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These can be abused, but anything can. I've sat through many worthless classes watching videos or filmstrips.

On the other hand, if they are used appropriately, I think this could work well. From what I've read about the programs, they allow kids to progress at their own paces. It won't beat personal attention by a parent or tutor but it will be more than they'll get in a 30-student babysitting session, I mean, class period.

I also wonder why you claim computers short circuit one's ability to think. Well-written educational software, even some games, has the opposite effect. I remember playing "Where in the world is Carmen Sandiago?" and getting something out of it. In college I used Mathematica to simplify equations that would have taken hours by hand. Yes, we did learn those techniques by hand, and applied them to many exercises--but when it came time to apply them to realistic (non-toy) situations, the computer enabled that to happen.

I'm not claiming they won't be abused; kids will play mindless games instead, steal them, etc. Teachers will use them as babysitters. I am claiming that if used effectively they can be an aid to learning rather than a hinderance. Or, just plain clueless teachers and students will spend hours trying to plug things in and turn things on instead of getting to any learning material (reminds me of high school calculus and the big box o' graphing calculators).

But then again, we could all go back to grunting at each other and drawing in the dirt. My point is that students should be comfortable with current technologies AND still know the theory behind things. The smart kids always have and will continue to do this, and the dumb kids never did even before computers entered the classroom.

If I ran the world, students would never see a computer in school. The point is to learn how to think, computers short-circuit that.

Part of me tends to agree. But the reality is that ANY job that pays a dime, involves having a PC on your desk and knowing how to make productive use of it. One still needs the basics to succeed as well, but to me computeR is the fourth "R".