Sir, – It is good the see that the penny is dropping among educationalists that the more iPad/tablets etc are used in the learning process, the less students learn and understand ("Is the pen mightier than the keyboard?" March 31st ).
As a parent, I witnessed how once technology is introduced to the classroom, there is a tendency among some teachers to sub-contract teaching to the computer/DVD player; while students subcontract learning to their laptops.
Coincidently, research from the US has found that people who read their news on electronic devices, retain far less than those who read a physical newspaper.
As we hand over simple mental tasks like navigation and memory of numbers to computers, our brains waste away. There is now the phenomenon of e-mentia, where young people suffer memory loss and depression linked to overuse of technology.
Technology is destroying creativity among young people and causing a disconnect from nature. If William Wordsworth were alive today he might write, “I wandered lonely as a clone, my nose stuck in a mobile phone.” – Yours, etc, JOHN DEVLIN Erne Tce, Dublin 2.