I remember that day, back in October, 1989, when I walked into the computer lab in Kreger hall with a post-it note in my hand. It had my newly minted username and password on it, and I logged in to the VAX for the first time. Welcome to the Internet.

I’m not sure we used the word “Internet.” I was logging in to MUBBS: the Miami University Bulletin Board System. Within a few weeks, I was in Usenet and email and I started to get it. This thing is about connecting.

It’s about connecting people with one another. Those people might be on the same campus, or they might be across the country or around the world. This new technology is a place for them to come together. They can share their passions and perspectives. They can have debates and disagreements. They can exchange ideas and work collaboratively on things that make the world better for everyone.

It’s about connecting people with information. The scarcity of information in the 20th century cannot be overstated. Even getting the most basic facts was an adruous task. Most conversations that started with “I wonder…” ended with “Huh. I guess we’ll never know.” We couldn’t imagine a system where everyone has access to all of the knowledge. It really is a completely different world from the one I grew up in.

I saw that then. The Internet changes everything. It redefines how we interact with one another. We can communicate in minutes with people halfway around the world. We can’t judge them on their appearance or their gender or their accent or their religion or anything else they choose not to share with us. We can only base our opinions on their words. Everyone can have a voice. Everyone can have a global audience. Everyone can share the same, level playing field.

It changes the entire purpose of school. Remembering stuff is no longer the most important thing. Knowing how to find the stuff is kind of important now. Knowing which stuff to trust is kind of important. That’s new. We used to look at the sun to try to figure out what time it is. Then, we got a clock. We needed to know how to tell time, so we taught students that skill. And that worked, for a while. But now we have a hundred clocks, and they all have different times. So how do we know which clock to trust? And at some point, we just say, “it doesn’t matter. It’s getting dark. I’m going inside.”

This is where I came in. My first classroom was a computer lab where the computers weren’t connected to each other. Everything was saved to floppy disks and printed on a dot matrix printer. There was no interaction. There was no access to information. I taught students how to use word processors and spreadsheets. We didn’t even use Powerpoint, because there wasn’t a way to display the slides to an audience. But I knew that would change. I taught those middle schoolers about the Internet. We logged in to bulletin boards using a modem. I tried to explain that their world was about to change a couple years before those AOL disks started arriving in the mail I had seen the future, and it was coming fast.

It wasn’t until my fourth year that we had Internet access in the schools. At that point, I had been teaching students how to make web pages in HTML for a year, because I thought it was pretty important for them to be able to publish anything they want online for a global audience without getting the approval of an editor or a teacher or some tech person who knew how to do those things. We spent a lot of time learning to use technology to communicate. We spent a lot of time learning how to find and assess the reliability of online content. They learned that how you know is just as important as what you know. Those kids are in their 40s now.

The technology leader in my school didn’t get it. She wanted me to spend more time on BASIC programming and keyboarding. She thought it was really important for students to be able to set custom tab stops in a word processor, and adjust the margins, headers, and footers in their documents. She wanted us to spend more time making banners in Print Shop. I was teaching students how to interact in a global online world. She was well-meaning. She had the best interests of students in mind. But the technology world moves at the speed of light, and schools move at the speed of glaciers. She was laser-focused on her technology goals for the school, but she had lost sight of the fact that those goals were no longer relevant.

When I became a school technology leader, I focused on ubiquitous access. Technology has the potential to change everything. But before that can happen, it has to be available and reliable. Getting a computer in every classroom was a challenge that took years. Internet access with enough bandwidth to support students and staff was difficult to get. And reliability is always elusive, especially when support resources are strained and budgets are tight. But if the technology doesn’t work, it’s just wasting everybody’s time. Time is the ultimate limited resource. I never want to waste anyone’s time.

I realized — possibly in Africa — that technology is only half of the picture. The revolution in school is fostered by access to reliable, ubiquitous technology resources. But really, the technology is just a catalyst for instructional change. We can have dozens of periodic table apps. We can have hundreds of tools for practicing spelling words or multiplication tables or state capitals. But flash cards are cheap. If we’re going to bother with the tech, we need to get more from it. We should use technology to improve student engagement by giving learners interesting projects and choice over how they’re demonstrating their learning. We should use technology to foster creativity and collaboration in ways that can’t be done without it. We should use technology to individualize instructional experiences to meet the unique needs of every student. It’s not about teachers using technology to teach they way they were taught in school, and students using technology to learn the way their parents learned. If something isn’t fundamentally different, we’re wasting our time and money.

I changed the focus of my professional development efforts. I stopped doing presentations at conferences where I would stand in front of a group of adults and talk for an hour about how they shouldn’t stand in front of a group of students and talk for an hour. Instead of starting with technology and figuring out how to use it in school, we started with teaching and learning, and asked how technology can help us reach our learning goals. I worked with teaching and learning experts to prepare teachers for ubiquitous technology access, and only then we issued a device to every student. And it wasn’t long before everyone did school online for a while, and we relied on technology as the only way to interact with one another. Many teachers and students and parents linked the technology with that dark time, and it’s been very difficult to separate them.

But I underestimated the dark side. I didn’t see the malicious weaponization of disinformation until it was too late. I didn’t anticipate the engagement tactics that online services use to keep people scrolling on their pages and viewing their advertisements without any real benefit for the consumer. I failed to see the ways in which algorithms would use divisiveness and hate to drive profits at the expense of mental health. I didn’t realize the degree to which the technology industry would harvest data and invade privacy in the service of greater revenue. And I didn’t recognize that the altruistic roots of the technology revolution would create immense vulnerabilities to be exploited by cyber criminals.

So schools are stepping away now from trying to leverage technology to improve teaching and learning. We’re concentrating on student data privacy. We’re expanding and revising our disaster recovery and cybersecurity plans. We’re implementing new security measures to reduce our vulnerability to attack. We’re having conversations about artificial intelligence, and how we can avoid misuse by our students and avoid exploitation by AI providers. We’re talking about reducing our reliance on technology and minimizing student screen time. And those are extremely important things to be focusing on right now because they represent real threats.

But it’s also time to let someone else lead those efforts. As well-intentioned as my goals may be, we’re at the point where they’re no longer relevant. I have to let someone else take it from here. So I recently submitted my resignation. After 33 years in public education, my time draws to a close.

When I look back at the beginning, I can’t help but be sad. There was so much promise. It was going to be an amazing world. And we almost made it. I’m sure there’s a way forward. I’m sure there are better days ahead. Technology will probably have some kind of role in the solutions. It can’t just be a source of more challenges. But I don’t have the imagination to see that world anymore. And it wouldn’t be fair to our students for me to keep trying. So I’m going to have to rely on others to lead us.

I’ll still be around for a while. I’m not leaving until the end of July. But 2026 will be the first year for me without a first day of school since 1975. I can’t wait to see the adventure that awaits.