Claremore’s state senator said she wants to know how elementary school teachers across the state are using technology in the classroom.
Sen. Ally Seifried, R-Claremore, will hold a joint interim study on the topic with Rep. Chad Caldwell, R-Enid, Oct. 7 at the Oklahoma State Capitol. Seifried is vice chair of the Senate Education Committee.
Last October, Seifried and another senator brought superintendents, mental health experts and others to the Capitol for a two-day study on banning cell phones in public schools. The study inspired Senate Bill 139, the proposal that became the bell-to-bell phone ban now enshrined in state law.
Seifried said during the two years she worked to ban phones at school, she spoke to parents and teachers who suggested she also look into how laptops and other devices affect student learning. She said though she believes technology can yield great learning benefits, AI-powered educational tools are a new frontier education leaders and policymakers need to thoroughly map out.
“It’s more exploratory than, I think, any other interim study that I’ve conducted,” Seifried said. “I really don’t have any sort of preset notions of where it will go and what information I’ll learn or what policies will come out of it, if any. I can see a situation where we can say maybe the state doesn’t need to take an approach to this. But I just wanted to continue the conversation.”
Banning cell phones at school was Seifried’s top legislative priority last year. This year, she said, she is approaching the broader issue of technology in classrooms more like an academic. She said she aims to figure out how elementary teachers are using tools like Amira, an AI reading assistant available to all Oklahoma school districts, and determine whether these tools yield better outcomes than more traditional teaching methods.
In a July release announcing the study, Caldwell said its goal is to find out how students learn best. He said Oklahoma students must be prepared for a digital world, but lawmakers and schools should pause before getting rid of “fundamentals that have served generations of learners.”
Seifried said a constituent told her a year ago that their child, who follows an Individualized Educational Program, was struggling in math because the student wasn’t learning how to work out problems on paper.
“You already have someone who maybe has challenges to overcome, and then they’re trying to learn math on a screen,” Seifried said. “That really bothered me. Maybe it’s the right thing to do, maybe it’s not. When I have to do math problems, I write them out, but that’s maybe a good example of what we’re trying to study.”
Seifried said she and Caldwell are still nailing down when the study will take place and who will give testimony. She said when these details come out, people can find them at oksenate.gov or okhouse.gov.
She said she hopes the study will ignite constructive discussions about the role of technology in classrooms during the coming legislative session, which gavels Feb. 2, 2026.
“This is our chance to say these are the issues we care about and highlight them for our colleagues,” Seifried said. “It’s a time for us to be a little bit more reflective and dive deeper on the issues, instead of just having to push the red or green button.”