If our current addictions to our iPhones and other tech is any indication, we may be setting up our children for incomplete, handicapped lives devoid of imagination, creativity and wonder when we hook them onto technology at an early age. We were the last generation to play outside precisely because we didn’t have smartphones and laptops. We learned from movement, hands-on interaction, and we absorbed information through books and socialization with other humans as opposed to a Google search.See also “Steve Jobs Was a Low-Tech Parent” (The New York Times, SEPT. 10, 2014) by Nick Bilton.
As education is about teaching a child to reason, is specifically about developing each child’s rational faculty so he can live successfully and happily as an adult, I agree with the articles: technology should be minimized in education, not maximized. In business, it should be taken advantage of, but the goal of business, noble as it is (creating and distributing human values: food, transportation, art, and so much more), is different from the goal of education.
Too many students are over-reliant on calculators and spell checkers, and on plagiarizing material on the Internet or on having someone on the Internet write a paper for them. Students are cheated of cognitive development, the ability to deal with complexity, and true self esteem as a result.