Why do kids need an iPad in school? They have plenty of chances to play with electronic devices at home.
Have iPads made these kids any smart? I doubt it.
As much as we highly compensated tech people like to believe -- that everyone has access to some kind of tablet, smart phone, or computer -- it ain't so. It's not most in the disadvantaged communities who don't have such access, it is almost none.
Yes, some kids and adults come to the libraries to use computers and iPads, some for finding jobs, building resumes (adults and high school kids alike), but as users of the PC's and iPads, they are not knowledgeable at all. Further, the PCs in particular are so locked down that they are virtually impossible to use. Windows machines do not act like any windows machines you can pick up cheap at Best Buy because of the "Rube Goldberg" special security software on them. When I try to use these machines as I help the patrons navigate and get what they want done, done, I'm appalled. It would take me 3x longer to do tasks on these machines than if I did these tasks on my own machines. And for these naive users, make that 10x more difficult.
No one using such computers could ever become facile or get a feel of how the rest of us computers and why they are useful to us.
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I've been an educator for well over 20 years and one thing I've observed is that we have always been easily distracted by shiny new toys and ideas. Many times we get enamored with the stuff without any real thought as to how it will be used. I remember when "SmartBoards" were supposed to be the big thing in the classroom. We got several, then they never got used. Palm Pilots were another so-called innovation than fizzled. Even now the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) initiative has just turned into a way for kids to watch Pewdie Pie on YouTube during class and keep up on FaceBook.
In the end, it's not the stuff, it's the people.
I wholly agree with you. Perhaps I'm even more opposed to use of computers in the classroom until at least late middle school. The use of calculators in schools is actually immensely damaging to children. They don't learn how to compute by hand, they get no feel for numbers or for sketching graphs by hand. The kids don't learn to see math as it's own language and learn the rules of manipulation.
Certainly, it is a problem primarily because teachers, like most American's are "innumerate", to use John Paulos' term. Computers and calculators take away from learning what needs to be learned. Once the basics are understood, then computers become a useful tool and only then.