“The idea that an app on an iPad can better teach my kids to read or do arithmetic, that’s ridiculous.”
In my experience this may be empirically false. My 4 year old could barely count, but after spending 2 months in the summer playing a couple of iPad games, he's adding 2 digit numbers and subtracting 1 digit numbers, and doing simple math puzzles. His elder brother couldnt do those till Kindergarten, and I dont think the difference was aptitude.
When I think back to when I was in first or second grade I can see a direct correlation between technology and the areas I've always excelled at. For instance, I've always been very strong in History. When I was at an elementary school level I would come home and play World War 2 themed video games, Oregon Trail, Age of Empires, etc. this sparked huge amounts of interest in me, and led me deeper into these subjects. My parents told me a story about how when I was in third grade my class got to go to our school library. I went up to a librarian, and asked her for a book on The French resistance in Paris during the Nazi occupation. The reason why I asked? I had been playing the medal of honor video game. So from my end, I think technology can definitely be a boon to education, as long as you're making sure that the content that children are getting from them is good.
Yeah, I learned my early math skills primarily by playing math games on a Mac 128k. That person doesn't know what they're talking about - interactive teaching systems can be engaging in a way that pen/paper has no hope of matching.
Playing "Maths Circus" and Lemmings on beige macs were the most powerful educational tools for teachers to use as a reward for good work to get me to perform well. Sadly that stopped a grade or two later, and my interest dropped, and so did my performance.
Hopefully soon our computational freedoms for big actual work won't be relegated to computer monitors. Laptops and tablets are great, but they make you focus/stare at one area for a long time. There is often a wall behind that monitor, we are basically staring at it, for many hours, most of my adult life is staring at a wall.
There's a Microsoft Research concept video that showed people interacting with computational environments within their natural environment. Statistical information could be represented for any data needed, and people were not bound to their seats. Problem is, I don't see things being able to change much for people that work in the terminal.
Basically, what I am trying to say with my thoughts is, the positives of both worlds will interwine and the negatives of both will mostly disappear.
On the other hand, “[...] if you learn to write on paper, you can still write if water spills on the computer or the power goes out.” (last sentence from the article)
I've had success with Monkey Math, Math Bingo and Rocket Math, and later Grow Your Garden. I should say its not that you let your 4 yr old unattended with these games, but you work with him - teach him methods but dont give him solutions, stop before he's bored, and definitely let him have some fun time also.
In my experience this may be empirically false. My 4 year old could barely count, but after spending 2 months in the summer playing a couple of iPad games, he's adding 2 digit numbers and subtracting 1 digit numbers, and doing simple math puzzles. His elder brother couldnt do those till Kindergarten, and I dont think the difference was aptitude.