Don’t get us wrong. At TeachClever, we’re all about using technology to make us better, more productive teachers. For the most part, we are faster, more efficient and effective due to technology. But Andrew Kantor from USA Today points out that technology can’t, or shouldn’t replace everything. Here are four things that technology doesn’t effectively replace and what it means for teachers:

Spelling. Sure spell check is a wonderful tool for editing, but it’s easy to become dependent on it. Rather than learn to spell words correctly, we just wait for the spell check to tell us we’re wrong. So we never learn to spell those challenging words, like dependent, which I spelled wrong typing this article and let spell check fix it. And I’ll probably spell it wrong again next time.

Teaching students spelling and word study are still valuable skills. Most students will create content digitally in their futures, but there will still be a place for writing by hand. And pausing to think about the correct spelling of a word is a waste of time.

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