I remember hearing this as late as the early 00s. I'd buy electronic dictionaries and spell checkers at yard sales and things like that, and use them in class. Multiple teachers were disapproving of it, despite it basically just being a paper book dictionary in a small, TI-92 shaped device. 10 year old me never saw how flipping through some obnoxiously heavy book in the back of the classroom was better than just punching in a few letters, hitting the "show definition", and ensuring I was spelling and using "curmudgeonly" properly.

Same went for using MacWord vs AppleWorks. MacWord had a built in dictionary, AppleWorks didn't.