human might miss in a sea of assessment and grading.

✅ Accessibility is the Hurdle: Text-to-speech and speech-to-text tools allow students with dyslexia or motor challenges to engage with the same high-level content as their peers.

✅ Global Collaboration is Required: A geography class video-conferencing with a classroom in Tokyo to discuss climate change in real-time.

✅ Iterative Coding and Engineering: When the subject is the logic of the machine itself, allowing students to build, break, and debug systems.

The Inappropriate Use: Disadvantages of Technology in School Administration

Conversely, we must recognize where the computer actively hinders the transfer of knowledge, introduces cognitive load, or degrades the teacher-student bond. The disadvantages of technology in school administration and teaching often appear when the tool obscures the goal.

Computers are ABSOLUTELY NOT SUITABLE when:

⛔ Communication loses its hierarchy: Because digital communication is immediate, everything feels urgent. A message on Teams about "leftover cake in the staff room" pings with the same ferocity as a safeguarding alert. We are elevating the trivial and obscuring the truly important stuff in a sea of noise.

⛔ Proximity is Ignored: Messaging a colleague on Teams who is sitting three desks away rather than walking over to speak to them. We trade tone, body language, and human connection for a sterile digital trail.

⛔ The "Reply All" Sledgehammer: Sending a message destined for three specific staff members to the entire "All Staff" distribution list. We waste the collective attention of a hundred people simply because the tool makes it easier to broadcast than to select.

⛔ Bureaucratizing Parents' Evenings: Expecting parents to download an app, verify an email, and navigate a booking system to secure a video slot, rather than trusting the child to walk around with a simple paper appointment card. We have traded a lesson in student responsibility for an exercise in parental tech support.

⛔ Behavior Management becomes Data Entry: Logging a "negative interaction" in a inefficient behaviour management system while a conflict is still unfolding, prioritizing the digital record over the immediate de-escalation of the student's distress.

⛔ The "Setup Time" Exceeds the "Learning Time": A teacher spending 15 minutes troubleshooting logins and Wi-Fi drops for an activity that takes only 10 minutes to complete.

⛔ The Lesson is Emotional or Social: Using a "wellness app" to have students select a sad face emoji, rather than a teacher looking them in the eye and asking, "Are you okay?"

⛔ Tactile and Motor Skills are Developing: A pre-school student dragging a virtual block on a screen teaches them nothing about weight, friction, or balance. They need to stack real wood.

Conclusion: Improving Human Connection in Schools

Ultimately, this is not a Luddite’s call to smash the machines; it is a humanist’s plea to regain our agency over them. The future of education does not lie in a seamless, frictionless digital utopia where algorithms predict a child's needs before they even raise their hand.

We must focus on improving human connection in schools, which often lies in the messy, vital friction of a teacher noticing a spark of confusion and addressing it with a conversation, not a support ticket.

We must stop asking "Can we do this digitally?" and start asking "Should we do this digitally?" The most advanced operating system in the classroom is still, and always will be, the human mind. Let’s stop swinging the sledgehammer at everything and remember the quiet power of using our hands.