This is an important point from Natalie Wexler

Bad ideas about learning existed before ed tech!

A lot of ed tech turbo charges the bad ideas, it’s true.

But there are genuinely good reasons why you might want ed tech. For me the best reason is scale. Providing consistently high quality instruction for millions of students is fiendishly hard. I don’t think any system in the world has managed it, ever, so it’s legitimate to ask if technology can help.

That doesn’t have to mean students staring at screens all the time. But it does mean being honest about the flaws of the pre-tech system.