Who really benefits from putting high-tech gadgets in classrooms?
How much genuine value is there in fancy educational electronics? Don't let companies or politicians fool you.
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U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan, left, and FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski speak at a Digital Learning Day event sponsored in part by Google, Comcast, AT&T and Intel. (Mark Wilson, Getty Images / February 5, 2012)
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Something sounded familiar last week when I heard U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan and FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski make a huge pitch for infusing digital technology into America's classrooms.
Every schoolchild should have a laptop, they said. Because in the near future, textbooks will be a thing of the past.
Where had I heard that before? So I did a bit of research, and found it. The quote I recalled was, "Books will soon be obsolete in the schools.... Our school system will be completely changed in 10 years."
The revolutionary technology being heralded in that statement wasn't the Internet or the laptop, but the motion picture. The year was 1913, and the speaker, Thomas Edison, was referring to the prospect of replacing book learning with instruction via the moving image.
He was talking through his hat then, every bit as much as
Every schoolchild should have a laptop, they said. Because in the near future, textbooks will be a thing of the past.
The revolutionary technology being heralded in that statement wasn't the Internet or the laptop, but the motion picture. The year was 1913, and the speaker, Thomas Edison, was referring to the prospect of replacing book learning with instruction via the moving image.
He was talking through his hat then, every bit as much as