Teaching in schools now means teaching in digital spaces as well as physical rooms. Most days you are moving between lesson plans, learning platforms, behaviour and welfare systems, assessment dashboards, email and chat, often while trying to keep a class focused in front of you. This page starts from that reality, not from glossy pictures of “digital natives” or ideal classrooms that never run late.
In my doctoral research I call this the Digitally Mediated Work of Teachers (DMWT). The study follows real days in a Victorian secondary school, tracing how teachers plan, record, communicate and troubleshoot across multiple platforms, and how they help one another to cope with that load. Generative AI appears in the data too, but always as one more tool dropped into an already busy digital ecology, not as a clean fresh start.
What you will find here
This section gathers posts written with classroom teachers in mind. They:
- name and describe the digital tasks that fill a teacher’s day, from the first inbox check to the last welfare note
- show how informal conversations, quick messages and shared templates are doing heavy lifting as informal digital support
- connect digital work to timetables, policies and system decisions, rather than treating it as a matter of individual attitude or skill
You will see familiar situations, such as:
- trying to teach while juggling slides, online work submission and a restless chat feed
- being the unofficial “tech person” for a subject team
- trying to keep up with behaviour, welfare and assessment recording when there is no obvious time for it
- working out how to respond when students arrive with AI generated work, or ask whether they can use AI for a task
The aim is not to tell you to “embrace technology” or “innovate”. It is to give language and structure to work you are already doing, so it becomes easier to recognise, discuss and push back on when needed.
Why this might be useful for you
If you are feeling stretched by digital work, these posts can help you:
- describe your day more clearly in workload and wellbeing conversations
- see which digital tasks are essential to student learning and safety, and which are inherited, duplicated or poorly designed
- recognise the informal support you already give and receive, and how unevenly that support can fall across a staff
You will also find practical ideas drawn from what teachers in the study were already doing. These include small ways to share digital expertise more fairly, to protect planning time from constant troubleshooting, and to support new staff without burning out the informal “go to” people.
How this connects to the rest of the site
This teacher section sits across all three pillars of the site:
- Digitally Mediated Work of Teachers names the digital tasks you are actually doing
- Informal exchange of digital practices focuses on the quiet, everyday help you give and receive from colleagues
- How schools shape digital practice looks at timetables, platform choices and policies, and how they make your digital day easier or harder
You do not need to read about all three at once. You can dip in wherever feels most relevant.
Where to start
If you are new here, you might begin with:
- What is Digitally Mediated Work in a School
- The Digital Morning, How Teachers Start the Day
- Five Ways Teachers Quietly Learn Digital Tricks From Each Other
- The Hidden Cost of Being the “Go To” Tech Teacher
You can read a single piece in a lunch break, or come back to them when you have more time. There is no sequence you have to follow.
If something here feels true to your experience, or if there is a gap you want addressed, you are welcome to get in touch through the contact page. The goal is simple, to make the hidden digital work of teachers more visible, starting from what your day is actually like.
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Dominic Brash 