TI - Technology ... Does Not Compute

One of my favorite tools to use for math is my calculator. More specifically, the TI-89 Titanium. I first came across this calculator in my calculus class in high school. I asked my teacher about it and he said that it is a very advanced calculator that can do pretty much any mathematical calculation including finding limits, deriving, and integration equations. Of course, these are skills that I learned in the classroom, but imagine a world where learning these skills didn't matter and that we could use machines to do everything for us. Let me rewind just a bit.

I'm back in high school in this new world where learning skills was not practical and instead, technology was the only thing we needed to learn. Let's refer back to my calculus class. "Today class, we will be learning about  the "finding limits" function on our TI-89 calculators. You may be thinking, 'shouldn't we learn how to do this on paper first?'. The answer is (in this alternate world) of course not. Why would we need to learn the skills when we can obtain the answers using this pocket sized computer".

Perhaps we should look at history. "Ok class, we will be taking a test today on the civil war. Since we have our wonderful technology at our disposal, you may use your Ipads during the test. You don't need to have this information memorized because in the real world, you will always have a computer (such as the Ipad) to look up the information."

Hmm, something about this universe doesn't seem right. It appears that technology has taken over and people are not learning. Sure, we have the information already, so why bother learning it? Makes you think, huh?