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Technology Has Its Place: Behind a Caring Teacher - Commentary - The Chronicle of Higher Education

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I agree with this, and hope we eventually realize that technology-driven education (often how online is marketed) is a mistake. Technology should support pedagogy, not drive it. And, no matter what some universities claim, they are letting the technology lead, especially because they view online education as a revenue stream.
Technology Has Its Place: Behind a Caring Teacher - Commentary - The Chronicle of Higher Education: After millennia of experimentation, we know a great deal about how people learn. We know that the best learning involves practices—lots of them. We know that effective learning is best achieved through the engagement of other deeply attentive human beings. The learning might occur in a traditional classroom, but it might happen in a different space: a lab, a mountain stream, an international campus, a cafeteria, a residence hall, a basketball court. 
No PowerPoint presentation or elegant online lecture can make up for the surprise, the frisson, the spontaneous give-and-take of a spirited, open-ended dialogue with another person. Hannah Arendt was correct: "For excellence, the presence of others is always required."
Obviously, I support using technology in education. I support asynchronous online education in special circumstances, and I definitely embrace hybrid approaches that use online education as a way to "free up" the classroom time for discussion and exploration.

Some people can and do learn in isolation, using books, computer-based training, and other materials. For those people, technology is the new self-guided study book. But, technology cannot replace the classroom.

College is much more than memorizing facts. College is about discovery, which occurs with other people.
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