How Google Took Over the Classroom

This is the title of a recent NYT article, for those who missed it. It describes in great detail the questionable sales tactics the tech behemoth has used to outmaneuver Microsoft and other competitors and colonize thousands of schools (for example, pitching technology as a great eleveler - and thus inducing idealistic teachers to enlist as its unpaid sales force). All this, indeed, seems reprehensible. But the article is not asking the crucial question - what will be the effect on the brains and minds of children and adolescents of spending most of their waking hours glued to a screen? Sue Palmer's new book, Upstart, provides some scary clues - and a timely update to her groundbreaking previous book, Toxic Childhood.