A large part of my job is working with school districts to build their capacity to support personalized and digital learning for all students. In discussing this transition with a parent group, one concerned mother brought up an intriguing question, “If the entire school is ‘going digital’, how much screen time is my child going to get every day? My pediatrician only recommends two hours a day.”

The inaugural Digital Learning Annual Conference (DLAC) took place on April 1-3, 2019, and one of the highlights of the event for me was the prominent and focused conversation around research and evidence. In fact, DLAC kicked off with a research community meeting, which attracted almost 50 attendees representing roles from across the digital learning sector. Teachers, administrators, policy makers, service providers, developers, and, of course, researchers attended the meeting to learn more about the existing evidence, as well as how to better connect research and practice.

Honestly, both my conversation with and subsequent column in The Hechinger Report may have focused more on the difficulty of research and educational innovation, and not enough on the importance of building an evidence base. Evidence is the only way to determine which innovations are promising and effective, and integrating evidence helps prevent practitioners from implementing ineffective ideas, like the 1 development project found to have statistically negative effects in the i3 evaluation.