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Parents end up treating tablets like precision surgical instruments, gadgets that might perform miracles for their child’s IQ and help him win some nifty robotics competition—but only if they are used just so. Otherwise, their child could end up one of those sad, pale creatures who can’t make eye contact and has an avatar for a girlfriend.

our modern fear that every parenting decision may have lasting consequences—that every minute of enrichment lost or mindless entertainment indulged will add up to some permanent handicap in the future

To date, no body of research has definitively proved that the iPad will make your preschooler smarter or teach her to speak Chinese, or alternatively that it will rust her neural circuitry

Five Card Flickr.” Each drive contains a folder with five photographs downloaded from the photo-sharing website’s royalty-free photo bank. The students pop in the thumb drives and open the folders, and the images blossom on their screens: a pair of dice, a pale and lanky teenage boy, a flower, a parrot, drums, a toddler wearing huge glasses, a tropical island. In pairs, the students get to work, arranging the images in various sequences to tell a story in the form of a play. 

“I just want them to think of themselves as creators,” Vail says. “And I didn’t want them writing just another paper. I want them to use technology to actualize their ideas. To dramatize their creativity.” 

images to use as the cover page of their adaptations—like a playbill for a Broadway show