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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

#341

Post by snkline »

abyssin wrote: post #39

A few years ago I went back to school. Hoping to manage some sort of Internet addiction, I bought a reMarkable 1 tablet. It did help me, but in retrospect I should've bought a black and white laser printer and a few boxes of paper. The ergonomy of paper is excellent after all, especially for a brain like mine that grew up without computers. There's a major issue though, which is that course material get designed for…

I really like the reMarkable tablets, but they are still not quite the replacement for a paper notebook that I would like. I think the main problem is that the refresh-rate/software is slow enough that trying to "page through your notebook" to find specific notes is a grueling experience. The alternative is to just make lots of one page notes, but things still become difficult to find (not to mention you add a lot of stress coming up with good names for stuff...)

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

#342

Post by Temporary_31337 »

I know it's brutal, but my kids were raised with iPads, PS3-5, computers, age inappropriate Minecraft and youtube, all kids of gadgets and turned out ok, already earning money (in tech of course) - one is in UX / product building, another more on the core math/theorem side. Protecting kids from tech is like raising your kids in a glass house, yes they are fine while inside but then what?

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

#343

Post by _wsbb »

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…

Meanwhile today Dutch kids get these extremely large screens at the front of the class to stare at all day for every little thing, the day's schedule, everything. Huge screens, some stretch nearly the entire width of the classroom, with about a third of desks within just three meters of it. All day.

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

#344

Post by saint_fiasco »

Temporary_31337 wrote: post #342

I know it's brutal, but my kids were raised with iPads, PS3-5, computers, age inappropriate Minecraft and youtube, all kids of gadgets and turned out ok, already earning money (in tech of course) - one is in UX / product building, another more on the core math/theorem side. Protecting kids from tech is like raising your kids in a glass house, yes they are fine while inside but then what?

Your kids were raised on those before predatory people and unscrupulous corporations learned how to take advantage of them at scale.

To protect against those, you have to make kids super-early adopters like yours, make them use tech that is ahead of the curve relative to the mass market, or go the other direction entirely and have them a couple of levels behind the curve so they are not targeted.

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

#345

Post by FarmerPotato »

eviks wrote: post #232
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…

> You cannot open a new tab to Youtube in a book If such a basic distraction in a digital device isn't fix, it means the experiment wasn't even tried!

Even with books, stuff happens, you can skip ahead a chapter, consult the index, follow a footnote... or put another book on the table.

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

#346

Post by saint_fiasco »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #270
Gigachad wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I keep hearing this at work but so far no one has explained what “learning ai” actually means. It seems to just be nonsense like those people selling prompt recipes or claiming to be prompt engineers. No one needs training in prompting AI. I could understand if they meant a deeper layer of integrating tech with systems but all they ever mean is typing things in to a text box.

You absolutely need prompting skills to use AI usefully. You need to know how to eliminate sycophancy, how to ask for and check primary sources, and how to use follow-up questions. I've been using AI for some legal issues, and it's been incredibly good at searching for case law and summarising the key implications of various statutes - much more efficient than web search, with direct links to the primary sources it f…

Learning those prompting skills was very useful for you, but in the context of schools it's a lot more difficult to make the investment worth it.

Schools are slow, by the time the teachers get around to teaching the sophisticated techniques you use today, those techniques will be obsolete, the new AI models will require completely different style of prompts.

As for critical thinking and reasoning, those are even harder to teach. How can teachers teach what they don't know?

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

#347

Post by FarmerPotato »

szmarczak wrote: post #116
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…

> The overall consensus among parents is that books are way better than screens for kids Any scientific backing that screens are at fault? I don't think so. E-ink tablets do exist. When I'm having children, I'm buying them a remarkable with all the books scanned. Sure, they still need physical sheets of paper and a pen, but they don't have to carry 2-3 kgs of literature. The major reason against digital literature is…

See Hana Goldin, MLIS: What Scrolling Did to Reading.

Lots to think about there.

https://open.substack.com/pub/cardcatalogforlife/p/what-scro...

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

#348

Post by soperj »

datsci_est_2015 wrote: post #263
xboxnolifes wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You dont need to learn to touch type to avoid searching out each key individually. You just need experience. I was taught touch typing as a kid. None of it took. I dont use the home row. I developed into the gamer home row hand positioning for typing.

I guess this is technically correct in the same way that stenographers and highly-ergonomic alternative-layout keyboard users also don’t “touch type” according to a strict definition. If you’re capable of typing quick enough to publicly take meeting notes, then it’s fine. But if you can’t, I could see it being professionally embarrassing in the same way that not understanding basic arithmetic could be professionally…

> But if you can’t, I could see it being professionally embarrassing

I had a boss that typed with one finger on each hand, it was laughable, but he was an incredible programmer, so it didn't affect him at all.

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

#349

Post by fodkodrasz »

fasterik wrote: post #217
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…

Touch typing is not a basic tech skill, and also pretty useless on the long term. I expect dictation to take over very soon, as finally voice recognition is getting to be usable, and commonplace.

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

#350

Post by FarmerPotato »

bombcar wrote: post #133
bko wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that we shouldn't have iPads and similar electronics in the classroom. But I would advise into reading too much into the societal beliefs of inventors and how their tech will play out. Consider Lee de Forest, one of the early pioneers of radio. He expected radio to act almost like a moral and intellectual uplifter for society. He thought people would use it to essentially listen to religious sermons and educa…

To be fair to the Forest, both of those did and do occur! But they were vastly overwhelmed by "entertainment" - similar to the printing press and other mass-media opportunities. The Internet allows you to get every classical work of philosophy or theology online immediately both in the original language or in translation. You can find videos discussion many of them in-depth. Someone in Nepal with an Internet connecti…

Um... you'd think so... but the Perseus catalog is notoriously incomplete. They don't have all the key works of Aristotle in Greek.
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