• For years, the scientific community dismissed her work on the communicative capacities and intelligence of forest systems, but once we started manufacturing analogous models in the computer lab, it's like our perceptual awareness (when turned outward) changed dramatically, as if the act of making adjusted or expanded the mental models through which we perceive and make sense of the world.
• “Just as the advent of networking technologies from the 1960s onwards allowed us to perceive life in new ways, and to open ourselves to new relationships and new modes of being," writes Bridle, "perhaps the advent of intelligent technologies will allow us to perceive the rest of the thinking, acting, and being world in ways that are more interesting, more just, and more broadly mutually beneficial" (83).
• Just as technology shapes our perception of nature, the collective intelligence of our natural systems have the potential and power to teach us so much about our models for technology as well. And we should listen.
• With this said, how might acknowledging our entanglement with nature help make "the physics of school" make sense? More specifically, what can nature teach us, not just about transportation systems, but about behavioral health and wellness and about our place of belonging in the cosmos?
• We are a part of something, and if AI can teach us anything, it's not that we matter less; it's that we matter all the more because the world relies on us, on our ingenuity, and on our empathic capacity to connect with the more-than-human system of life, beauty, and becoming.
• What if learner-centered pedagogy meant finding their place in this network and taking responsibility for it?

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• over 90 percent reported that they believed their digital technology was negatively impacting their everyday lives. However, when we matched these reports with school administrative records, clinical assessments, and reported mental health symptoms, we did not find evidence of impairment.
• when researchers frame social media as addictive (versus neutral), they are more likely to find negative associations.
• in her laboratory-based study, Simone Lanette and colleagues (2018) reported that over 90 percent of parents and teens responded to open-ended questions about their phones using language that suggests feelings of addiction, defensiveness, and/or shame.
• ngela Yuson Lee has shown that the most harmful thing about social media with respect to mental health may be how much control, or agency, adolescents perceive themselves to have when interacting with it
• However, it is through many of these same channels that students seek out help and support. Many teens go online to seek out information about mental health, especially when they are struggling. In a nationally representative survey of 1,300 adolescents (Rideout & Fox, 2018), 90 percent of those with depressive symptoms reported going online for information about mental health, compared to 48 percent of those without symptoms.
• Simply put, pointing a finger at unproven causes of mental disorder will not make the youth mental health crisis go away. Instead of rushing to implement restrictions on social media, consider teaching children that such platforms are tools over which they have control. Teach them self-efficacy, and self-regulation will often follow. Instead of scaring children about “strangers” and “predators,” teach them about problematic behavior, both in people they know in person and for those they may not know online
• Instead of making the problem about a tool that provides access to information and data, teach children to critically examine their sources and turn information into knowledge. Misinformation and data illiteracy are some of the greatest threats to society today, and schools have a unique opportunity and responsibility to influence our future in this regard.
• Use your own phone and social media in responsible ways, think critically about your own media consumption,
• Above all else, model the behavior we want to see in our children.
• and engage with students and their devices thoughtfully and intentionally.
• Have a conversation with the young people in your classrooms about who they are interacting with online; what interests them; and what type of information, support, and experiences they seek when they spend time in online spaces and turn to social media feeds.
• Young people are early and enthusiastic adopters of new digital technologies, and simply restricting access is not going to work.
• Choose communication over conflict when it comes to managing devices
• A first step in supporting the young people in our classrooms with their digital technology and social media use is to question the narratives we are fed about these issues. If we continue to just accept the messages that we are hearing about social media, we risk driving a wedge between generations and restricting access to the larger set of supports for students who need that lifeline.

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• For Stager, the notion of tech-bans or bans on devices in schools is a farce. For him, the notion that the teacher should be the centre of attention at all times, or that an arbitrary assessment or curriculum agency is more important than the personal development of a child, is problematic
• “If your stance is that kids have to pay attention to an adult, whose expertise may or may not be questionable, for inordinate periods of time in order to perform on an arbitrary examination, or write a paper on a topic no one could possibly care about, then you are not preparing anyone for any kind of meaningful future,”
• “Assessment is judgment and inherent in that is a desire to rank and sort, rather than to uplift and empower, and that’s problematic. We should be asking, ‘What can a student do?’ – and the way we know what they can do is by knowing the student, by spending time with them, by collaborating with them, by talking with them, by having a more collegial relationship and breaking down the hierarchy,” he says
• “Schools should be in a position of preparing kids to be in charge, as opposed to being mere consumers or victims of a force that they neither understand or control,” he says.
• “It was only a matter of days before the 10-year-old was humiliating me on the tennis court. But during one session, he was complaining of a headache. He was agitated and wasn’t making a lot of progress. When we took a break, I asked him, ‘If you could run the lesson, what would you like to work on? And he said, getting better’. That was one clue to me that he had no cognitive investment in what he was doing,” Stager recalls.
• “It’s arrogant to suggest that a program can replace the wisdom of adults in proximity to children they care about,” he says.
• “I think it’s important for educators to recognise that that sort of light exists in the world and that there’s some kid who’s not doing well on NAPLAN – or as I like to call it, napalm – who is the next Charlie Rosen or Casey Neistat who can potentially change the world and make it a better place for the rest of us.”

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