Sensiblecity’s Weblog

Simplistic thinking is often applied to educational technology. Either it’s the greatest approach to education ever invented or it’s a waste of money. We can do better than such limited rhetoric. Too many advocates rely on weak arguments, such as “students are digital natives, so we should use more technology,” as if schools should have used radio and TV more often when earlier generations grew up with those media. Stanford University’s Larry Cuban was right to warn against the excessive “hype” one hears about the value of computers. (“The Laptop Revolution Has No Clothes,” Commentary, Oct. 18, 2006.) On the other hand, a majority of skeptics have failed to notice how quickly online schools, computer-based testing, and other powerful innovations are spreading, and how significant they are.

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