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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

#411

Post by downut »

WalterBright wrote: post #383
groby_b wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not what I said. I'm absolutely supportive of using blackboards & paper and pen over computers. What I'm saying is that making unsubstantiated claims like "you'll hear the lecture again when you read it" is completely detrimental to making that point, because it's entirely unsubstantiated and doesn't make any relevant point you couldn't make in a well-supported way instead.

The relevant part is it filled in the missing parts of my notes. The prof says more than what he writes.

Might be a translation issue here with the commenter, maybe?

Handwritten notes help to remind yourself when studying about what the instructor thought important. You write down the emphasis. I sure made it clear to my classes that my emphasis was on this, this and that. The instructor is writing and grading the tests. Or was, back in the ancient times when we made chalk dust, as a pedagogical tool.

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

#412

Post by uduni »

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…

Written language is deep tech itself. There's evidence it changed our brain morphology even. So ya it deeply affected kids abilities, for example memorizing long poems or whatever.

Digital tech is here to stay...

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

#413

Post by lmm »

Gigachad wrote: post #3
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…

As much as I would have disagreed as a kid, I very much agree now. Laptops were used more for flash games and reddit than learning in the classroom in my experience. And likely the act of reading physical books and handwriting is better for learning.

> Laptops were used more for flash games and reddit than learning in the classroom in my experience

Are you sure it isn't both? Learning how to bypass the school's internet filtering so that I could get to flash games and reddit probably taught me more than anything in the lessons.

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

#414

Post by eviks »

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 about the important and relevant part - education

It tells us almost nothing about the unimportant any irrelevant part - how a few individuals choose to raise their kids

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

#415

Post by casey2 »

The value of a shared reference frame decreases every year, while simultaneously the cost of translating between distinct reference frames has collapsed. Of course books are better, but for what? Serving a reference frame that doesn't value technology?

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

#416

Post by Gigachad »

Ekaros wrote: post #222
Gigachad wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd think really the only AI skill you need is the ability to think independently and be able to verify the results you are getting or spot when something is wrong in the response. It would take a few sessions at most to take someone from 10 years ago and get them fully up to speed with AI tools since they have zero learning curve.

I think exercises when student is given pre-generated AI output and told to identify as many issues or mistakes as possible might be sensible. Not sure how long creating such exercise would take and what should be the tools or sources to verify the output but that might be helpful excersise.

We had something like this when I was in school but it was reading a news article, or the same story covered by different people and identifying the bias or missing information.

Evaluating AI output it’s not a skill on its own. It’s just general critical thinking and literacy.

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

#417

Post by chunpaiyang »

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'm curious about the true logic behind the claim that tablet use lower grades. What is the underlying logic ?

For my own kid, I do limit screen time just because their eyes are still fragile before age 9, not because the above reason.

I asked an AI about the reasoning and the answer comes down to: kids need real-world interaction to support brain development. But if that's the case, aren't these two seperate issues? Using a tablet doesn't damage your brain ... it's just a low-value activity that fails to build the good skills (like video games?) that other activities do. It is not that screens make you dumber, it is that they crowd out the things that make you smarter.

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

#418

Post by elric »

rendaw wrote: post #408
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…

How is handwriting important for cognitive development?

Presumably the combination of concentration, fine motor skills, and language use.

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

#419

Post by amuradbegovic »

WalterBright wrote: post #306

The same goes for college. I've advised college students to leave their laptops in their dorm room. Take a spiral notebook to lecture, and a couple pens. Write down everything the professor writes on the chalkboard. When studying, going over the notes, you'll hear the lecture again in your head. Of course, if the professor doesn't use a chalkboard, and does a slide presentation instead, that will make studying harder…

> Take a spiral notebook to lecture, and a couple pens. Write down everything the professor writes on the chalkboard.

I'm a gen Z college student (born 2005) and this is pretty much what I do all the time. I attend most of the lectures, even if they are not very good and I take notes with a pen during each of them. Some people at my school see it as being subservient to the professors and wasting time, but for me it's about rebuilding my attention span, confidence and clarity of mind (besides internalizing the material far better). It made me a different person compared to who I was in hs and freshman year. It's so simple. Most of us don't have ADHD, we're simply addicted and we can fight it.

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

#420

Post by casey2 »

pmontra wrote: post #355
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An iPad absolutely doesn't make kids "better at technology", if anything it makes them worse because it just wraps everything up in a braindead simple package for consumption. Ironically, Gen Z was supposed to lead the way as "digital natives", but in many ways they are (speaking broadly) much less technically adapt than, say, Gen Xers, because Gen Xers had to struggle to figure stuff out because it hadn't been all w…

20 year olds are bewildered when they see me opening a computer and replacing stuff instead of bringing it to a shop. "Where did you learn to do that?" It used to be the only way, everybody with a computer did it. The strange thing is that it's still possible but they don't think about it.

It's simply not true at all that everyone who owned a (i'll be generous and assume you're talking about PCs) computer serviced their own computer upgrades and part swaps. In the 80s and 90s most people would take the whole PC to the store and get a whole new PC. The consumer market has always been dominated by pre-builts.

About as neat a trick as opening a slot machine, pulling out the mech and fixing a jam.

There is a massive qualitative difference between API knowledge and foundational knowledge. The former is tied to the usefulness of the platform, the person with a macbook or an iphone looks at you the same way you look at a person fixing their car or slot machine. I for one am sick of the gross fetishization nerds do of cheap knowledge.

The same thing that makes your knowledge useful (usable) is the same thing that makes it useless (negative utility). You can only change your likely PC parts because it's long been standardized and a whole industry has ossified around those standards. You've confused learning about computers with learning about a standard. Someone else would roll their eyes at your statement, "well duh of course you can't take an IBM 360/40 to the shop"

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