5 Tech Integration Mistakes—and What to Do Differently Next Time

Former teacher Michelle Singh once believed that great teaching meant always having everything airtight and under control. If a lesson didn’t go as planned or students disengaged part of the way through, she took it personally. But even with extensive planning, perfection is unattainable, writes veteran educator Jason DeHart. The reality of the classroom demands that teachers develop resilience, he says, dynamically rolling with the unexpected and “giving ourselves permission to play—to try, to fail, to try again.”

That sounds straightforward, but giving yourself permission to slip up or allowing things to get messy (especially in front of 30-odd students) can go against every instinct. This tension feels particularly acute when you’re integrating technology into a lesson, as variables outside your control—an unexpected power or internet outage, persistent off-task behavior, a handful of uncharged Chromebooks, forgotten log-in passwords—can derail even your best-laid plans.

For many, the frustration caused by these setbacks can feel like it outweighs the benefits. But seasoned educators tell us that these moments are part of the learning curve. Everyone has stumbled through a tech disaster or two (or 12), Kristen Merrill, a sixth-through-eighth-grade language arts teacher, told me: “There’s so much pressure. But when you’re seeing people post on social media, we’re not showing you all the things that went wrong. We’re just showing you the final outcomes.”

These hiccups aren’t signs to drop tech altogether, instructional technology coach Heidi Samuelson told me—they’re signals that you’re doing the hard work of learning. “Our first attempts in learning often result in failure,” Samuelson said. “Try again. You’ll learn something new.” And while some tech integration stumbles are inevitable and part of the process, others are preventable—if you know what to watch out for.

We asked educators, from teachers to tech coaches, to share common tech integration snafus and the most effective strategies for avoiding them.

Keeping Up With the Edtech Joneses

The fail: While there’s tremendous value in learning from colleagues and observing what works in other classrooms, it can be tempting to replicate everything you see, Merrill said. “In a language arts classroom, there are very specific tools and apps that would make my classroom thrive,” she says. “But if you teach third-grade science, there’s things you’re going to use that just aren’t going to apply to me. It’s really easy to get together with other teachers, to hear them talking about certain tools and think, ‘Why am I not using those?’” When implementation doesn’t go well, the resulting frustration can feel like an indictment of tech integration as a whole when the real problem is that you’re “trying to put a square peg in a round hole.”

What to do differently: Those educators who seem to effortlessly utilize multiple tech tools didn’t build their skills overnight, Merrill said. Start small and create your tech tool kit piece by piece. After finding one tool that fits your context well, stick with it for a while, she suggests. “Then the next year, like a whole year later, you can add a new one.” It’s still valuable to learn about new tools and stay informed, but you don’t have to implement everything with students right away. Let your instructional goals—not the technology—guide your choices, eighth-grade history teacher Jessica Faubion told me: “Do not use technology just to use it. We need to teach the content, and when we’re integrating technology, we need to ensure we’re still doing that.”

Forgetting to Walk a Mile in Their (Digital) Shoes

The fail: If you’re refining a lesson plan on your teacher device at home, it’s easy to test all the links and features—only to discover midclass that students are blocked from accessing a website or encounter an entirely different layout on the student view of a platform. And when students and teachers have different devices, that can increase the complexity, Samuelson said: “I might be planning my lesson on a laptop, but what does it look like on a student’s iPad?”

Forgetting to “put on the student hat,” as instructional technology educator Crystal Uhiren says, means potentially missing critical friction points that could derail a lesson or create unnecessary frustration. For example, “How many clicks does it take to reach assignments in a learning management system like Canvas?” she asks. “If it takes too many, students can lose their path or struggle to find what they need.”

What to do differently: “Grab a student device and complete the assignment yourself,” Uhiren suggests. Even better if you can do this while using school Wi-Fi to ensure that links are accessible. While working through the assignment as a student, Uhiren tries to anticipate tech issues a student could run into, like trouble saving files or editing documents. “I can ask AI to create a simple troubleshooting guide for common problems associated with certain applications,” she says. “This helps students feel more confident and reduces frustration.”

Off-Task Behavior Is Overtaking My Classroom

The fail: When she asks preservice teachers what they fear most about technology in the classroom, off-task behavior on student-assigned devices tops the list, writes Julie Daniel Davis, an edtech adjunct instructor. “When teachers feel like they are policing more than they are teaching, technology is seen as a stumbling block in their classrooms,” she explains.

The instinct is often to swing to one extreme or the other: either allowing the behavior to continue (which can derail the lesson and normalize disruption) or shelve devices entirely. While removing devices can help “teachers feel more in control of the learning environment,” Davis acknowledges, it can also rob students of the opportunity to develop core digital competencies they’ll need in the future.

What to do differently: Clear expectations, effective routines, and fair consequences are key. From the first day, Davis models exactly how she will respond to off-task behavior. Maintaining an active presence—circulating in the room as students use devices—helps minimize off-task behavior, allowing you to provide support as needed while quickly addressing disruptions. “If I walk past a student’s desk and move their laptop to a 45-degree angle or close the lid, they are to leave the device that way until I change the angle or I permit them to do so,” Davis explains. Similarly, Merrill will swiftly remove device privileges in response to off-task behavior and provide a (much less appealing) alternative to the activity: “‘Here’s an eight-page article—you can read the whole thing.’ I’ve only had to do that maybe a handful of times. The whole class sees, and they’re thinking, ‘I don’t want that.’”

Strategic implementation of technology (including the decision not to use tech at all) can also help reduce off-task behavior, Merrill said. When teaching particularly challenging material, for example, you can avoid compounding students’ cognitive load by not simultaneously introducing a difficult or unfamiliar tech tool. “That can cause a kid to not do what they’re supposed to do or fall behind,” she says—less because they’re choosing to be distracted and more because they’re confused, lost, or overwhelmed.

Rushing to the Rescue

The fail: Faced with tech difficulties, students often look to an adult for support. If teachers always jump in to help, they can find themselves playing tech whack-a-mole, troubleshooting minor issue after minor issue while precious instructional time ticks away. “What’s super-stressful is all the questions and only like one or two of them I’m really needed for,” Merrill said. It can be tempting to fix the problem yourself, but it’s important for students to have a degree of intellectual curiosity and self-reliance about their devices, writes middle school teacher-librarian Shannon Engelbrecht: “We won’t always be there to help them.”

What to do differently: For simple tasks students will repeat often—like printing a document or searching for an assignment in their email—walk them through the process verbally while they complete the steps on their own device, Engelbrecht says: “Plug that USB cord into your Chromebook and bring up the doc. Then select Print and find the printer in the drop-down. Don’t worry, I’ll be sure you find it.” If students struggle, she’ll help but won’t hover. “The next time they come in, I tell them to give it a try while I continue working.”

Another solution is to create a culture where students support each other, ensuring that common tech issues get resolved quickly while you focus on more urgent matters. “Find the experts in your class by asking for help with common tech tasks; ask if anyone can model creating browser bookmarks for the class,” Engelbrecht suggests. “With the expert’s permission, teachers can encourage other students to ask them for help where needed.”

Murphy’s Law of Edtech

The fail: You think you’ve nailed an intentional, thoughtful, tech-integrated lesson design, and you’ve learned from past mistakes by choosing a familiar tool, testing the lesson on a student device, and anticipating potential roadblocks. Then, on the day, it happens: Your own laptop battery is dead. To top it all off, your admin walks in to observe your class. “I remember that day—you freak out,” Faubion said: “‘Oh my God. I have everything on that computer.’”

What to do differently: A sudden internet outage. Multiple student devices glitching. A tech tool’s platform is down for maintenance. None of these issues will throw you off as long as you have a backup plan, writes Andrew Marcinek, a districtwide director of technology. Keeping an “analog version of your scheduled activity” allows you to maintain the pace of the class and keep students on track, he says. “What was the task? What was the skill that you were using that platform for?” Merrill said. “Students are supposed to be having discussions on Padlet? Give them all three Post-its and they’re going to write on them. If it was research, take the class to the library.”

Backup plans aren’t just for technical issues, says multigrade teacher Megan Ryder. Creating a plan for what students will do if they finish the lesson early ensures a seamless transition from one activity to the next: “I keep a full board dedicated to what they could do when they’re done.”