technology in schools

In the wake of announced budget cuts, I've been thinking about the way we (as parents, as schools, as a society) deploy our resources -- a subject that will certainly loom large for a long while. I'm no longer an educator, and certainly don't claim to be an expert on managing a classroom. But I have taught at the university and college level for many years, and I still do a lot of presentations, and it has been my experience that the prevailing certainty that technology helps people learn and keep students engaged is misplaced. In my last year teaching at York, where my classrooms were wired with all kinds of presumably very expensive A/V equipment, I went back to lecturing without any technological backup. Students complained at first, because they were accustomed to taking notes from powerpoint slides, and they found it much more difficult to process ideas and facts, and determine for themselves what they should be writing down. It was that difficulty that made them pay attention. Still, I did a bit of research and discovered that just as some universities were spending fortunes on "smart" classrooms, others were tearing out the computers and A/V systems -- because they were interfering with learning. Now that we're facing budget cuts, I've been thinking about those articles I came across. That was a couple of years ago, and I haven't been able to lay my hands on them. But I did come across this recent piece in the LA Times. If others find this line of thinking interesting, I'd be happy to dig a bit deeper. In any case, if we're looking at trying to get by with less, and we can identify something expensive that not only doesn't help a whole lot, and may even hinder learning, then perhaps we can make cuts sting considerably less.