The following is from an excerpt of a Harvard Business School interview with Sherry Turkle. Good observation. I wonder what other technologies teachers are appropriating for the classroom which are not stimulating the type of learning environment we might desire?

"In my own observations of PowerPoint in the classroom, I'm left with many positive impressions. Just as it does in business settings, it helps some students organize their thoughts more effectively and serves as an excellent note-taking device. But as a thinking technology for elementary school children, it has limitations. It doesn't encourage students to begin a conversation—rather, it encourages them to make points. It is designed to confer authority on the presenter, but giving a third or a fourth grader that sense of presumed authority is often counterproductive. The PowerPoint aesthetic of bullet points does not easily encourage the give-and-take of ideas, some of them messy and unformed. The opportunity here is to acknowledge that PowerPoint, like so many other computational technologies, is not just a tool but an evocative object that affects our habits of mind. We need to meet the challenge of using computers to develop the kinds of mind tools that will support the most appropriate and stimulating conversations possible in elementary and middle schools. But the simple importation of a technology perfectly designed for the sociology of the boardroom does not meet that challenge."

Link from Techno-News Blog