A School That's Too High on Gizmos.

Welsh, P. (2008, February 10). A School That's Too High on Gizmos. Washington Post . Retrieved December 9, 2010, from http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/08/AR2008020803271.html
This article from the Technology section of the Washington Post is about a school in Alexandria, Virginia that is brand new, and has almost every technological gizmo available.   Instead of being happy many of the teachers are depressed and feel that they are not really reaching their students because they are forced to use the technology.  Some say that they don’t have any connection with their administrators since the main form of communication is email rather than face to face conversations.  A math teacher complained that he believes the administrators think that a computer that will just spit out the answer will make math easier, but that learning math is actually hard work, and needs to be worked out piece by piece.  Social Studies teachers complain that students think that class is just guessing right and that writing has deteriorated as students don’t put real work into their writing, just “one draft, spell-check, send and pray.”
This article confirms some of my own prejudices about technology in the classroom.  It is a tool, not a magic wand.  Students like everybody else respond more strongly to actual human interaction, looking at people in the eye and not hiding behind a screen and keyboard.  We are living in a profoundly technological age, and we are still learning how to use the technologies efficiently.  Yet a certain “technolust” as the one mentioned in this article remains.  We as educators need to note that making things easier for our students may in fact being doing them a disservice, because it is often the process at arriving at the right answer, and not the answer itself where the real learning lies.