Digital Dilemma: How Technology May be Sabotaging Our Investments in Reading Reforms

On September 19th, we had the honor to host renowned reading expert, author, and UCLA Professor Maryanne Wolf for an engaging discussion. We learned how technology is interfering with students’ ability to become deep readers and why that matters in our efforts to address Maryland’s reading crisis. We were proud to partner with the Albert Shanker Institute to host over 30 education leaders in Maryland to explore this critical issue.

We covered a wide-range of topics and look forward to share more about what we learned.

Most importantly, we learned that any initiatives to remove cell phones from schools is just a starting place for examining the presence and role of technology in our schools. We need to think carefully about whether or not our use of technology in education is actually in service of our highest educational priority: improved reading proficiency.

Special thanks our new friends Maryanne Wolf for the generosity of her time and to Mary Cathryn Ricker and Esther Quintero of the Albert Shanker Institute for their wonderful partnership.