What a fascinating discussion.  Thanks for bringing up the topic, Peter.  A very intriguing NY article as well.  I have been teaching for 20 years now.  When I started, everyone was talking about Student-Based Learning; then it was the Communicative Approach, then Topic-Based Learning, then Teaching for Understanding, then CLIL, now everyone around here is talking about Enquiry Based Learning.

I started working in a Montessori school last year.  Her approach encompassed all these �fads� and more a hundred years ago.  The Montessori Method encourages resisting the use of computers until the students can dominate the use of books.  I definitely use computers in my classroom for phonics and reading and I use a lot of instructional videos on Youtube.  But it�s only one small part of what my students engage in during class time.   They still need to read, write, talk, build, explore, play, etc. etc.  Learning to speak English is learning to function successfully in an environment where English is used and computers are only one small part of that, I think.