Using a computer/Ipad, whatever is all well and good, BUT it's expensive to supply every student with one. Depending on the district, many kids will already have one that will likely be of better quality than those a school district can afford and so you already have issues.

That's leaving aside the the issues of being glued to yet another screen all day and not be able to bring the device home. 

I just retired from teaching after 37 years and I can tell you that the gimmicks just never stop coming down the pike -- whiteboards, Powerpoint, on-line classes, Cornell note-taking, webbing, the COW, focus correction areas, Essential Question, Mastery Objective, Common Core, Frameworks, Know, Understand,Do -- all accompanied by acronyms up the WAZOO (Where All Zany Oddness Overloads).

There's generally something of value to be gleaned from most of these, but buying fully into any and all of them is inevitably a recipe for disaster. 

We're moving toward a theory and practice of education that refuses to acknowledge the importance of a teacher and a community of learners, which certainly enhances many a bottom line, but does nothing for the notion that learning should involve the development of one's ability to work with others toward the achievement of a mutual goal, an achievement whose whole is larger than the sum of its parts. Developing that ability means being able to offer and defend opinions face-to-face as well. That's a lost art in the days of on-line courses and anonymous teachers. Sad.

Back to texts: I taught a Shakespeare class for almost 30 years, and, once the Internet made it practicable, would print out, copy and three-hole punch the plays. My students kept them in a three-ring binder. We used them as scripts for performing in class, but the kids could also (and I insisted they did) incorporaate into the texts notes, annotations, definitions, anything we discussed. In general, I let them use those notes on quizzes and tests. One result was that they really "owned" those plays. Touching and writing on a text make a huge difference, as does reading and enacting the words. (And that doesn't go just for plays.)

Can't do that if the text is on a screen. Not as easy to read from in front of class, either.

Before I had the 'Net, I used the Folger paperbacks, but insisted, to the kids' astonishment, that they write in them. They'd been conditioned not to over many years of education, but far from "vandalizing" the books, they were adding to their value for the classes to come. Over the years, many a kid had a chance to sound like a brain wehn I would ask a question for which his or her book contained the answer. Plus, if I did not mention something that was in their books, they'd stop and ask me about it.

Each book was a little like an archaelogical dig. And it added the "F-word" to school.

"Fun."

PS: Ever notice how people who make Powerpoints as a supplement or illustration simply read them to you? It's a step backwards from true communication: the room is dark, a voice reads to you as you read along, they never vary from the script (since they don't really understand the gobbledy-gook they've copied from someone else). And in the 21st century, that's "running a meeting" or "teaching."

You are so right on this and this is one of the many sad things that I learned in the past few years and I echo your statements here with a sadness in my heart.

Which Marx Bros are you quoting?

Teaching creationism because evolution is a "theory" is like giving equal time to flat-earthers and Holocaust deniers. 

Because the women in his life weren't content to merely be his sexual playthings, but insisted on being fully-rounded human beings, with thoughts and opinions and needs and wants and all that other pesky stuff.

Just googled him. Another talent destroyed by drugs. 

A xenomorph by any other name...