Tuesday, July 23, 2013

Diane Ravitch: 3 Dubious Uses of Technology in Schools: Scientific American

Diane Ravitch: 3 Dubious Uses of Technology in Schools: Scientific American:

Diane Ravitch: 3 Dubious Uses of Technology in Schools

Technology can inspire creativity or dehumanize learning




Image: DAVID DESPAU

Technology is transforming American education, for good and for ill. The good comes from the ingenious ways that teachers encourage their students to engage in science projects, learn about history by seeing the events for themselves and explore their own ideas on the Internet. There are literally thousands of Internet-savvy teachers who regularly exchange ideas about enlivening classrooms to heighten student engagement in learning.
The ill comes in many insidious forms.
One of the malign manifestations of the new technology is for-profit online charter schools, sometimes called virtual academies. These K–12 schools recruit heavily and spend many millions of taxpayer dollars on advertising. They typically collect stat