Rethinking How We Use Calculators

I read a very interesting article this week about the use of calculators in the classroom. It basically discussed the "old school" vs. the "new school" ideas of using a calculator. Being a math teacher, I can understand the ideas of both sides. I feel like there is a time and a place for the use of calculators. If students are caught up on ideas such as multiplication and division, they will never be able to move onto algebra ideas. They will continue to get problems wrong because of computation errors. If you let a student use a calculator they may be able to understand an algebra concept and be able to come up with the correct computation using the calculator. Another benefit of a calculator is students can get the point of a problem rather than just plugging in numbers. For example, when doing a graphing problem on a calculator you can easily manipulate the slope of an equation to determine exactly what is changing the shape of the graph. If you were to this by hand it might take student an entire class period to determine how the slope has changed. So, seeing the multiple graphs helps students make algebraic connections much quicker. Again, I don't think students should rely on using a calculator, however there are many benefits to using a calculator. What are your thoughts?