There is a pattern I keep seeing in schools, and it concerns me. A teacher will open a lesson on their device, allow students access to the lesson on their devices, and automated instructions and commendations will fill the remainder of the class time.
After a brief back-and-forth of an engaged class during introductions and explanations, the room simply falls quiet. Eerily quiet. Don’t mistake me, every student seems engaged as the teacher monitors progress, but there’s an odd distance to it, like watching a lesson happen behind glass. Without engagement, debate, or friction.
To be clear: I don’t believe the technology in that room is inherently a bad thing, and it didn’t get there by accident. The choice wasn’t the teacher’s to make. EdTech adoption happens at the institutional level – district mandates, administrative priorities, procurement decisions made well above the classroom. And those decisions aren’t arbitrary. Schools that integrate cutting-edge software signal something to parents, to boards, to rankings: that they are modern, well-resourced, forward-thinking. Technology has become part of what a good school is supposed to look like.
But the real question we have to ask: is learning happening?
I have spent more than fifteen years in classrooms in Canada, teaching across grade levels and working with students with a wide range of learning needs. I have also worked at a major technology company, supporting the integration of technology in educational settings. Given that background, people often assume I am a wholehearted advocate for technology in the classroom — that more EdTech is always better, and that the goal is full digital integration. That is not my position. If there is one thing both experiences have taught me, it is this: the question is never whether to use technology.
The question is always why.
According to PISA 2022 — the OECD’s most comprehensive international assessment, covering millions of students across dozens of countries — 65% of students reported being distracted by digital devices during math lessons. More striking: students who spent less than an hour on devices during the school day scored roughly 50 points higher in mathematics than their heavy-use peers. Math and reading scores declined across more than half of OECD countries between 2018 and 2022, and the OECD noted those declines were already underway before COVID-19 closed a single school.
This marks a distinct data-driven change, but one that teachers have suspected for a long time. When EdTech first began making its way into classrooms in a serious way, there was enormous excitement — and understandably so. The possibilities felt limitless. Digital tools promised to personalize learning, connect classrooms to the world, and make complex concepts accessible to every student.
What followed in many schools, though, was a procurement decision dressed up as a pedagogical one. Devices were purchased. Platforms were subscribed to. Teachers were handed tools and told, in so many words, to use them. Professional development focused on the mechanics — how to operate the software, how to manage devices — rather than the harder question: how does this actually deepen what students learn?
The result has been what I think of as frantic technology use:
I say this not to criticize teachers — many of whom are doing extraordinary work under real pressure with insufficient support — but to name a pattern that undermines the genuine potential of EdTech. When technology is used without a clear instructional purpose, it does not enhance learning, but displaces it.
This is happening against a backdrop of a global EdTech market projected to hit $214 billion by the end of 2026. The investment is extraordinary.
The outcomes, broadly, are not.
In January 2026, American neuroscientist Dr. Jared Cooney Horvath testified before the U.S. Senate that in nearly every context he studied, EdTech doesn’t reach the minimum threshold for meaningful learning impact – and that students are off-task for up to 38 minutes of every hour when on classroom devices. His testimony spread fast through education circles. But again, many teachers who read it weren’t surprised.
During my years teaching in Canada, I made a deliberate choice that sometimes surprised colleagues: I regularly chose not to use technology, even when it was available.
In mathematics, for example, I would spread chart paper across tables and give students markers. They would work through problems by hand — writing, crossing out, revising, thinking out loud. The marker could not be erased, and that was the point. Every crossed-out attempt, every correction, every moment of hesitation was visible on the page. Students could look back at their own thinking. They could compare their process with a classmate’s. The paper became a record of cognition, not just a record of answers. That kind of visible thinking — the messy, honest trail of a mind working through a problem — is something that most digital tools, for all their sophistication, struggle to replicate.
Some of the richest learning I witnessed happened when students were working with their hands — building structures to explore geometry, sorting and arranging physical objects to understand patterns, using manipulatives to make abstract concepts tangible. There is something about the act of physically handling materials, making something, taking it apart, and trying again that engages the brain in ways that tapping a screen simply does not. Learning that moves through the hands tends to stay longer. It becomes embodied knowledge, not just information encountered and forgotten.
Taking students outside extended this further. Observing plants, walking through the neighbourhood, using their eyes, ears, and bodies to encounter the world directly — these experiences grounded learning in reality in a way that no digital simulation can fully replicate. There are forms of understanding that only come through physical experience. No screen delivers that.
And yet, I was equally deliberate about when technology was the right choice. When students needed to collect and analyze data to answer a research question they had generated themselves, digital tools allowed students to explore the question with both greater breadth and greater depth. When I wanted to connect my class with students in another country for a collaborative project, technology made that possible in ways nothing else could. For all students, technology also opened up new pathways for expression — creating podcasts, producing short videos, composing music, or building digital collages gave every learner ways to demonstrate understanding that a written test or worksheet never could.
This is also where the question of equity becomes impossible to ignore. For students who have historically been excluded from full participation in learning — whether due to language, disability, or learning differences — thoughtfully chosen technology can be genuinely transformative. Text-to-speech and voice input tools, for instance, were not conveniences for students who struggled with reading and writing. They were the means by which those students could finally participate fully. I think of students I taught in special education settings who had spent years feeling unable to show what they knew, simply because the available tools did not match the way their minds and brains worked. When the right technology was introduced with care and intention, those students did not just catch up. They found their voice. Intentional integration, in this sense, is not only a question of pedagogy. It is a question of values.
The difference between these two modes — technology as a meaningful learning tool versus technology as a time-filler — comes down to one question asked during the planning stage: What do I want students to learn here, and does technology genuinely serve that goal?
Intentional technology integration is not a teaching style, but a design principle — one that belongs at the heart of how curricula are built, how programs are developed, and how teachers are supported.
It means asking, before any tool is selected: what is the learning objective? What does this particular tool make possible that other approaches do not? Are we using it because it deepens understanding, builds a skill, or expands access — or are we using it because it is there?
These questions sound straightforward, but in practice they require a shift in how schools and organizations think about EdTech implementation. The dominant model in many institutions is still tool-first: a platform is adopted, and teachers are then expected to find ways to use it. Intentional integration inverts this. It starts with the learning, and works backward to the tool.
According to a 2025 report on the teaching profession by HMH, 36% of educators have received no training on the AI and EdTech tools now embedded in their classrooms, and 54% say they’ve received only “some.” In other words, nine out of ten teachers are navigating these tools without meaningful preparation. We have built an expectation that educators will absorb new technology into their practice, often mid-term, with little more than a login and a user guide.
Teaching educators how to operate software is necessary. But it is not sufficient. What teachers actually need is support in building the instructional judgement to know when technology serves learning – and the confidence and autonomy to put it away when it doesn’t.
Whatever your role in education — developing technology, publishing curriculum, designing programs, or leading a school — the principle of intentional integration has direct implications for your work.
For EdTech companies, it means thinking carefully about the instructional contexts in which your product will actually be used. Alex Galvagni, CEO of Age of Learning, put it plainly in a recent piece for EdTech Digest: “Here’s an uncomfortable truth about EdTech in classrooms: most of it doesn’t work. Not because the industry lacks talent or research… They fail because they’re designed to please procurement committees, not to engage kids in the way they want to learn.”
A tool that is beautifully designed but deployed without a pedagogical purpose will not produce the outcomes you — or your users — are hoping for. The most effective EdTech products are those built with a clear understanding of how learning works and where in the instructional sequence technology genuinely adds value.
For educational publishers and curriculum developers, intentional integration means going beyond simply including digital components in a product or program. It means making deliberate decisions about where technology genuinely enhances the learning experience — asking not just whether technology is accessible to diverse learners, but whether its incorporation makes the learning itself richer, deeper, and more purposeful. The question is not whether a program feels modern. It is whether every element, digital or otherwise, earns its place. When it doesn’t, leave it out.
For school leaders, it means investing not just in infrastructure and devices, but in the professional learning that helps teachers develop the judgement to use technology purposefully. Evan Abramson, director of innovation and technology at New Jersey’s Morris-Union Jointure Commission, said it directly in a recent EdSurge report: “We’ve taken the power from teachers and put it in technology’s hands.” Devices in every classroom mean very little if the culture around them has not shifted from “are we using technology?” to “why are we using technology, and how does it serve our students?”
At Unfold Learning Design, this is the conversation we want to be part of — not as a vendor or a gatekeeper, but as a genuine collaborator.
The work of making technology intentional in education is not something any one organization can do alone. It requires EdTech developers who build with pedagogy at the center. It requires publishers and curriculum developers who design for diverse learners, not just capable ones. It requires school leaders who invest in professional culture, not just infrastructure. And it requires educators who feel supported enough to make deliberate choices rather than defaulting to whatever is easiest.
This is where we come in. With deep roots in both North American and Japanese educational contexts, we bring a bicultural perspective that goes beyond language or market knowledge. We understand how learning is designed, how teachers make decisions in the classroom, and how products and programs actually land in the hands of real students.
For EdTech companies, educational publishers, and curriculum developers looking to expand their operations in Japan — or strengthen what they already have — we collaborate to ensure that your work is grounded in effective, intentional learning design from the start. We also work directly with international schools in Japan, helping teaching teams build a shared language around new programs and tools, ensuring they fit the school’s culture, and supporting the professional development that makes integration actually stick.
If that’s the kind of partner you’re looking for, we’d love to hear from you.
Interested in working with an educational consultancy that puts pedagogy first?
Reach out to us to start the conversation.
Tomoya Tsutsumi has spent over two decades working at the intersection of Western and Japanese K-12 education, serving as a classroom teacher, a learning program leader at Apple, and the Founder of Unfold Learning Design. His perspectives are grounded in authentic classroom experience and a profound understanding of the elements that make learning effective across cultures.
Tomoya Tsutsumi
Founder & Education Integration Designer