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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

#211

Post by SJMG »

red_admiral wrote: post #204

I support this, up to the point where a second-grader has to carry four textbooks and four exercise books around on their walk to school; from the rucksack weight to body weight ratio they might as well be training for the marines. Ipads are not the solution - that gets you back to screen/computer mode in the classroom. e-readers/ e-paper tablets might be worth a try. (Just please don't make every child have a mandat…

Anecdotal, but I do not think e-ink displays are as good for reading or benefiting from handwriting as an actual purely physical medium. They just don't have the affordances of durably occupying physical space. I say this as someone who has done quite a bit of review of the literature and has a kindle and a Supernote.

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

#213

Post by Fire-Dragon-DoL »

red_admiral wrote: post #204

I support this, up to the point where a second-grader has to carry four textbooks and four exercise books around on their walk to school; from the rucksack weight to body weight ratio they might as well be training for the marines. Ipads are not the solution - that gets you back to screen/computer mode in the classroom. e-readers/ e-paper tablets might be worth a try. (Just please don't make every child have a mandat…

Ereaders (Kindle scribe specifically) has been a huge discovery! I cannot make any claims, but my daughter draws on it, writes on it, does homeworks on it and reads so many books on it (she is 7). She liked it as soon as she saw it. I decided to gave her my Scribe,which I deeply miss.

It's essentially a notebook and a book reader.

You can take notes directly on the book if you use pdf (epubs can only have notes on the side).

I think that's the tech I want to see in school, no tablets please.

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

#214

Post by jasonmp85 »

teekert wrote: post #79
graemep wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"screens" can be great for research and there is a lot you can learn online. The main problem mentioned in the article you link to seem to be distraction from what they were supposed to be doing. Distraction is not always bad and kids can learn a lot by being distracted by something that catches their interest. it depends on the approach and its more of a problem following a fixed curriculum in a classroom. Probably…

Well, the school of our kids blocks a lot of urls. Now they play the games via some url that goes like https://unblocked.something.something . These kids are not crazy.

This is written with what feels like the peak understanding of my kid's school's IT department: "well, they're just so smart, we can't find any way of stopping them!"

An allowlist might be a good place to start.

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

#216

Post by Fire-Dragon-DoL »

dylanowen wrote: post #186
mcculley wrote: post #180

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.

That sounds very dystopian. The ai teacher part, not the no devices part

It sounds distopian, but AI has been a big boost to learning at least for me personally. Of course the problem is when it's wrong.

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

#217

Post by fasterik »

pier25 wrote: post #199

I worked in EdTech about a decade ago and our education/pedagogy experts were already talking about this. They also talked a lot about how handwriting is super important for cognitive development. After working on that company for a couple of years I realized using tech in education (pre university) was a mistake. One of the reasons I left. In a decade or two the long term consequences of inundating kids with tech an…

>I realized using tech in education (pre university) was a mistake.

I think we should use tech in education, but in a targeted way. It's important that children gain basic technical literacy, like how to touch type and use basic software. I suspect there is a gap in the technical literacy of lower income students, whose parents are less likely to have a computer at home.

The real problem is separating reading/writing skills from tech skills. We shouldn't stop teaching handwriting just because typing exists. And being able to read long books and essays teaches fundamental cognitive skills like attention, focus, and information processing.

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

#218

Post by cogman10 »

red_admiral wrote: post #204

I support this, up to the point where a second-grader has to carry four textbooks and four exercise books around on their walk to school; from the rucksack weight to body weight ratio they might as well be training for the marines. Ipads are not the solution - that gets you back to screen/computer mode in the classroom. e-readers/ e-paper tablets might be worth a try. (Just please don't make every child have a mandat…

Yeah, I think eink displays are the happy medium for tech for kids. And even then, you should limit the capabilities to be effectively the same as working with paper.

Like, maybe download wikipedia onto the device but don't give internet access. Let the device sync at school with required books and assignments.

Effectively, you could give kids a pocket library but that's the extent of what they should have.

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

#220

Post by rsolva »

fifilura wrote: post #63

Buying a book made of trees is very often much more expensive than reading on a screen. Worldreader provides books for free for schools in Africa where they only need to pay for a $40 phone once instead of spending money on books. https://www.worldreader.org/

Laptops and tables are, as it turns out, not so cheap either. They need to be fixed or replaced at an alarming rate, and they lay claim to a much larger part of a school budget than books ever did. That is part of the reason that we revert back to pen, paper and books in Norway. First for 1-4 grade, but it will be push further up the grades as we go, I think.
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