Originally Posted by Irena
As a mother of a very bright boy with physical and neurological limitations to his ability to physically write it saddens me and downright frightens me, to hear a teacher say she absolutely refuses to consider ipads for the classroom frown

I realized after I posted that I should have explained my position more. I am NOT opposed to the use of technology in my classroom - I teach STEM classes and use it a lot. I allow students to use technology of any kind in my room if it helps them learn. BUT the idea of a school buying ipads for kids instead of textbooks and believing that it is going to increase test scores and make teachers better teachers is what I oppose. In my experience, when a school is pushing for ipads over textbooks or any technology over training teachers to be better teachers it is a bad idea and only results in more bad teaching going on.
I am sorry I wasn't clear in my original post. A big problem in education is the idea that technology alone will "cure" schools' woes and administrators, as well as companies push stuff onto teachers who have too much on their plates already and who could really benefit more from teacher training than from another gadget to figure out how to handle.