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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

#391

Post by AngryData »

datsci_est_2015 wrote: post #237
ninalanyon wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> how to touch type What for? I've been writing computer programs and documentation since 1969 and I can't touch type. I've never felt enough pressure to do it. I can still type faster than I can think. When I'm writing most of my time is spent thinking not tapping the keys.

You typed out this message by hitting individual keys as your eyes searched for them? Isn’t that mentally exhausting?

I don't do it for every key but without looking, even if just sort of indirectly, I will repeatedly make mistakes. I also don't use proper finger placement. But never have I felt it limiting or slowing me down. If anything I feel like it gave me a heads up on screen typing although I still way prefer a keyboard.

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

#393

Post by fc417fc802 »

Gigachad wrote: post #5
gritspants wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see the advantage of learning 'AI workflows'. I am in the US and there seems to be a FOMO plague infecting our school system when it comes to technology. In practice it seems more destructive to the child.

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.

It would probably be useful to learn how the models work under the hood - particularly about high dimensional vector spaces - as a counter to magical thought. But I doubt that's what is meant.

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

#394

Post by tempaccount420 »

randcraw wrote: post #203
3yr-i-frew-up wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Luddite move. Buddy AI is here to stay. You remind me of my 2nd grade teacher who said 'we wont have calculators in our pockets'.

And s/he was right. Most students who were brought up with calculators in math class cannot do basic math without one today. When shopping in groceries, they have no idea if one product costs more than another by weight. They're easy to bamboozle with the simplest misrepresentations of numbers. Is one choice of product really better than another, fractionally, or corrected for a shifted baseline? They don't know and…

> they have no idea if one product costs more than another by weight

In proper countries the price per kg is displayed under the price

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

#395

Post by fc417fc802 »

pessimizer wrote: post #303
graemep wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not see the point of either of your examples of rote learning. What do you lose if you do not know the? You will pick up enough of multiplication tables through doing maths, native speakers of a language will conjugate correctly without memorising (you do need to do it if learning foreign languages). Anaphora is a technique which cannot really be rote learned - and most people to try to use it do so badly and ju…

> You will pick up enough of multiplication tables through doing maths You will not do maths casually until you have memorized enough multiplication to make it not torture. You will not pick up multiplication from using a calculator any more than you will pick up programming from using a computer. > native speakers of a language will conjugate correctly without memorising They do not. They have memorized , through ma…

> You will not pick up multiplication from using a calculator

Sure you will, at least assuming we're still talking about memorizing multiplication tables here and not how to do long division or the like. I don't think algebra or even basic calculus has any convincing need to involve rote memorization.

I've ended up unintentionally memorizing many things due to frequently needing to consult various lookup tables.

> conjugation

Competent ones will. Wrong conjugations usually "sound" wrong to me even when I haven't seen them before and that's in English of all things.

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

#396

Post by kbelder »

jasonmp85 wrote: post #214
teekert wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That might slow them down.

Could any of the IT professionals, here, think of a way around it? Then likely the kids could.

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

#397

Post by tombert »

MidnightRider39 wrote: post #336
brailsafe wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Should we not teach basic numerical and statistical methods in Python? > No. Those should be done by hand, so kids can develop an intuition for it. The same way we don't allow kids learning multiplication and division to use calculators. I would think that it would make sense to introduce Python in the same way that calculators, and later graphing calculators are introduced, and I believe (just based on hearing ra…

Fwiw calculators were banned in my school. Only started to use one in university - and there it also didnt really help with anything as the math is already more complex

I was allowed to use calculators when I started algebra in seventh grade.

I found that calculators didn't help all that much once you got into symbolic stuff. They were useful for the final reductions, obviously, but for algebra the lion's share of the work is symbolic and at least the relatively cheap two-line TI calculator I was using couldn't do anything symbolic.

I know that there are calculators that can do Computer Algebra System stuff, and those probably should be held off on until at least calculus.

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

#399

Post by mlsu »

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…

At what point do we stop and admit that paper books are superior in all cases.

It's like social media ban for children. If you stop and think about it there is nothing special about children, it's terrible for everyone.

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

#400

Post by nostrademons »

asdff wrote: post #381
nostrademons wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The strict definition of touch typing reminds me of how when I was a kid, my parents would always tell me that there’s a specific way of holding chopsticks. You gotta hold the top one like a pencil, and rest the bottom one between the crook of your fingers and your ring finger, and make sure they’re the same length and the bottom one isn’t moving and you’re just using it as a base to press against. And then I became…

I will say you are far faster touch typing proper. I never fully learned it in school. I kind of half do it. Left hand is pretty religously touch typing byt right doesnt' stay on its home row. Just never cared to get perfect at it in school. I would get absolutely crushed on typing tests though with the kids who actually learned touch typing. They all had piano experience and could reach the modifiers while holding o…

I use a Dvorak keyboard, so usually outpace the touch typers. By the strict definition, it's not technically touch typing. By any colloquial definition, it absolutely is, if I looked at the keys I'd be touching the wrong letters. I just have the Dvorak layout burned into my brain so it's what I type regardless of what the keys say.
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