"Most educational computer use, however, misses the real point--getting children to take initiative and think deeply." Healy, p. 130
"Instead of asking what our children will learn with computers, we also need to ask what they will become." Healy, p. 191
"Among the greater ironies of the computer age is the fact that information is cheap and accessible, and so no longer very valuable. What is valuable is what one does with it. And human imagination cannot be mechanized." --New York Times review of The Productive Edge as quoted in Oppenheimer, p. 189
"It would be nice if the challenges that parents and policy makers face when confronted with fads like school technology consisted of nothing more than the basic pedagogical questions: What is the purpose of school? What is the true nature of academic work?" Oppenheimer, p. 191
"Learning can be only partly measured quantitatively. It's an enterprise, rather, that is deeply psychological, frequently emotional, and thus inescapably subjective. To ignore this fact, to force millions of teachers and students to turn all we have learned about the mysteries of the mind and the human soul into a narrow numbers game, is an insult to science and an abrogation of social progress." Oppenheimer, p. 292
"In the quiet spaces opened up by the prolonged, undistracted
reading of a book, people made their own associations, drew their own
inferences and analogies, fostered their own ideas. They thought deeply
as they read deeply." Carr, p. 65
"Links don't just point us to related or supplemental works; they
propel us toward them. They encourage us to dip in and out of a series
of texts rather than devote sustained attention to any one of them.
Hyperlinks are designed to grab our attention. Their value as
navigational tools is inextricable from the distraction they cause."
Carr, p. 90
"In arguing that books are archaic and dispensable, Federman and
Shirky provide the intellectual cover that allows thoughtful people to
slip comfortably into the permanent state of distractedness that
defines the online life." Carr. p. 112
This page was prepared by Dr. David M. Marcovitz.
Last Updated: October 6, 2011