Using tech also meant you got an iPad because otherwise teachers and IT would be overwhelmed. That the kids were already much more apt at using such devices was secondary.
In the context of general education I can understand the strategy, it could be a useful learning environment, but certainly not if it is about digital education, tech knowledge or general engineering. Nobody becomes an engineer in a prison, you need to give your users freedom.
An iPad absolutely doesn't make kids "better at technology", if anything it makes them worse because it just wraps everything up in a braindead simple package for consumption.
Ironically, Gen Z was supposed to lead the way as "digital natives", but in many ways they are (speaking broadly) much less technically adapt than, say, Gen Xers, because Gen Xers had to struggle to figure stuff out because it hadn't been all wrapped up with a bow yet, and thus we got to understand the details of how thing worked at a deeper, more fundamental level.
I recall reading some articles about how many Gen Zers new to the workplace didn't even understand how file systems or directories worked, because things like iPads largely hide those details from the end user.
And to emphasize, I'm not dumping on Gen Z - they're, like everyone, just a product of the environment they grew up in. But I strongly disagree that getting access to an iPad makes anyone more technologically adept.
20 year olds are bewildered when they see me opening a computer and replacing stuff instead of bringing it to a shop. "Where did you learn to do that?" It used to be the only way, everybody with a computer did it. The strange thing is that it's still possible but they don't think about it.
It's simply not true at all that everyone who owned a (i'll be generous and assume you're talking about PCs) computer serviced their own computer upgrades and part swaps. In the 80s and 90s most people would take the whole PC to the store and get a whole new PC. The consumer market has always been dominated by pre-builts.
About as neat a trick as opening a slot machine, pulling out the mech and fixing a jam.
There is a massive qualitative difference between API knowledge and foundational knowledge. The former is tied to the usefulness of the platform, the person with a macbook or an iphone looks at you the same way you look at a person fixing their car or slot machine. I for one am sick of the gross fetishization nerds do of cheap knowledge.
The same thing that makes your knowledge useful (usable) is the same thing that makes it useless (negative utility). You can only change your likely PC parts because it's long been standardized and a whole industry has ossified around those standards. You've confused learning about computers with learning about a standard. Someone else would roll their eyes at your statement, "well duh of course you can't take an IBM 360/40 to the shop"
In the context of general education I can understand the strategy, it could be a useful learning environment, but certainly not if it is about digital education, tech knowledge or general engineering. Nobody becomes an engineer in a prison, you need to give your users freedom.