Students would agree with you. They’ve had devices at school since low elem grades and phones since they were 10 or 11. College is a good time to develop new habits—but my students say they are on screens even more b/c of lack of analog things to do + LMS + communicating long distance.

In discussions with my students, many of them want to think—they just don’t know how. I think we teach it like anything else: Offer strategies, practice, and lots of patience. It does feel like we’ve moved backwards, developmentally, but wishing it weren’t so or ignoring it won’t fix it.

Truly believed he was immortal.

Very likely a backlash against students who are empowered to ask for what they need, yes.

Also, what people who harken back to “the good old days” are really desiring is not the classroom technology but students who will docilely conform to whatever they are asked to do. Today’s students are having none of that—and we have so much to learn from them.

Maybe this is “less-tech,” not “low-tech.”

I’m using more low-tech writing tools because I am tired of responding to writing on my computer—not to prevent “cheating.” The time seems ripe to re-think how much connection was mediated—poorly—through screens.

…rethink what we think students are coming in with. The students I spoke to were referring to AP and Honors English.

However, we have to help students build the intellectual and likely physical stamina to dig deeply in thought and writing. Just dropping a 10- or more page assignment on them when they have only mastered 4- to 5-page ones could be one reason GenAI is attractive as a helper. We need to…

I had a fascinating convo with my first-year writing students about writing in high school. Almost all of it was short and time-constrained—learning to take whatever standardized test was at the end. Blue books as testing material reinforce this kind of writing.

I’m using blue books as student notebooks for the first weeks of class. They’re for handwritten (if the student is able) free writes, reflections, and reading notes. Students can choose to continue with the bb as their notebook or switch to a regular notebook of their choice. I don’t give exams.

This book is getting me excited about the upcoming academic year. It’s the best book about teaching that I’ve read in a long time. Bravo!

If and when students use LLMs ts should be agentic and personal, where they conceive a challenge in what they're trying to do and then deploy the tool to meet that challenge. This is how the adult champions of this technology are using it. We should do the same for students, right?

BS is baked in to classical rhetoric. That’s why I’m struggling with my chosen profession lately.

It’s hard to take the UNC system seriously anymore, and I’m an alum.