Apple is the leading promoter of replacing traditional textbooks with e-books and electronic devices, according to Michael Hiltzik, L.A. Times columnist ("Hyping Tech Will Not Help Students," Feb. 5, 20212). Consequently, the value of "fancy educational electronics" in the classroom is "commercially processed claptrap," Hiltzik says. Digital classrooms are just another fad, Hiltzik adds, and pushing technology in schools is not driven by pedagogical concerns, but pure corporate profitability. Additionally, wannabe tech educators and innovators make no effort to integrate groundbreaking technology in the classroom, Hiltzik maintains. Drives for digital classrooms are as effective, he claims, as "snake oil."
Snake oil? Technology
has transformed the world more over the past fifty years than all prior
historical eras combined, with more people collaborating, competing in real time across global
borders than any time in history. Tech-savvy students today are not only the
first global, digital generation, but have never known life without the
Internet. Yet many old-fashioned public schools still teach to a world of the
past. Curricula developed fifty to one hundred years ago
fails to suffice, or entice the largest, most diverse, digital
demographic of students ever enrolled in high schools and colleges.
More than ever, teachers have the
crucial task of making learning meaningful in the digital age.
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