Consumers or Connectors? The Tech Debate Education is Getting Wrong

Somewhere between "every student gets a device" and "no technology for thirty days," Education is falling into a defeating overcompensation. In this episode of /take note/, Jeremy Hall, VP of Education, sits down with Benjamin Zork, principal of Aspire Academy — an online, synchronous, NAD-accredited senior academy — to talk about the whiplash. First came the money: pandemic-era federal funding flooded American schools with hardware, platforms, and connectivity on a scale nobody had planned for. Now the pendulum has swung hard the other direction. Some schools have gone as far as running month-long fasts from technology entirely — while, in the same breath, research publications celebrate AI tools that help students with reading and math. Both extremes are overcompensation. And the child in the middle is the one who pays. That then becomes, an ethical issue. Benjamin makes a distinction that most of this debate never gets to: there is a difference between consuming technology and connecting through it — connecting to information, and connecting to people. One of those flattens a student's world. The other expands it. A policy that can't tell them apart will end up cutting off the second while barely slowing down the first. There are liabilities with anything powerful like technology. That's a given. This is not an argument for more screens. It's an argument for asking a harder question than "how much?" In this conversation: • Why the funding surge and the backlash are the same mistake in opposite directions • The consumer/connector distinction, and how it changes school policy • What an online synchronous academy reveals about what technology can and can't replace • Why families are driving the backlash, and what they may be giving up • Where AI actually helps students — and where the enthusiasm outruns the evidence • What "throwing the baby out with the bathwater" costs a student, specifically /take note/ is a podcast about Adventist education — the people doing the work, the questions worth arguing about, and what it takes to teach well. Hosted by Jeremy Hall. 🔔 Subscribe for new episodes. 💬 Where do you land on this one? Tell us in the comments. #AdventistEducation #EdTech #ChristianEducation #OnlineLearning #SchoolLeadership #AIinEducation #TakeNote Adventist Education Podcast