What is meant by classroom or instructional technology tools?
The Pro-Bond folks would like you to think that these are technology tools necessary in “modern” classrooms to “enhance and enrich students’ learning experience”. What we’re actually talking about is a bunch of absolutely unnecessary technical gadgetry, whose only real promise is to complicate classroom instruction, require more teacher training and maintenance time and cost, introduce time loss due to technical glitches that are certain to come up more frequently, make teacher-student interaction less personal and more “pushbutton” oriented, and basically to more further de-humanize the classroom environment. And all of this at a HUGE financial cost to taxpayers. Specifically what the Board is asking for in every classroom is more DVD players, digital cameras, handheld PDA devices, Infrared Class Room Performance Systems (fancy wording for handheld remotes for student feedback), Digital document imaging systems, Sound Field Systems (to amplify the teachers audio for students who refus
