Teaching now involves a huge amount of screen time. Emails, Teams, registers, data systems, lesson planning, reports, PowerPoints, online homework and safeguarding systems all keep teachers tied to a computer.
Most of that is not going away. The more realistic aim is to reduce the screen time that is unnecessary, repetitive or simply not helping you teach any better.
1. Do not have email open all day
Check it at sensible points instead. Constantly seeing new messages arrive makes it much harder to concentrate on the job you were already doing.
2. Plan the lesson before opening PowerPoint
Spend a few minutes deciding what pupils need to learn, how you will explain it and what questions they will answer. Then use the computer to support that plan rather than allowing slide-making to become the planning.
3. Stop rebuilding lessons that already work
If you taught the topic successfully last year, start there. A few changes are usually enough.
4. Accept that not every slide needs improving
Moving a text box, changing a font or finding a better image can easily consume fifteen minutes without improving the lesson.
5. Use the textbook when it does the job
If the textbook already has a clear diagram, explanation or set of questions, let pupils use it rather than reproducing the same material on a screen.
6. Keep a paper notebook beside your computer
Write down jobs, reminders and ideas as they occur to you instead of constantly switching between tabs, emails and apps.
7. Batch your computer jobs
Do your emails together, then your data entry, then your lesson preparation. Constantly jumping between tasks can leave you on the computer for much longer.
8. Walk over and speak to somebody occasionally
If a colleague is nearby, a thirty-second conversation may solve something more quickly than writing and waiting for an email.
9. Mark in the simplest sensible way
Sometimes digital marking is useful. Sometimes writing a quick comment in a book or giving whole-class verbal feedback is faster. Use the method that suits the task rather than automatically choosing the digital one.
10. Keep useful documents easy to find
A lot of teacher screen time is not productive work at all. It is searching for last year’s worksheet, the latest version of a policy or a file called Lesson 4 final FINAL 2.
11. Use recurring templates
Have a standard format for quizzes, worksheets, lesson slides, reports and common emails. Starting from a template is much quicker than starting from nothing.
12. Turn notifications off while you are planning
You can still check Teams and email later. You do not need to know the second somebody sends you a message.
13. Do some planning away from the computer
A piece of paper is often enough to sketch a lesson sequence, write questions, work through a calculation or think about misconceptions.
14. Leave some resources deliberately plain
A worksheet containing ten good questions does not need icons, borders and decorative graphics. Sometimes plain is quicker and clearer.
15. Use your non-screen jobs as a genuine break
Photocopying, setting up practical equipment, looking through exercise books or organising resources can give your eyes and attention a useful change of focus.
16. Avoid automatically taking the laptop home
If there is nothing genuinely urgent, leave it at school occasionally. Simply having it nearby can create the feeling that you ought to be doing something.
17. Notice when you are still on the computer but no longer achieving much
This is probably the biggest one. There is a point in the evening when planning becomes tweaking, email checking becomes scrolling and useful work becomes sitting in front of a screen because there is always something else you could do.
Computers are essential to modern teaching, so this is not about becoming a screen-free teacher.
It is about noticing the difference between screen time that genuinely saves time and screen time that quietly consumes it.
If ten minutes with a pen, a textbook or a colleague will do the job, the laptop does not always need to win.
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