Here are some facts: The US spends over $600 billion on the K-12 education system. Just around 0.46% of that entire budget is spent on educational software resources. Most of the content money goes in the pockets of Pearson and other big textbook publishers.
I have been an ed teach entrepreneur for over 1.5 yrs and I started building ed games for ipads over 2 years ago. I actually learnt objective-c for that purpose alone. I have tested our games and numerous other games with 100's of kids and I can unequivocally say, that in my 'subjective' experience, replacing workbooks/textbooks with ipads is much better for kids. iPads should serve as a tool to optimize education.
The argument that these teachers don't know how to use them is complete BS. For every 50 year old teacher, there is a young 23 yr old TFA graduate who is vastly superior at integrating technology. As a society, you cannot make decisions based on accommodating the ever shrinking population of teachers that is too old to work with technology.
Amplify is hardly the example of disruption, they are a big company with around a thousand employees, led by a former superintendent who greases the superintendents all over the country. They have the resources to esentially 'buy-out' schools. Schools in turn let themselves be bought out rather than evaluate all the options, due to district procurement rules. Good tehnology for ed will only be available if there is an easy way to test products in schools since most good tech is iterative. We have to go through so many barriers to do this on a school level, but I have linked up with enough good teachers who understand its value and are willing to put in the time and effort to do so.
I have faced many of the same questions from parents that this article comes up with. Those are nothing new. The question is not about tablets or or no tablets, its the fact that all computers will be tablets (or some form of touch devices) in 5 years. If that is the only computer that is going to be available to us, then schools and teachers need to learn how to assimilate it.
There are a lot of issues in the public education system. In fact, one might ask whether the compulsory Prussian-based system is still relevant and effective these days.
One thing's for sure: you're not going to fix these problems by pumping in consumer electronics into the curriculum. You'll temporarily mask it, maybe please the parents and students a little (especially the poorer ones), but ultimately you'll have accomplished nothing.
For one thing, you're offering them locked down, DRM-packed, proprietary tracking devices that give an abstracted user interface but won't give you much potential to tinker with its inner workings or hack around. Most districts go with Apple products, so even things like app development are significantly more closed.
There is no doubt that education needs to catch up with the technological world and the Web of Things that lies ahead, but it's being done in the most careless and ineffective way imaginable. To the point where it might even be hampering education.
If your objective is to make a subservient class of automatons who lack critical thinking skills, then sure, stuffing them with iPads is the way to go.
Public education should be online-integrated and technologically conscious, but in my mind what we need is a radical paradigm shift: a higher acceptance of autodidacticism and alternative education as viable learning paths. A lot of public schools teach at a very slow pace, one that more savvy kids can be ahead of with the global repository of information online (of course, most prefer social networking, but I digress).
Who knows? MOOCs might make a lot of schools obsolete soon.
What's worth noting is that the private schools which the children of the elite and the wealthy attend tend to be educated in highly selective institutions that for the most part do not utilize contemporary technology and rely on more traditional approaches to education. Perhaps there is something to be noted here.
