I struggle with this. I want to be teacher-friendly and give opportunities for all to learn, but I am sometimes frustrated by a few who use the call for training as an excuse for never actually trying independently. I explain that one learns more by doing it badly than by all the instruction available. However, teachers often have real difficulty with being or looking inept. How do we provide support while encouraging independent growth? Of course I also have to struggle with the fact that my relationship with technology is very different from many of the people with whom I work (who is sicker...I don't know).

I am OBSESSIVE about the rule of three, though my audience can't always figure out if it is the Holy Trinity or the Axis of Evil!

Wow! Both your post and Andrew's comment articulate the core of the issue, and probably scare many people to death! Another layer I'd like to introduce is the power of nostalgia, by which I mean assigning moral value to something based on comfort and familiarity. Staying in the library, I know how bereft I felt when the massive card catalogs were taken out and replaced by computer terminals. I had a strong feeling that this was wrong and something was being lost. Looking from today I recognize that something was lost, but there was no "wrong" to it. I don't know that the librarian position (or the teacher position as suggested by Andrew) will not reinvent itself into a new form. But our familiarity and comfort with this paradigm does not make it right or wrong. I wrote about this in my own blog http://www.platformsandparadigms.com/articles/33 Thanks for your post and for this excellent discussion!

Is it my imagination, or is the text a little more difficult to read in this version. I was having difficulty processing some of the facts before they moved on. Probably I'm just old!