Swapping Blackboards for iPads: Tech in the Classroom

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As children spend more and more time hunched over screens, punching out text messages, playing online games, and updating their Facebook pages, we ask: is a tech takeover of the classroom inevitable?

Increasingly, schools are outfitting themselves with new and better equipment. More laptops. More tablets, More educational video games.

But not every school.

Last fall, the New York Times reported from Los Altos, Calif.:

The chief technology officer of eBay sends his children to a nine-classroom school here. So do employees of Silicon Valley giants like Google, Apple, Yahoo and Hewlett-Packard.

But the school’s chief teaching tools are anything but high-tech: pens and paper, knitting needles and, occasionally, mud. Not a computer to be found. No screens at all. They are not allowed in the classroom, and the school even frowns on their use at home.

So, what’s going on here? If technology enhances learning, why are technology titans taking away tech from their own kids? We delve into that question today.

Guests:

• Chris Dede, professor of learning technologies, Harvard Graduate School of Education; editor, Digital Teaching Platforms

• Brenda Matthis, director, Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Division, Lesley University

• Robert Waxler, professor of English, UMASS Dartmouth; co-author, Transforming Literacy: Changing Lives Through Reading and Writing; co-founder, Changing Lives Through Literature