75% of the school day spent using iPads - an inhuman thing?

“[It] destroys memory [and] weakens the mind, relieving it of…work that makes it strong. [It] is an inhuman thing.”  Plato quoting Socrates in 500 B.C. Greece. The “it” in the quote is writing.

I was a bit horrified at this title "Glued to the screen: A third grade class where kids spend 75% of the day on iPads." What is this teacher thinking? was my knee-jerk reaction. A parent who allowed his child to spend 75% of her leisure time "glued to a screen" would be dunned as irresponsible.

But on reflection, I thought about how the students were using the iPads. The devices were their:

Textbooks
Free reading books
Notebooks and pencils
Worksheets
Whiteboards
Discussion forums
Games

All very common and unremarkable activities in an elementary classroom. It's just that a single device has now replaced a number of tools. Are kids simply be spending more time on screens because the screens can do so many different things?

I've often commented that parenting has become more difficult when it comes to regulating the amount of "screen time" they allow their children. When I was a parent of young children, the "screen" of screen time was pretty much a television screen, sometimes with a VCR or game console attached. My grandchildren today are staring at small screens on which they may be reading a classic novel, doing research, or writing an essay just as easily as they could be playing a game.

I would say that one important question that remains unsettled is how reading on a device may be different from reading on paper. In "Being a Better Online Reader," Konnikova in The New Yorker writes:

The shift from print to digital reading may lead to more than changes in speed and physical processing. It may come at a cost to understanding, analyzing, and evaluating a text.

Hmmm, much of this "research" strangely echo's Socrate's concern from 2500 years ago.

Different is not always worse.