For years, educational technology has promised to make learning faster, more personalized, and more efficient. On some respect, it has delivered on those promises. But as concerns about screen time and student engagement continue to grow, more educators are rediscovering the value of low-tech learning.
This isn’t a call to abandon technology or return to some imagined golden age of education. Instead, it’s an invitation to think more carefully about the tools we use and the experiences we create. Sometimes the simplest tools offer something powerful: greater freedom, deeper focus, more creativity, and a stronger connection to the physical world around us.
Switching to a Low-Tech Project
There’s a quiet buzz permeating the room as students jot down ideas, sketch out diagrams of ideas, and get lost in articles. It is hands-on and tactile. One girl carefully cuts out a paragraph from an article and places in on a continuum she has created showing differing views on the environmental impact of AI. Another draws an arrow by an infographic and jots down his thoughts on its accuracy. Still another student uses colored pencils to construct a flow chart connecting to an article he just read.
On the surface, this is low-tech. But then I notice that certain students have typed up articles or created infographs using Canva. Many of the articles were printed off the internet, though most are actually physical copies of magazines.
The students are working on their ongoing choice-based Commonplace Books. For centuries, people kept commonplace books as a way to collect quotes, ideas, questions, and observations in one place. Rather than organizing information into neat categories, these books functioned as hubs of curiosity. People would capture whatever resonated with them and often make connections to other ideas. They often wrote their own original works or created mash-ups as well.
In many ways, a commonplace book was less about storing information and more about cultivating deeper thinking as patterns, insights, and new ideas emerge through reflection.
So this teacher has taken a really old idea and brought it back to life in the classroom (and she’s actually connected to a group of people who do this for fun after reading about it on Reddit).
If you’re picturing an interactive notebook, that’s close but not quite it. A commonplace book is messier. Students create their own internal logic and organizational structure. It’s also more student-directed. There are some occasional prompts from the teacher but more often, she provides parameters.
This takes elements of content curation, where they find other resources, organize them, and offer commentary.
But it also includes original work that they create. Each student must add instructional, expository, and argumentative pieces that they either write out by hand or type and print. These books are deeply personal, offering a chance for students to explore their tastes, examine new ideas, and find their voice in a way that feels deeply personal.
However, they also include a social dynamic. Students leave comments on each others’ commonplace books. Each author-curator can either allow for sticky notes (and some of them seem to love the multicolored sticky notes fanning out in their books) or leave space in the margins of their work for peer comments. A few students have created shared commonplace books where they share and rotate.
In the end, the commonplace books function as a tool for making connections, helping students turn information into insight through reflection and curiosity.
This project is a sharp departure from the combined Geek Out Blogs and Curation Project that their teacher Melissa had done in previous years. From a learning standpoint, this project still has the same components with the same standards and competencies. But the low-tech version is a sharp departure from previous years.
She describes it this way, “Honestly, students were writing in a way that was too formulaic. I was also battling the challenge of AI-generated writing. Not because my students were lazy or even apathetic. They were just so busy. But also, they were wanting something more private than blogging.”
The result was something much more lively, if a bit chaotic. Assessment proved a challenge at first and she had to combine self-reflection with conferencing along with a rotation of days where she would collect their books. “Some of them got kind of attached to their books and they worked on them at home and so there was this frustration with not having them for a couple of days.”
There was also the challenge of having additional classroom magazines, sticky notes, and going through more printer ink. High tech solutions are often less expensive. But for her, this project was proof that many students want something a bit low-tech right now.
Why iPad Kids Are Embracing Low Tech
Our local Barnes and Noble is so packed with Gen Z kids that I hear a woman say to her friend, “I haven’t been to a Barnes and Noble in years. I didn’t know. I just didn’t know so many of teenagers love to read. It makes my retired English teacher heart happy.”
Her friend nods and whispers, “Look. He’s choosing Brave New World. Remember when we did that dystopian novel unit with Maze Runner and Hunger Games?”
The other woman lets out a verbal giggle and I can’t help but smile.
I glance around the store. Students are debating which manga is better. Others are saying, “have you checked out this album” near the records and they’re popping in earbuds to see if they should buy a record (note that a listening station might be a great option in the future). Kids sit across from each other in big chairs eating muffins and reading books and I feel transported back to my own high school experience.
My city is not an anomaly. At a time when many experts predicted the death of bookstores, Barnes & Noble has experienced an unexpected resurgence. They’re currently rolling out sixty new stores across the US this year.
Part of this success comes from a renewed interest in physical books, but it also reflects something deeper. Many members of Gen Z, who have spent much of their lives in digital spaces, seem to be seeking out places that feel tangible, social, and real.
Bookstores offer a different kind of experience in an era where it’s hard for teens to find a “third place.” People can browse shelves, discover books by chance, flip through pages, and spend time in a shared space without the pressure to buy something immediately. But it’s bigger than that. In an increasingly online world, the appeal of Barnes & Noble suggests that convenience isn’t always the highest value. Sometimes people crave spaces that are slower and more tactile.
We can talk about AI. It’s an amazing technological advancement. We can think about the future of virtual reality. But I also want to recognize that a generation of so-called “Digital Natives” are sometimes looking back at the Old World and asking, “What did we lose and how do we get that back?”
It’s almost like coming out of COVID, so many of them said, “Yeah, I can inhabit a space of ones and zeroes but I also want my feet planted firmly on the ground.”
In a world of mind-blowing compression, where we can listen to nearly every artist on demand, I see a desire, no, a thirst, for decompression. For slow. For tangible. For an album playing where you can’t choose to skip it even if you want to.
I see it in the number of youth I see at musicals (there were so many young people cosplaying the theatrical performance of Wicked we went to last year) or sporting events or even, yes, book stores.
The Benefits of Low-Tech
As we think about taking a low-tech approach to learning, I want to points out some of the benefits of using lower tech tools. Note that I’m not anti-technology. There’s a reason I call it “low-tech” and not “anti-tech” or “take-free.”
1. Low-Tech Options Can Actually Mean More Freedom and Choice for Students
It feels a bit counterintuitive but low-tech options often allow for more freedom and flexibility. This is odd because programs and apps tend to provide us with more tools and more choices than their low-tech counterparts. But along the way, they also have more guardrails. So, we end up with high-tech providing choices but low-tech allowing for freedom.
Consider a blog versus a commonplace book. When I blog, I can edit on the fly. I can share my work with the world. I can find visuals from anywhere. I can embed multimedia. On some deep level, it feels like I get to have my own newspaper or magazine (which was a childhood dream of mine). I love blogging. It’s why you’re reading a blog right now.
But on another level, I can’t easily move text to different locations. I can’t draw arrows between ideas or move snippets around. Could I do this on some type of digital tool? Perhaps, but it wouldn’t be as easy or as precise as a commonplace book. So the lack of options here honestly leads to a certain freedom I don’t get in blogging.
2. Low-Tech Options Can Help with Divergent Thinking
As we think about this idea of fewer options leading to more freedom, there’s an underlying notion of creative contraint. Sometimes fewer options lead to better results because it pushes us to think creatively. This is the idea of “think inside the box” that I explored years ago in a sketch video:
Sometimes low-tech options push us to think more divergently. We end up finding creative solutions when faced with constraints. So, we might limit our materials in a maker challenge and then students come up with novel solutions.
But also, the freedom (from the last point) of low-fit options can help spark divergent thinking as well. Low-tech materials often lead to more divergent thinking because they are less scripted and more open-ended. A cardboard box can become a castle, a spaceship, or a marble run. A notebook can become a sketchbook, a journal, a design portfolio, or a place to collect questions. When students use sticky notes to map ideas across a wall or build prototypes with craft supplies, they aren’t choosing from a menu of predetermined options. They’re inventing possibilities. Ironically, the tools with the fewest features often provide the greatest creative freedom because students are free to imagine what the tool might become.
3. Low-Tech Options Are More Concrete
In academic circles, it’s easy to forget that we are multi sensory mammals who learn through seeing, hearing, feeling, smelling, and tasting. Before anything hits our long-term memory, we process information in our sensory memory:
To be clear, we still need to think abstractly. We wrestle with ideas on a regular basis. And each brain is unique. While there is no such thing as “learning styles” we know that some people picture what they read in a vibrant visual way while others (like me) see brief snapshots that fade quickly and still others don’t see anything. But regardless of our differences, we all need concrete elements to help us learn.
The challenge is that technology tends to become more abstract as it grows more precise and efficient. Consider the clock. A sun dial isn’t that accurate but it is a clear reminder that time is connected to the earth and the sun. If we think of an hourglass, we can watch time passing in a visual, almost visceral way. Meanwhile, the ticking of a clock is a bit more abstract. We see precise numbers and we watch movement but the quantity is lost on us. Now move to a digital clock. The movement is gone. The precision is stronger. Our clocks are now synchronized. But it is mostly abstract. Time as a quantity or a spatial movement are both gone.
So, as I think about learning, the low-tech options allow for something a bit more concrete. We see this with students doing prototyping with cardboard rather than moving straight into digital modeling. If we want students to iterate in what they create, this low-tech option allows for more freedom (previous point) but also a more concrete form of revision that students can actually see firsthand.
4. Low-Tech Options Are Often More Developmentally Appropriate
Young children learn best when ideas are concrete, tangible, and connected to the physical world around them. Piaget famously described children in this age range as being in the Concrete Operational Stage. Here they make sense of concepts through hands-on experiences rather than abstract reasoning.
Some nuance here. Researchers have since revised and challenged aspects of Piaget’s theory. Kids don’t move through childhood in lockstep stages. Human development is much more fluid and context-dependent than a series of fixed stages.
However, the broader insight still holds. Children often understand ideas more deeply when they can manipulate objects, observe patterns, draw pictures, build models, and engage directly with their environment. In a world filled with increasingly abstract digital experiences, low-tech learning can provide the concrete foundation that young learners need.
An iPad is essentially an entertainment device designed for adults. Every app has been socially engineered to maximize attention. It’s pre-programmed, offering the illusion of freedom by giving more options and features. It is inherently abstract. There’s nothing physical to manipulate. So, we have a situation where many children spend hours of unsupervised time using these powerful, abstract, addicting devices in their most formative years when they should be coloring, drawing, playing with blocks, engaging in pretend play with dolls, looking at insects outside, etc.
To be fair, I don’t judge a parental figure for occasionally letting their child use a tablet to watch videos or play games. Plane rides are ridiculously loud and uncomfortable and people are quick to judge a child for being loud. I’m not going to judge a parent for letting a child use an iPad. My wife and I never chose this as parents because we were too poor to fly when our kids were young.
But I do think the cultural reckoning with children and screen time is a positive thing. We need to recognize that tablets aren’t developmentally appropriate. I want to see students use physical manipluatives and solve problems on paper instead of hopping onto an adaptive learning math program.
Does this mean we need to ban tablets from schools entirely? I don’t think so. Some of the ant-screen “tech-lash” we see fails to recognize the moments when tablets work well. For example, children should read physical books but there some cases where adaptive learning phonics programs (in limited time frames) work really well.
5. Low-Tech Options Are Less Distracting
For well over a decade, teachers have complained that students were playing games, doing instant messaging, or watching YouTube videos on their Chromebooks rather than typing in a Google Document. I’m not surprised by this. I’m writing right now on Apple Pages with my WiFi turned off and my phone on the other side of the room because I know that I need to hit hyper focus in my writing but I am way too easily distracted.
And here’s the wild thing. I love to write. I enjoy wrestling with ideas and sharing my insights. I love the mental challenge of writing. However, when I get stuck, I find myself wanting to scroll Instagram and see if anyone has sent me a funny Reel. If I have my browser open, the urgency of email shouts at me from my pinned tabs.
I’m a huge fan of Cal Newport’s Deep Work and included deep work as one of the key relevant competencies in my book Vintage Innovation. Similarly, I found his notion of Digital Minimalism to be a strong correction to the hype of high-tech and I love this idea of Slow Productivity and cited it in my book The Depth Advantage.
In a world of incessant distractions, our students will need to develop the habit of deep focus. This deep focus is vital for deeper mastery which then leads to better problem-solving. In other words, our students will need to develop a “snailed it” mindset where slower, deliberate, focused work stands out in an age of shallow information and fast technology.
Low-tech options often help us with this type of sustained focus. For years, when teachers complained about tech distractions, they were told by experts to simply “be more engaging.” But if we, as adults, struggle with this type of focus in the work where we are fully engaged, is it any wonder that students choose games or videos over a cognitively demanding assignment?
A highly engaging assignment alone will note prevent distractions. It is not a cop-out when a teacher says, “We are going low-tech on this assignment because I want my students to avoid distractions.” There is nothing wrong with going low-tech to prevent the incessant temptation toward distractions.
In future articles, I’ll be covering ways we can use technology centered on singular functions. When we limit the options of a high-tech tool, we create guardrails that prevent distractions. There’s a huge difference between reading on an iPad and a Kindle Paperwhite both in terms of the user interface and the ability to get distracted. Similarly, there’s a big difference between recording on an iPad or a physical camera.
6. Low-Tech Options Help Us Avoid Dopamine Crashes
Earlier this year, I wrote about the push and the pull of helping students learn how to focus. I think it’s a vital skill in our current age. When I wrote The Depth Advantage, I focused on the core competencies of deeper learning. I started with a few driving questions. What will students need as they navigate the complexities of a changing world? In a world shaped by algorithms, what deeply human competencies will students need to master? In a distracted, fast-paced, instant world, what will students need in order to do work that endures? I ultimately realized that what students need is deeper learning.
We can think of these competencies as skills that become habits that ultimately grow into a mindset. And this mindset stands in stark contrast to our culture of constant distraction.
But part of the challenge is that smart phone apps, including games and social media, push us toward an ongoing cycle of short term dopamine crashes. Here they have the stimulus that leads to a quick boost of dopamine followed by happiness and then a crash.
This is a sharp contrast to long-term dopamine releases where it moves slower, doesn’t peak as high, but also lasts longer. We get those long term dopamine releases in things like playing sports, learning an instrument, deep conversations, or being out in nature.
As we think about technology in school, there’s a danger in spending hours using adaptive learning programs that mimic social media. Students get short term dopamine boosts when they get the right answer but they don’t have the long-term dopamine release they would get with deep reading or problem-solving. This then impacts things like resilience and self-direction.
Low-tech options help us avoid the ecosystem of short-term dopamine cycles. This can be a challenge for teachers if their students are used to playing games or watching short videos. But ultimately, I see this as an opportunity for deeper learning but also potentially better mental health (though to be clear, I am not a mental health expert and I am only suggesting that based on the research I see from the mental health / psychology community).
