STALE TASTE: We like to think that new toys will make a difference in the classroom but we would be well advised to be wary of the "classic cycle of old wine in new bottles," warns Michael Levine, in a piece by Tina Barseghian in Mind/Shift. Some tools merely adds bells and whistles to old pedagogy and focus on irrelevant metrics. "We are not exploiting the affordances of the new technology to give kids new kinds of learn-by-doing activities," notes Elliot Soloway, professor at the School of Education at the University of Michigan. School bores many kids, he adds, so just saying iPads increase students' engagement "is to say nothing," Soloway says. Bring out the Beaujolais Nouveau!
