The Question Is No Longer, Screens or No Screens?

Publishing Connected Classrooms by Brian Puerling invited our team at Gryphon House to reconsider a familiar debate in early childhood education: Screens or no screens?

For years, conversations about technology and young children have often focused on how much screen time is too much. But the more we explored this topic, the clearer it became that the question itself may be too simple. Instead, we can consider types of technology and how that technology is used.

A child passively watching an autoplay video is having a very different experience from a child who is using a tablet to photograph a caterpillar and document its transformation over time. A video call with a grandparent can connect generations. Recording a child explaining the block structure they built can capture their thinking in a way that allows the child—and their teacher—to revisit it later. Projecting an image onto a wall can become the starting point for collaborative art, storytelling, or investigation.
A screen may be present in all those examples, but the learning experience is not the same. That distinction matters.

The key is to choose tools with intention. Consider whether a tool helps children communicate, create, investigate, collaborate, solve problems, or connect with other people in meaningful ways.
And sometimes, the right tool isn’t digital at all.

That is where the conversation becomes much more interesting. Instead of asking, “Should young children use technology?” we can ask, “What do we want children to experience, discover, or accomplish—and what is the best tool to help them do it?”

For me, that is also a wonderful example of what we mean at Gryphon House when we talk about bridging theory and practice. Research and theory can help us understand what children need. Our job is to help educators translate that understanding into thoughtful decisions they can make every day in real classrooms with real children.

In Connected Classrooms, the author doesn’t ask educators to embrace technology for technology’s sake. He asks us to think more deeply about what technology can make possible when it is used with purpose.

Perhaps the question was never really, Screens or no screens?

Perhaps the better question is, How can this tool help a child do something meaningful?

And that is a question worth asking about every tool we bring into a classroom.