Dive Brief:

• Forbes contributor Jordan Shapiro warns against implementing technology into the classroom too quickly without first considering the "implicit" messaging of the device being used.  
• According to Shapiro, students read implicit messaging before explicit messaging, so it's important to understand what message they are taking away — especially if schools are being run with business practices in mind.  
• Despite buzz about implementing tech into classrooms as quickly as possible, Shapiro says educators must first must know why they want to use that tech because inserting it just to call a class "innovative" is not going to be beneficial in the long run.  

Dive Insight:

To highlight his point on implicit versus explicit messaging, Shapiro mentions recent findings by the Making Caring Common Project out of Harvard University's Graduate School of Education. The project found that while adults tell children they value "empathy, compassion, and critical thinking," the structure of most schools tells kids that achievement based on grades is the most important. Here, Shapiro says students ignore the explicit talk around bigger values and instead walk away valuing what has been modeled before them: praise over grades and test scores.  

Ultimately, Shapiro's point reminds us of advice Kickboard CEO Jen Medbery shared with us when we asked what schools should do to ease the process of wading through the sea of classroom tech offerings. Like Shapiro, Medbery emphasized the need to focus less on the tech and more on the "implicit messaging" or "pedagogical goals." She said:

"If you're asking those questions first, that's going to inform the sorts of tools you look for," she told us. "It's a very different philosophy from saying, 'We want to give all of our students laptops so that we can be 1:1,' and then asking 'Now that we're 1:1, what should we do about it?' That's a backwards approach."