Cellphones are educational tools. Educators completely missed the cellphone boat; it sailed without us. We stood on the dock and railed against everything the cellphone represented and closed our eyes to the rest of the world who sailed into using cellphones in daily living. Teachers, especially, never understood the opportunities for using cellphones as teaching and learning tools and they lost by not planning for that adventure.
Public education had no vision for harnessing the use of cellphones in the classroom. Our age-old response to children and cellphones was to prohibit what we could not control. Just like chewing gum in the 1950s. Now, I fear, it is déjà vu time for missing the boat on AI.
Artificial Intelligence is public education’s current test. Will we harness it as a teaching and learning tool or once again bay at the moon and prohibit it? The difference today is that AI does not care if we are on board, it has a mind of its own.
What do we know?
The tide of laws and regulations prohibiting the use of cellphones in classrooms, if not school, is growing. Classroom teachers could not adapt the power of pocket computing and communicating from the real world into educational practices. With their mouths agape, they experienced what any savvy person could have told them. “The more you tell children what they cannot do, the more they will do it.” And, with cellphones, children saw the hypocrisy and the missed opportunity clearly for what it was – a refusal to adapt.
Sadly, the real issue with cellphones in school is not the games and texting students do. The real issue is us.
First, our teacher-student relationships and daily instruction were less compelling than a cellphone screen. Instead of rising to the instructional design challenge and making daily instruction more engaging, we banned cellphones and taught like we always had taught and children disengaged,
Second, we did not make the cellphone a teaching and learning tool, like a tablet or laptop, and productively incorporate it into school life. As an observer, I saw children in classrooms where teachers have strong connections with children and engaging lesson plans. There, children never think about taking a cellphone from their pocket. They wanted and appreciated strong, personalized instruction. I also saw children in classrooms with weaker connections and instruction where children walked into class with cellphones in hand and once seated, gave their teacher little or minimal attention. Their screen was more engaging and more personal. The sad story is cellphones are considered more powerful than our pedagogy and quality connections with children, so we ban them.
The real world is no in school.
A smartphone is a real-world powerhouse. It is an instant information resource, learning apps device, and communicator. It is real world applications that are personified and we know it.
I sat in an audience at a Wisconsin Association of School Boards convention amongst several thousand delegates. Up and down my row of seats, board members and administrators watched and listened to the speakers with their cellphones in their hands. Some took notes on their phones. Some took pictures of presentation visual information. Some dived into a search for information on something the speaker said. Others texted their colleagues and friends during the session. Several played games. More people had cellphones in their hand than they did not. And that was in 2018. The people who would make rules banning cellphones in school used them in their learning experience.
More to the point, children in all decades of schooling heard this from a teacher. “Look it up. Find the facts. Learn what others have written about it.” Decades ago, we paged through encyclopedias and card catalogs and guides to periodical literature. Today, outside of school, children use their cellphones to Google or AI or ask Siri. Children still need to find facts, examine different perspectives, and weigh opinions. However, in school, children can only use approved devices with Internet filters. How foolish! How controlling! Our policies treat cellphones like our policies treated chewing gum in the 60s and 70s. And we wonder why there were so many dried kernels of gum stuck to the undersides of desks and tables.
Banning cellphones in school is all about control not better teaching and learning.
The AI boat can sail without us.
The real question for educators and AI is this – We can harness AI as a teaching and learning tool or AI will replace us as teaching and learning professionals. With AI, even classrooms may be optional.
Sarah Schwartz reported on students at Percy Julian Middle School (Oak Park, Ill) in the April 20, 2026, edition of Education Week. This is necessary reading to inform educators and school boards about the AI boat and its passenger list.
We must clap loudly for a middle school teacher and his students, and a school and its administration for engaging in their study of AI use at their school. They did what we all should do. Study and use AI apps, field test them on our school and community, and learn how to use AI productively for teaching and learning. At the same time, we will learn that AI also presents dangers that must be understood by all. In some ed reporting, the teacher and students seem stiff and opaque. Schwartz relates the experiences of an inquisitive teacher and group of students and what they learned. You will like these people and their story.
I appreciated one student’s comment. During their all-staff reporting session, she saw doubting teachers with frowns. There will be teachers who refuse to get on the boat or get aboard reluctantly. Such is life. The real winner in this story is Percy Julian Middle School. The AI boat will not sail without them, and they are better prepared for the adventure.
The Big Duh!
We missed and still are missing teaching and learning opportunities with cellphones. We continue to separate the real world from the classroom. Shame on us. However, the Titanic taught us that large ships do not change course easily or without peril, and schools are large institutions like ocean liners. I wonder how a school with prohibitions against cellphones in school can rationalize and navigate children into a future where AI is used to teach and learn.
AI is a different game. I work in a teacher licensing preparation program, and we already are envisioning classrooms without human teachers. Truth be told, we already have a total online teacher prep program – no face time with a teacher for our adult learners. We build and teach curriculum with AI, and our licensing candidates learn using AI. The same real world-in-the-school can be created for children.
Or we can watch others treat AI like chewing gum and cellphones and try to control children in classrooms.