Philly schools are full of technology. Teachers say that’s not enough to close the digital divide.

Philly teachers use a lot of technology — from smart boards to AI — but the district doesn’t have a broad mandate for implementing the tech, making it hard to ensure all students are equally exposed to new digital skills. 

While the School District of Philadelphia offers hardware and instructional support, the technical education can vary based on how much each teacher buys in. 

When Bonnee Bentum first started teaching over 20 years ago, her classroom didn’t even have a computer in it. Now she can’t imagine not incorporating tech into her lessons.

“Educators need to learn how to embrace the new technology so that students can grow their lives with this technology,” Bentum, an English teacher at the Science Leadership Academy at Beeber, told Technical.ly. “To be in front of the technology.”

During the pandemic, which forced a switch to online learning, teachers were forced to learn how to use the new tools. But while some continue to dive deeper, others are hesitant. 

On its face, the district has majorly stepped up its tech. Today, all K-12 students have Chromebooks, which many schools use because of the model’s affordability, and all classrooms have compatible smart boards, or digitally interactive whiteboards. Those devices can be used for everything from in-classroom lessons to homework after school.

The district calls this the one-to-one model, which is a strategy where every student receives a personal device to use for schoolwork. All teachers are also given a laptop. 

“We have maintained that model by building processes and an inventory system that allows each student to have that Chromebook assigned to their name,” said Melanie Harris, chief information officer for the district. “It moves with them, school to school.” 

The goal of this technology is to expose students to the tools available to them and also to practice digital skills they can use to create, rather than just consume content, said Luke Bilger, executive director of educational technology for the district. School activities that involve creation over content consumption encourage creativity and help students practice problem-solving, notes the Learning Technology Center, an educational board that’s led tech policy in Illinois schools for three decades. 

Plus, exposure to technology is beneficial for students to be creative and build up digital skills they can use in the workforce, according to Bilger. For example, it can increase interest in fields like computer science and prepare them with digital skills they’ll need for nearly any other career path. 

On top of the one-to-one model, the school district offers a digital literacy curriculum for grades K-8, which it refreshed last year. This curriculum teaches basic computer skills, coding, media literacy and how to be a responsible digital citizen. 

Investing in these skills and this tech is a step towards equity for all Philadelphia students, according to Fran Newberg, deputy chief of the district’s Office of Educational Technology. 

“Every student has access to understand what it means to code a robot, access to understand what it means to build a spreadsheet,” Newberg said. “So that as they move throughout their educational career, they’ve been at least exposed to everything everyone else has been exposed to.”

In order to be successful, though, teachers must understand what tools are out there and how to use them. 

Educators embrace AI with careful guardrails

Some teachers, like SLA Beeber’s Bentum, are open to new tech resources. 

Right now, she is interested in incorporating artificial intelligence, which she’s been doing for the last three years. She specifically wants her students to become experienced prompt engineers, meaning they know what to input in AI tools to get the feedback or information they want, because she thinks that will be a competitive skill when they enter the workforce, she said. 

Many of Bentum’s students assume AI can only be used in school as a way to cheat, especially thanks to widespread concerns about ChatGPT in education environments, but she has a different view.

Using AI chatbots for research, fact-checking and feedback has encouraged her students to do more revisions on their work, Bentum said. She wants her students to play with AI, use it for different purposes and get comfortable with it in the safe space of a classroom. 

The district is also talking about AI more broadly. It recently announced a pilot with the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education to launch a professional development program for teachers to incorporate AI into their work. 

However, there’s more out there than the school district provides access to or knows about, Bentum said. A lot of the tools she uses in her classroom aren’t accessible through her school district email. 

Teachers have to be ok going beyond their comfort zone to bring these resources to students, she said. She remembers when people were scared to use computers in the classroom, and she wonders if the incorporation of AI will be similar. 

“Are we going to do that again with AI,” she said. “Leave children behind because of our own fears, because of our own lack of knowledge.”  

Beyond providing tools, teachers need training and support

The Philly School District has around 30 edtech coaches who work with teachers to help them integrate technology into the classroom.

Chani Barton, one of those tech program specialists, runs a team that offers light tech support with a priority to help teachers integrate it into their classrooms. 

Teachers often come to Barton when they want to use a tool but don’t know how. Barton will help them plan a lesson that uses it, sometimes even coming into a class and modeling the lesson, she said. 

The tech integration team also hosts professional development training, most often about new ways to use their smart boards, which are extremely popular, she said. They also show teachers how to use available Adobe software and Google Suite. 

“The best part of our job is when we have a teacher that’s willing to try things, and we get to really dig in and talk through it with them,” Barton said. For example, teachers in the past have come to the team to learn Adobe Express, a creative software for making graphics and videos. 

Integrating technology into the classroom also makes students more thoughtful digital users, Barton said. Gaining the skills to create a video, graphic or a piece of writing about what they’re learning uses critical thinking skills and prepares them to use those skills in the workforce, she said. 

Tech is just a small part of building a well-rounded curriculum

While technology is an important skill for students to learn, it shouldn’t be the focus of the classroom and it can’t replace the role of a human teacher, educators said. 

Teacher and student interaction should be the main guide for learning, according to Evan Wilson, cofounder of edtech startup Scaffold Ed. For example, tech isn’t solving problems like behavioral issues, those tools come second to students having positive classroom experiences.

“We believe in technology that’s trying to augment the experiences and expertise that educators and honestly, students themselves, also have,” Wilson, whose startup analyzes classroom data, said. This includes technology that doesn’t take up huge amounts of time, rather it makes the classroom experience engaging and helps teachers teach better. 

The school district agrees. While classroom technology is a great way to engage students, administrators do not advocate for students to use tech 100% of the time, Newberg said. 

“We advise teachers to use a balance and where you have manipulatives, use your manipulatives,” Newberg said. “Where the technology gives you a little more power for personalization, use the technology.”

Still, most of the teachers Wilson interacts with, especially veteran teachers, are often skeptical of new technology because of what he calls “tool fatigue.” 

They don’t use it because it either creates more work for them and technologists did not design it with an understanding of what it’s actually like to teach. Or, they’re hesitant because they’ve had past experiences of past tools that didn’t work out, he said. 

“From a teacher perspective, it really comes down to, is this actually valuable, and does it create a lot of work,” Wilson said. “We hear constantly, we don’t have the time to do extra work. And if the technology creates that, it’s never worth it to implement.”

It also takes a while for these tools to become ingrained in the process. Since Philadelphia is a large district serving a diverse population with a large range of circumstances, it’s naturally slower to implement new tech, Wilson said. 

There are some strategies to push that along though, like meeting kids where they are.

Students generally are drawn to tech tools that emulate the apps and games they play on personal devices, and there’s been a push towards gamification in the classroom, Wilson said. But there’s still a range of interest, one size doesn’t fit all. 

Plus, tech tools will not help a student who is struggling in school because of personal circumstances unless the tech is designed to address that issue, he said. 

“A lot of these tools are not as magical as people make them out to be,” Wilson said. “Although they do have a lot of potential put in the right hands of educators who do have the potential to be magical.”