Thirty Years Will Give You Perspective...

June 27, 2026

“The only thing that stays the same is Everything changes, everything changes” ~ Tracy Lawrence, Time Marches On

Tomorrow, thousands of educators, technology leaders, and industry partners will gather at ISTE. Just like they have for decades, they’ll debate what’s next. Artificial intelligence will dominate many of those conversations. So will digital citizenship, student safety, innovation, and the future of teaching and learning.

I’ve attended enough of these conferences to know that while the technologies change, the questions often remain the same. Thirty years will give you that perspective.

I started teaching in 1996. Coincidentally, that was also the year President Clinton challenged the nation to connect every classroom to the Information Superhighway. At the time, most of us weren’t entirely sure what that meant. The internet was still new. Most classrooms didn’t have computers. Email wasn’t even part of the daily routine for most educators. If you wanted students to use technology, you often scheduled time in a computer lab and hoped everything worked when you got there.

Looking back now, it’s hard to overstate how much has changed. In many ways, my career has followed that moment for three decades.

I remember one innovative math teacher that physically moved her classroom into the computer lab around 1997. At the time, that felt revolutionary. Most of us still thought of computers as something students visited occasionally. She saw something different. She saw a tool that could engage students in ways we hadn’t considered before.

Around that same time, I found myself experimenting as well. I was teaching physical education and brought a laptop into class so students could learn bones and muscles using software that gave them a three-dimensional view of the human body. Looking back, it seems simple. At the time, it felt cutting edge.

What I remember most wasn’t the computer. It was the look on the students’ faces.

Students were asking better questions. They were curious. They wanted to explore. The technology didn’t replace teaching. It created new opportunities for learning. That lesson has stayed with me for thirty years.

Then came classroom computers, laptop carts, interactive whiteboards, one-to-one computing initiatives, Chromebooks, cloud computing, smartphones, tablets, learning management systems, video conferencing, and now artificial intelligence. Every step of the way, someone predicted the latest innovation would either save education or destroy it.

Neither happened. Schools adapted. Teachers adapted. Students adapted. Life and education marched on.

Along the way, another thing happened. Everybody got a camera in their pocket. To be completely honest, I’m pretty glad that didn’t happen when I was in college.

Like every major innovation before it, smartphones brought both benefits and challenges. They made it easier to communicate, easier to navigate, easier to capture important moments, and easier to stay connected with the people we care about. They also made distraction, comparison, and constant connectivity easier than ever before.

That’s usually how technology works. It solves some problems while creating new ones.

Which is why I’ve never been particularly interested in the debate over whether technology is good or bad. After thirty years in education and educational technology, I’ve watched too much history repeat itself. The calculator didn’t eliminate mathematics. The internet didn’t eliminate learning. One-to-one computing didn’t replace teachers. Artificial intelligence won’t eliminate the need for human judgment.

Technology changes. The challenge has always been learning how to use it wisely.

Around the same time technology was transforming our schools, another conversation was taking place. In Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam argued that Americans were becoming less connected to their communities. Fewer people were joining civic organizations. Churches were shrinking. Volunteerism was declining. We were spending less time together.

Twenty-five years later, that observation still feels relevant.

What’s fascinating is that Putnam couldn’t have imagined the world we live in today. Most of us carry a device in our pocket that can instantly connect us to almost anyone. We can FaceTime our parents, collaborate with colleagues across the country, navigate unfamiliar cities, and access more information than any generation in history.

So how can we be more connected than ever and less connected than ever at the same time? We’re having the wrong debate.

The better question is this: How do we use technology to strengthen the relationships and communities that matter most?

Today, my office fits in my pocket. I can answer a Slack message while picking up livestock feed in town. I can jump on a Zoom call from my ranch over a fiber connection. I can review a proposal while waiting for a haircut. That flexibility simply didn’t exist when I started my career. And honestly, a lot of it is amazing.

My new puppy, Sully, wears a GPS collar that lets me know where he is on twenty-seven acres. It tracks his location, activity, sleep, and probably a few things he’d rather I didn’t know. AI cameras help me monitor wildlife and manage conservation efforts on the ranch. I FaceTime my parents every week, a tradition we started during COVID and never stopped. Artificial intelligence helps me organize ideas, summarize information, and spend more time doing the deep thinking that matters while taking many routine tasks off my plate.

Technology has improved my life in countless ways. But there are also things that concern me. The biggest one isn’t artificial intelligence or smartphones. It’s the idea that we’re always on.

Constant connectivity has benefits, but I don’t know that it was ever intended to become a lifestyle. There is still tremendous value in putting the phone down, working with your hands, sitting on the porch with a cup of coffee, playing catch with your kids, or simply being fully present with the people around you.

That’s where I think Seymour Papert got it right.

Papert, widely considered the father of educational technology, spent decades thinking about how technology could improve learning. What made his work different was that he wasn’t fascinated by the computer itself. He was fascinated by what learners could create with it. The computer wasn’t the goal. Learning was.

That idea has shaped the way I’ve thought about educational technology throughout my career. People often ask whether an educational technology tool is good or bad. After spending thirty years in this field, I’ve learned that’s usually the wrong question. These are some of the most important and complex decisions school leaders make. The best tools are aligned to instructional goals, supported by evidence, implemented with fidelity, and used by outstanding educators who know when technology adds value and when it doesn’t.

Technology by itself has never improved learning. Great educators, sound judgment, and thoughtful implementation have. And that’s just as true for artificial intelligence today as it was for the first computer lab I walked into nearly thirty years ago.

When I read Putnam today, I don’t walk away believing technology is the problem. I walk away believing participation is the challenge.

The communities that have shaped my life were never passive experiences, neither is ISTE. They were schools. Ball fields. Churches. Professional organizations. Conferences. They were places where people showed up, contributed, disagreed, learned from one another, and built something together.

Technology can certainly help us do those things. It can also distract us from doing them. The difference isn’t the technology. The difference is whether we’re creating or consuming, participating or simply observing.

That’s why I don’t think we’ve lost community because of technology. I think we lose community when we stop participating.

If I fast-forward twenty years and imagine talking to my future grandchildren, I have no idea what technologies they’ll be using. The pace of innovation is accelerating too quickly for any of us to predict. But I hope they’ll understand the same lesson my generation has spent the last thirty years learning.

• Think for yourself.

• Create more than you consume.

• Find communities that matter.

• Technology should enhance your life, not become your life.

As I finish writing this, I’m sitting in Orlando getting ready for another ISTE conference. In a few hours I’ll reconnect with friends I’ve known for decades, meet educators who are just beginning their careers, and spend the week talking about artificial intelligence, innovation, and whatever comes next. Some new technology will undoubtedly steal the spotlight. It always does. But after thirty years, I’ve learned that’s never what I remember most.

I remember the conversations in the hallway. I remember the ideas shared over coffee (or a cold beer). I remember the mentors who challenged my thinking. I remember the young educators whose excitement reminded me why I started teaching in the first place.

Technology will continue to change. It always has. What matters is that we continue changing with it without losing the things that matter most. That’s what thirty years has taught me. And maybe that’s why I still come to ISTE. Not because I expect the next piece of technology to change education.

But because I believe the people who care enough to wrestle with those questions just might.