My oldest son is 12 and has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). He was diagnosed with that and a couple of other learning disabilities when he was in kindergarten. The great news is that through special education resources at our local public school, he's been able to overcome his disabilities, with the exception of some fine-motor skills such handwriting (or in his case, the lack thereof).

Where we live, “middle school” runs from the sixth grade to the eighth. Given that our son had not only handwriting challenges but the everyday challenges that most 10-and-11 year-olds face in getting themselves organized, we jumped at the chance to put him in our middle school's “Laptop Program” when he matriculated. The school forced us to buy an overpriced laptop from a specific company that sells overpriced products to schools, but we had high hopes that the program itself would create an organizational paradise in the Hartley home and overcome my son's handwriting issues.

Paradise was never found.

The laptop program was poorly thought out. Although every teacher had to maintain a Web site that documented nightly homework requirements, each teacher had a different way of doing this. There was no consistency whatsoever. Some teachers had too much homework and expected us to understand the intricacies of their specific class Web site. Others barely updated their sites. Even though the laptop forced upon us included a calendar tool as part of its software package, the school didn't use it. So instead of students subscribing to each class calendar and then getting a single aggregated view of the calendar on their laptops, we had to search six different Web sites every night to see what homework was required. To add insult to injury, none of the software tools used by the school's laptop program really required the particular overpriced laptop that we'd been required to buy. All of the software was Web-based. In other words, we could have accessed it via any laptop running any operating system.

This is not a rant about the school. What I learned in working with the teachers is that they have no time or support to manage all of this technology. They work incredibly long hours in the classroom, so any work they do on the computer has to happen after hours. They assign too much homework, and don't understand how to turn a computer into a learning tool, but that's a subject for a future blog entry.

The point is that the laptop didn't deliver on Paradise. Sure, it was expensive and booted up and ran programs and accessed email and the Internet. The problem was that we, as parents, had placed too much hope on a single tool. A laptop doesn't teach—teachers do. Learning how to use a word processor is not learning how to write. Nor is learning how to create a PowerPoint presentation is not learning how to present or to think or to persuade. In fact, as a tool, a television with compelling content can probably teach more than a computer with access to the Internet and an office automation suite.

This is why I'm so supportive of Curriki.org. Curriki is an online environment that's about sharing curriculum created by teachers and other teaching professionals. It's free. It's global. It's a community of educators helping other educators with high-quality teaching resources that may or may not be delivered by computers, but that will focus on the purpose of education: learning topics, rather than learning tools. Current offerings on Curriki range from lesson plans, assessments and media clips to complete textbooks, all available at no cost. Anyone can join Curriki. In fact, Curriki and the AARP are collaborating to encourage retired educators who are subject matter experts to share their curriculum, review content curricula, and help train teachers. The focus is the content.

When he was in seventh grade, we moved our son to a school that had smaller classes. His entire seventh grade class is now 22 students. They do not allow the use of laptops in the classroom. Despite that, we've noticed no adverse impact on my son's academic performance. The lack of computers is, however, forcing him to improve his handwriting skills.

My son's story is far from over. We'll see how it develops, but the one thing we've learned so far is this: The tool is not the teacher.