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Sweden goes back to basics, swapping screens for books in the classroom

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Re: Sweden goes back to basics, swapping screens for books in the classroom

#171

Post by HumblyTossed »

greenbit wrote: post #18

Having observed a fair amount of computer based primary school, it seems to me anyway that the biggest problem is that kids just can't focus properly that way. Even if the machine is locked down to prevent open internet access, it's just too easy for them to become distracted by the medium itself. Books, pencils and paper may not be flashy, but isn't that actually desirable, in this context?

People are saying, oh i used to doodle, blah blah. But doodling in the margins is very HELPFUL for the rest of your brain to focus and memorize what is happening in the lecture.

Re: Sweden goes back to basics, swapping screens for books in the classroom

#172

Post by zigman1 »

dmd wrote: post #166
artakulov wrote: post #13

[flagged]

> sits on the shelf for the next kid. Maybe in a post-Soviet country they did. In my school they shredded them so the next class had to buy a new set.

What? Are you serious?? :o Sorry, this is the saddest sentence I have read in a long time.

Re: Sweden goes back to basics, swapping screens for books in the classroom

#173

Post by zozbot234 »

microtonal wrote: post #168
tonyedgecombe wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of being a parent is saying no when your children pester you for something you know is bad for them.

Did you read my comment? The issue is not being able to say 'no'. The issue is basically Sophie's choice: it's saying 'no' but then your kind misses out on a lot of social interactions with their peers vs. saying 'yes', but then your kid has a risk of getting addicted to this crap. Missing out on social interactions weighs heavily on kids too. Making everything harder is that even primary schools sometimes allow kids…

Missing out on social pathology is a good thing, not a bad thing. You should absolutely teach your kids to defy any peers or self-proclaimed authority figures who are expecting them to engage with that crap. It's called having healthy boundaries.

Re: Sweden goes back to basics, swapping screens for books in the classroom

#174

Post by shimman »

TaupeRanger wrote: post #97
mentalgear wrote: post #15

I remember that - even though Steve Jobs promoted the iPad as a replacement to the 'heavy schoolbooks kids had to carry all day' - he never allowed his children to use iPads. I bet Zuckerberg doesn't allow his children to use social media. And I assume that Sam Altman won't allow his children to use AI chatbots. What does that tell us?

It tells us nothing. People act like this is some big hypocrisy or revelation. First of all, Jobs DID allow his children to use iPads, but it was limited. People take a single quote from the Isaacson biography out of context, assuming that he never let his children have access to iPads at all, forever. Other interviews he gave talked about limiting access - like ALL families should do. Jobs was literally just parenti…

Is this the same Jobs that famously denied paternity of his daughter, Lisa Brennan-Jobs, and was only forced to accept her as his daughter when a US federal court forced a DNA test on him proving she was in fact his daughter?

Yeah, something tells me we shouldn't be taking advice regarding children from this man.

Re: Sweden goes back to basics, swapping screens for books in the classroom

#175

Post by dmd »

zigman1 wrote: post #172
dmd wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> sits on the shelf for the next kid. Maybe in a post-Soviet country they did. In my school they shredded them so the next class had to buy a new set.

What? Are you serious?? :o Sorry, this is the saddest sentence I have read in a long time.

Yep. A public school in NY suburbs in the early 1990s.

Re: Sweden goes back to basics, swapping screens for books in the classroom

#177

Post by something765478 »

smatti wrote: post #2

A very similar development is going on in neighboring Finland. There are schools that use almost exclusively paper books (instead of digital ones) again. The overall consensus among parents is that books are way better than screens for kids, all the way up to high school. Hand-writing and free drawing with pen and paper provide many advantages to fixed screens. You cannot open a new tab to Youtube in a book. The sign…

Absolutely. When I was in college, I had to stop using my laptop to take notes, as I would just always end up scrolling reddit for half the class. I switched to pen and paper, and while I almost never ended up looking at my notes, just the fact of manually writing them down helped me remember them.

Re: Sweden goes back to basics, swapping screens for books in the classroom

#178

Post by zigman1 »

nimonian wrote: post #38
amadeuspagel wrote: post #21

> Basic skills — especially reading, writing, and numeracy — must be firmly established first, physical textbooks are often better suited for that purpose. Reading and writing, maybe, but numeracy? With a computer, you can get instant feedback, immidiately see whether you did the math correctly or not. With a textbook, you have to wait for your teacher.

I still believe looking up the answer in the back of the book is completely fine. It creates a moment of tension. It invites you to justify in your own head that the answer is right before checking. The cognitive dissonance when you see your answer is wrong and really have to challenge yourself, or ask your neighbour, to see why - is all really valuable. I just don't think "instant feedback" is as important as we thi…

The problem with the back-of-the-book is that once you answer the same exercise few times, you remember what the result is and you work on memory not on skill. At least this is something i struggled with.

Digitalization should be able to provide you with drastically larger number of exercises to practice, and if possible should also provide you with the exercise that is at the right level for you

Re: Sweden goes back to basics, swapping screens for books in the classroom

#179

Post by 3yr-i-frew-up »

My city, the 2nd richest in our state (And our county is the 3rd richest in the United States)... is considering banning AI in schools.

I am horrified at how bad this could be for the students. Imagine growing up without a calculator or computer. They read books, they do long division, they manually graph. They graduate and are completely unprepared for the world.

I pay well over $15,000/yr in property taxes because I wanted my kids to go to a good school. Now I'm thinking they are going to need to go to a private school or we will move from what we thought was our forever home.

AI is here, burying our heads in the sand changes nothing.

Re: Sweden goes back to basics, swapping screens for books in the classroom

#180

Post by mcculley »

An idea I have been thinking about: Increasingly powerful chatbots provide more teaching capacity. I think this will lead to counterintuitive outcomes like teaching environments where the human student is not allowed to use any device but is being taught and tested by a synthetic intelligence.
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