The dominant story about COVID-era school closures has been simple: remote learning hurt kids’ mental health. And for many, that’s true. National data show American teens reported more loneliness and more suicidal thoughts between 2019 and 2023, with isolation during lockdown often cited as the culprit.
But a new study complicates that narrative. Researchers analyzed survey data from more than 6,000 middle schoolers during the 2020–21 school year and found a striking divide:
White and higher-income students were significantly happier and less stressed when attending school in person.
Black, Latino, and low-income students often reported the opposite—feeling less stressed and sometimes even happier when learning remotely.
In other words, remote school wasn’t universally worse. For some groups, it offered a reprieve from stressful in-person school environments, from health risks during the pandemic, or from inequities baked into the classroom experience.
The findings don’t suggest remote school is “better” overall. Academic setbacks during closures were real and disproportionately hurt the very students who sometimes felt mentally healthier at home. Instead, the study is a reminder that school isn’t a neutral space. How students experience it depends deeply on race, income, and environment.
As the researchers note, it’s not enough to flatten the pandemic into a single story of harm. Different groups of students experienced it differently—and will need different supports moving forward. If schools want to be places where all kids can thrive, they’ll need to reckon with why in-person learning left some students more stressed than staying home.
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From the Department of Banning Those Cell Phones Sure Did Wonders for No One comes a story out of South Carolina about… disposable cameras…
When South Carolina rolled out its statewide school cellphone ban this year, most stories focused on parents’ frustrations and kids’ grumbling. But at Woodland High School, one student decided to get creative.
Inspired by flipping through her mom’s old high school photo albums, Alianna Alston showed up with a disposable camera instead of a phone. The idea caught on fast—soon classmates were snapping candid moments without worrying about likes, filters, or notifications. “It was just straight happy vibes,” Alianna told Live 5 WCSC.
What started as a workaround to the ban has become something bigger: a way for students and teachers to connect, to capture real, unpolished moments, and to rediscover a technology that defined the ’90s and early 2000s. The humble disposable camera, once a vacation staple, is suddenly a symbol of presence in the age of digital distraction.
Of course, the irony here is delicious. Lawmakers ban cellphones to keep kids “focused,” and within weeks, teenagers are turning Kodak throwaways into a cultural moment. It’s almost like blanket bans don’t actually stop creativity, connection, or rebellion—they just reroute it. Students will always find ways to hack the system, bend the rules, and make something cool out of the scraps adults leave behind. Maybe that’s the real lesson: you can ban the phones, but you can’t ban the vibe.
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David Wiley is experimenting with what he calls “generative textbooks” — a mashup of OER (open educational resources) and generative AI. His core idea is:
What if anyone who can create an open textbook could also create an AI-powered, interactive learning tool without writing code?
From Open Content to Open AI-Driven Learning
For decades, Wiley has championed open education resources (OER)—teaching and learning materials freely available to adapt and share under open licenses like Creative Commons. With generative AI now in the mix, Wiley sees a unique opportunity to merge the participatory spirit of OER with the dynamic adaptability of language models.
The result? A new kind of learning tool that feels less like a dusty PDF and more like a responsive learning app—crafted by educators, powered by AI, and free for students to use.
The Anatomy of a Generative Textbook
Wiley’s prototype isn’t just a fancy textbook—it’s a modular, no-code authoring system for AI-powered learning. Here’s how it works:
Learning Objectives: Short, focused statements about what learners should master.
Topic Summaries: Context-rich summaries intended for the AI—not students—to ground the model’s responses in accuracy.
Activities: Learning interactions like flashcards, quizzes, or explanations.
Book-Level Prompt Stub: A template that sets tone, personality, response format (e.g., Markdown), and overall voice.
To build a generative textbook with ten chapters, an author creates:
One book-level prompt stub
Ten learning objectives (one per chapter)
Ten concise topic summaries
Various activity templates aligned with each chapter
A student then picks a topic and an activity. The system stitches together the right bits into a prompt and feeds it to a language model—generating a live, tailored learning activity.
Open Source, Open Models, Open Access
True to his roots, Wiley made the tool open source and prioritized support for open-weight models—AI models whose architectures and weights are freely available. His prototype initially sent prompts to a model hosted via the Groq API, making it easy to swap in different open models—or even ones students host locally.
Yet here’s the catch: even open models cost money to operate via API. And according to Wiley, most educators he consulted were less concerned with “open” and more with “free for students.”
A Clever—and Simple—Solution
Wiley’s creative workaround: instead of pushing the AI prompt through the API, the tool now simply copies the student’s prompt to their clipboard and directs them to whatever AI interface they prefer (e.g., ChatGPT, Gemini, a school-supported model). Students just paste and run it themselves.
There’s elegance in that simplicity:
No cost per token—students use models they already have access to.
Quality-first—they can choose the best proprietary models, not just open ones.
Flexibility—works with institution-licensed models or free-tier access.
Of course, there are trade-offs:
The experience feels disjointed (copy/paste instead of seamless).
Analytics and usage data are much harder to capture.
Learners’ privacy depends on the model they pick—schools and developers can’t guarantee it.
A Prototype, Not a Finished Product
Wiley is clear: this is a tech demonstration, not a polished learning platform. The real magic comes from well-crafted inputs—clear objectives, accurate summaries, and effective activities. Garbage in, garbage out, especially with generative AI.
As it stands, generative textbooks aren’t ready to replace traditional textbooks—but they can serve as innovative supplements, offering dynamic learning experiences beyond static content.
The Bigger Picture: Where OER Meets GenAI
Wiley’s vision reflects a deeper shift in education: blending open pedagogy with responsive AI-driven learning. It’s not just about access; it’s about giving educators and learners the ability to co-create, remix, and personalize knowledge in real time.
Broader research echoes this trend: scholars explore how generative AI can support the co-creation, updating, and customizing of learning materials while urging care around authenticity and synthesis.
Related Innovations in Open AI for Education
VTutor: An open-source SDK that brings animated AI agents to life with real-time feedback and expressive avatars—promising deeper human-AI interaction.
AI-University (AI‑U): A framework that fine-tunes open-source LLMs using lecture videos, notes, and textbooks, offering tailored course alignment and traceable output to learning materials.
GAIDE: A toolkit that empowers educators to use generative AI for curriculum development, grounded in pedagogical theory and aimed at improving content quality and educator efficiency.
Final Thoughts
David Wiley’s generative textbooks project is less about launching a product and more about launching possibilities. It’s a thought experiment turned demonstration: what if creating powerful, AI-powered learning experiences were as easy as drafting a few sentences?
In this vision:
Educators become prompt architects.
Students become active participants, selecting how they engage.
Learning becomes dynamic, authorable, and—critically—free to access.
That’s the open promise of generative textbooks. It may be rough around the edges now, but the implication is bold: a future where learning tools evolve with educators and learners—rather than being fixed in print.
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New York Gov. Kathy Hochul wants a statewide, bell-to-bell cellphone ban in schools, dictating how every district, student, and teacher handles devices. But the New York Senate is pushing back, demanding flexibility for schools and ensuring students won’t be suspended over cellphone violations.
The governor claims she’s doing what “parents and teachers want.” But let’s be honest: this isn’t about education but control. Schools already have policies. Local educators, not politicians, should decide what works best for their students.
Let’s break it down: 📵 Banning cellphones won’t fix student disengagement. The real problems—underfunded schools, high-stakes testing, economic stress, and a lack of mental health support—remain untouched. 📵 A one-size-fits-all ban ignores real student needs. Many students use phones for accessibility tools, translations, medical needs, family contact, and learning resources. 📵 Enforcement will fall on teachers and create unnecessary conflict. Instead of teaching, they’ll be the “phone police.”
Yes, social media addiction is a real issue. But banning tech won’t solve systemic failures in education. If Hochul cared about student well-being, she’d invest in smaller class sizes, more counselors, and policies that treat kids like humans, not distractions.
Good on the NY Senate for fighting back. Educators and communities should make school decisions—not politicians looking for a quick-fix headline.
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There’s a project that I’ve wanted to begin for a few years. I thought I’d have the chance during my first year as a full-time digital learning coach, but then COVID happened, and things went off the rails.
Now, my project is running. I’m working with a group of teachers in my district; the Future Shift Fellowship. The teachers represent grade levels from K-12 and several different content areas. Our focus is on redesigning lessons to create deeper learning experiences for students.
In case you weren’t aware, this process isn’t easy. But, with the right outlook and tools to help, we’re making some headway on this journey.
The Right Tool for Framing Conversations
We’re using the wonderful 4 Shifts Protocol as our guiding light during all our conversations. If you’re not familiar with this protocol, here’s an overview:
The 4 Shifts Protocol is a questioning protocol that focuses on redesigning lessons in four areas: deeper thinking & learning, authentic work, student agency & personalization, and technology infusion.
It’s a simple tool to begin using, but it opens the door to much deeper conversations about what we ask students to do and how those tasks align with meaningful work in settings beyond the classroom.
Before this week’s meeting, I asked the fellows to read through the 4 Shifts handbook to guide our discussions. From the group, here are some of the thoughts they shared and their takeaways from the book:
The 4 Shifts Takeaways
My fellows know that one of my rallying cries about any change we undertake in our classrooms is to “embrace the suck.” It’s a military term used by trainers to get their trainees to understand that you must lean into being uncomfortable and push through difficulties. I use it to encourage teachers and students to keep going despite whatever difficulty they face with technology usage, rethinking lessons, or anything that “sucks” about change in education.
The fellows agreed that this book and protocol give them some support and encouragement to embrace the suck. And to know that things won’t always suck.
Next, they realized that lesson redesign will look different for different people because of the protocol’s flexibility. The 4 Shifts protocol respects teachers as professionals and masters of their craft. There is no dictation to use certain tools or methods in any of the shifts, merely yes/no/maybe questions to start conversations about how to change. It’s up to each teacher to determine how to best change each no to a yes.
One fellow brought up how, when used properly, infusing technology into lessons can give students greater control over their learning. Good technology integration should provide students with greater agency and provide them with opportunities to present their work to an authentic audience and setting. Thinking about lesson redesign with deeper learning in mind makes this possible.
It Doesn’t Have to Be Hard
We talked about our overachiever desire to do something spectacular with our students. If we’re going to redesign a lesson, we thought, we need to do something that’s never been done before and end the lesson or unit with some impressive technology project to show off to as many people as possible.
Of course, that’s not the point of this process. And the redesign doesn’t have to be difficult to implement or require huge changes to lead to deeper learning. Even small tweaks to your existing lessons can open new doors for students. Changing one small part of your lesson can give students a greater opportunity to think more deeply or, if appropriate, lead them down the path of becoming creators of content rather than consumers.
Ultimately, our goal in lesson redesign is moving students from inert learning to active learning, getting away from simple test prep to acquiring knowledge that sets them up for success in the world beyond our school walls.
What Happens Next
Our journey is just beginning with this fellowship. We’re starting small to spread this work across our school district. We will learn much along the way, and I’ll be sharing our work with all of you as we go. It’s an adventure for us and, we hope, for our students, too.
Change does not happen quickly, especially in education. However, our students are worth whatever changes we can make to help them be successful and live the life of their dreams, whatever that may be. The struggle is worth it because our kids are worth it.
The Eclectic Educator is a free resource for everyone passionate about education and creativity. If you enjoy the content and want to support the newsletter, consider becoming a paid subscriber. Your support helps keep the insights and inspiration coming!
