Posted on 09/11/2014 12:49:14 AM PDT by lee martell
Experience the power of a bookbook
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOXQo7nURs0
Watched over 9.7 million times.
Advantages to both, really.
I do, like you, prefer physical books when possible. I think one of the advantages of a physical text for students is there is less risk of distraction.
Like you said, students now a used to “swimming in the digital sea,” which means they have to resist checking their Facebook or email or twitter while they are studying. Or worse, they get caught in the ever widening spiral of related sites if they are looking up something for an assignment. No chance of doing that with paper and ink.
On the other hand, tablets have the advantage, assuming the teacher has their act together, of permitting self paced learning. You can instantly see who needs help and who is racing ahead and needs more challenging material. They stop the cookie cutter, one size fits all, approach to education. It’d be the nearest thing to home schooling the public school system could get.
My kids learned math using a REAL textbook. Hasn’t seemed to handicap them...at all.
But if others take the bait on this “technology” trap, so be it.
I like to use both in conjunction. Reading a textbook helps me absorb more information, whereas online textbooks often have great study tools built in. I retain the most information by using both.
An electronic device requires turning it on and (for the most part) sitting to read, perhaps being distracted by a blip on the screen, and the hassle of turning from one page to another electronically if you're trying to 'digest' something.
You're also subliminally prepared to turn it off after reading whereas a book can just fall to the floor
50% of the time with a physical book, your eyes flit to the lower left rather than scroll a page up and/or down (another physical activity)
I prefer a book
In past years they have been issued both a home book and a school book.
Before that one book to take to and from school.
So part of me thinks this is technology related but also cost related and for some reason kids just can't be responsible for books anymore which is sad.
My daughter's Algebra book was still in our house two summers ago. I asked why she didn't return it, and usually if you didn't return it you didn't get your final report card until you did (or paid for the book). She had her report card. Come to find out there's so many changes every few years and with common core they didn't even want the book back. Brand new probably $100 book trashed. But I'm sure e-books aren't free. Common core is a publishers dream come true! Also tonight she sat in the living room as we watched TV with headphones on and her lap top. I tapped on her shoulder and told her to do her homework. She said she was and was in the middle of a verbal vocabulary test online, to be done at home. My first impression was how easy it would be to cheat and second one was I know I'd push the wrong button and then enter and screw up my own test. She's already yelled at the computer when it says she clicked "B" whens he had really clicked "C". Maybe I'm just old but I prefer paper, pens and books. But so does my 16 year old but she has no choice.
Textbook. In math and science, it was very helpful (for me) to write lots of notes in the margins, highlight or underline things, and circle things for later review. I think this works best with textbooks. It also happens to be easier, though that’s not the point; best isn’t necessarily easier.
Even if someday they make it as easy, or easier, with a tablet, I’d still prefer students use textbooks. Otherwise, they go full lazy on you and get the crazy notion that learning is just about sweeping their eyes carelessly across their iPads. I think students have to get the feel for what they doing with pencil and paper in hand. Lots of practice is the name of the game. At some point shortcuts shortchange students.
A good example of how books are better: I am trying to learn how to program Mitsubishi PLC’s. I’m familiar with ladder logic programming but each manufacturer has their own structure. All they sent with it is .pdf’s for the manual. While it’s easier to do a search several issues come up. First, since it’s on a disk they have morphed several different version’s instructions into the same file. I am constantly scrolling to find the sections that apply to the component I am using.
Second, it’s very easy to lose track of where, in the .pdf, certain information lies. Trying to cross reference is time consuming.
Third, sitting in front of a screen for hours is not conducive to good posture and comfort whereas you can take a book to a desk and set yourself up the way you want.
Fourth, it’s SO easy to get distracted by other sites like FR.
I’d rather have a good old fashioned manual.
I think one reason is that its too easy to get distracted on an electronic device of any kind. One second you’re reading, the next you’re surfing the web or playing Angry Birds. If you are reading a physical textbook, there may still be distractions around, but they are not on the book itself.
I prefer physical books to take notes in and to highlight important areas. I’m a supervisor for USAF courses to teach new recruits their new career field info and we have transitioned to electronic documents to save money - failure rates have increased and many students use their own money to print out training material so they don’t have to use the laptops we provide the material on. I’d wager that ineffective time at over $300/day as students who fail a test wait to be reintegrated cost far more than printing the materials would be.
I think there is a place for both forms. Especially in early years when game playing in the simple basic 1+1=2, or the ABC’s. We used paper flash cards in our generation. When my youngest was in grade school it was the home computer monster Commodore 64, husband wrote code for the computerized math flash cards. He taught the kid to sit still, learn, and made it fast and easy, while I plowed through old Dick & Jane style books to teach him to read. Which the school was failing to do.
Plus I had a BIG incentive. A BELT for the rear end when he tried my patience to far. How many times does a mom tell a 6 yr what a 2 letter word WE is? By the 15th time in 1 book, I used the belt to the butt, and that ended the procrastination ‘I HATE SCHOOL attitude’ to learn to read.
On the other hand computers have allowed massive cheating and plagiarism to go on.
With a ten year span in the ages of my five kids schools have transitioned from books to digital. The older ones did much better in school.
I prefer books to digital as they “feel” more personal to me. And it’s a lot easier to take them places. I have a book with me everywhere I go.
I’m an avid reader, various taste, but love news online where I can blow up the screen and read easier. I’m not limited to the local leftist rag the Commie Appeal of Memphis for news or information.
I need to look up drug side effects quite often as print outs are limited in facts and read on various health issues, and the Net is the only place to go to when you live in a small town whose library is the size of a postage stamp. Nor would they have the latest info I need.
Where else could I find out this about the horrid drugs both my Endo and PCP are trying to push on me. And I REFUSE to take, already had a reaction to Fosamax by the 2nd pill, the rest went in the trash after I finished reading on line all the following + more info. Instead I looked up every bone vit and min, and take them. No side effects. Bones are not made of drugs, but vit/mins.
So I take a lot of Vits and Mins. Hopefully my next Bone Density scan will show better than the one in 2013. Damn Medicare limits those to every 2 yrs. As does Tricare Life, Ret. Military over 65, which is our secondary. Hubby did 20 yrs in the Navy, retired as a SCPO. And DOD MANDATES are crippling with Medicare mandates 0 made that impact both our healthcare.
FDA WARNINGS OP DRUGS
Reclast UPS kidney failure, A FIB risk.
http://www.webmd.com/osteoporosis/news/20110901/fda-osteoporsis-drug_ups-kidney-failure-risk
Safety update for osteoporosis drugs, bisphosphonates, and atypical fractures
http://www.fda.gov/drugs/drugsafety/drugsafetypodcasts/ucm229800.htm
Black box warning Foreto
http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=21853
Using a tablet or netbook would be cheaper in the long run, but they are also much heavier to hold in hands full of Osteo Arthritis and a bad spine degeneration. I have a full size computer, laptop, netbook and tablet along with a Samsung Galaxy Note 3 I’m just learning to use.
Way different than the I phone, LOVE the SD memory card. Which Apple does not offer.
It is a lot like when they went to calculators for even simple math, to these new $100+ ones. I can buy that if the student is going into careers in the sciences where complicated math is a must.
Hubby taught electronics, computers, telecommunications 20 yrs in the Navy; Navy was a breeze. And 20 yrs in Jr College. The big thing he ran into were at the Jr. College, where A/B grade math grads out of HS, had to go through his remedial math course first they were that badly educated. As the Memphis City School system JUST handed out grades like candy. His foreign students did NOT need remedial math. And yes at this level you needed a complicated calculator. But not in grade school. Basics first by rote.
Don't expect the price to go down, especially at the college level. Does anyone think that prices would drop from $90 a book down to $12? Too much of a financial dropoff, same reason why an album of mp3 still costs what the LPs and CDs of old cost even without production costs, shipping, storage, etc.
Battery life, fragility of the medium, other distractions with an internet capable device...kids should master the material as someone further downthread points out, else they think learning is just sweeping their eyes across an electronic screen.
Had the battery die in an old brick sized Texas Instruments calculator during my high school physics final back when dinosaurs walked the earth...
Oh noes!
But...I had a math text book with log tables in the back in my book bag, voila, extra credit!
Later in life:
Artillery fire direction computations using charge sticks and firing tables were faster and just as accurate as with the handheld computers they transitioned to in the ‘80s.
We did still needed the radios and field phones though!
No ‘call out your numbers loud and clear’, the guns were a little too far away for that
My 6th grade nephew had math homework
He wrote the problem on the tablet, and the tablet tells him the answer.
What exactly was he learning?
Don’t have time to read, so sorry if I’m repeating.
I love having the Internet, as a quick source of information and data.
But if I can narrow it down to what I need, or I already have it, I like real books.
I’m sorry, but ultimately it is easier to scan a real physical book than swipe-swipe-swipe either in fiction or non-fiction books. Yes, I know the “search” function (which varies), but it’s still a pain to switch gears, type in and then go through all the places it’s found. Still “swipe”. Flipping pages is easier and when you have a feel for the book, you know basically where to look and it’s a simple eye scan.
I guess I’m middle-aged now; we grew up along with computers, but not joined at the hip.
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