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Do E-Readers Spell the Demise Of Traditional Schooling?
Attila Dimedici writes "I came across a an article this morning that suggests that the Nook and the Kindle have changed things in such a way that schools are becoming obsolete. His premise is that the ideal way to teach children is by a tutor ..., [and] the Nook and the Kindle have allowed large amounts of written material on many different subjects to become accessible enough that parents can tutor their children at a price that just about everyone can afford."
The author is a bit off-base on the nature of the public schooling,
but easy access to resources like Project Gutenberg and Wikibooks certainly removes some
barriers to self-study and the limitations of the 20+ child classroom.
Yea this will replace tutors just like books have replaced tutors since days of yore. EReaders are great, they may replace books someday but when it comes to education, the biggest barrier is getting kids to pickup a book/e-reader not how much space they occupy.
or maybe No.
I Love How Complex Problems Always Have Simple Yes/No Answers.
Is free day care included with an E-Reader?
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
A lot of parents just want to dump their kids off at school and let them do the parenting. Unless there's some type of supervision, I don't see how this could work well.
Of course, you couldn't do this previously using the Internet, only e-readers make this feasible. Before that, the distance to the library clearly made this entirely impossible.
No, new shiny technology of the day has not changed everything. Parents who may have struggled to build a teaching plan yesterday will still struggle even if you give them a Kindle. Most families will still need both parents to work these days, anyway.
Who exactly is going to be doing this tutoring? Parents with nothing better to do all day, perhaps? Maybe one of the private tutors currently working, of which I'm sure there are plenty to meet demand. What about letting the kids just teach themselves? It's not as if they'll just spend their time screwing around instead of working.
Schools aren't just there because we want to give kids a sub-standard education, they're there because they're the only practical way to provide education to large numbers of children.
If "traditional schooling" means burying your desk/shelf/whatever in a lot of physical, printed books, yes. Otherwise, no. Physical books are the only thing e-book readers might replace, and while they may do that, that alone is not going to change education as we know it.
It's having to live on one income that stops most families home educating, not the cost of educational materials. I've never heard anyone say they would home school but don't because they can't access educational material.
That and the fact that most people don't want to home school. I predict that the nook and kindle will have negligible impact on home schooling numbers. My kids are home schooled without a nook or kindle.
TFA is flamebait, an anti-school piece, not a technology piece. Not really news for nerds.
http://marriedmansexlife.com/
It's the Internet that changed the way we access information for our own betterment. In most companies no one cares anymore about your credentials as long as you're capable of performing the required tasks. The school - college - university system that was the means to get started in a career in the 20th century has been eroded from the top: It's universities and colleges that are losing relevance. School is still somewhat relevant, but I wonder how long will that last. More unconventional ways of learning that leverage technological advances like the Internet, ereaders, tablets, and possible future advances as well, will surely come to erode more of the current practices in education.
Intellectual property must be rendered obsolete for the Internet can reach its full potential, and for these advances in learning and education to materialize.
While at university, in the Discrete Mathematics course, I had this professor who made this strange type of maths easy and fun to learn.
It is what introduced me to what computer science is all about, and how to analyze problems. This type of course cannot be properly delivered via 10" screens. Nothing can replace that face to face human touch.
This assumption goes wrong in a number of places, of which some obvious are:
1. Parents have the time to school their children
2. Parents have the inclination to do it
3. Parents have the capability to do it. (How many know parents whose maths is non-existent or whose spelling is beyond comprehension?)
4. The parent/child relationship works towards learning and not against it. (Think obstinate teenager here.)
I am sure there would be many other problems too, like very few parents have learned the tips and tricks a teacher has.
So in my humble opinion, it will not work!
A family obviously can have multiple children but in most cases they will be of different age. This will slow down the older children if taught simultaneously.
Our experience runs directly counter to this. The younger children see the older at their lessons because they are not separated off at a school. They then start learning the material so they can join in. All our younger children were doing their studies of their own initiative before school age.
http://marriedmansexlife.com/
Tools like the Kindle are great to assist learning; but let's face it: the weakness/strength to learning is always the teacher. These are great as a substitute for the books/paper in the classroom, but not as a substitute for human instruction. Yes, there are a few who are able to learn from Khan Academy or from e-books alone. The vast majority, however, need that human to get them through the rough patches. Most home-schooling relies on mom and dad for that, and they tend to not be the greatest of instructors, as a whole. It's the reason most states are considering requiring parents have the same qualifications as teachers. It also eliminates the social factor for these kids. Where I am, I've seen more than a few "veal" being home-schooled. If they associate, it's with others who are home schooled. They will never be required to deal with social interactions of differing social groups until they go to college, unless they happen to be lucky enough to have a parent that forces them into these situations.
I'm all for the elimination of the textbook industry that makes millions each year off changing a few sentences and claiming a "new edition" for which you have to pay $50-$200. Unless you have a certain physical or mental handicap, however, homeschooling offers no advantages other than raising your little baby sheltered from having to face the real world.
How many parents do you know that can afford to stay home and tutor their children in place of going to school? The author of TFA also fails to understand that children learn in different ways and book learning alone is not the best way for everyone. E-readers might be a good way to supplement learning but I can't see how it could replace a teacher in a classroom setting.
"We are just a war away from Amerikastan. When god vs god the undoing of man." Dave Mustaine
I am bored to tears with all the "Does XXX mean the death of YYY" articles these technologist wankers drool out. It's always the same: "do computers mean the end of TV?" "Does the internet mean the end to commuting to work in your car?" "Does the Wii mean the end of Computer gaming?" and so on.
In EVERY case, the new technology has had an impact, sometimes even a limited one, but failed to do away with the previous. And anyone that thinks a technology for displaying information (and that's all an ebook is) will do away with a fundamental societal need like formal education is a fool, a wanker, or both.
If this were Usenet, I'd killfile the lot of you.
I have tried to read a couple of science-type books on my Kindle. I find when you have to back-reference a previous page containing an equation or diagram that's important to what follows in the book, you often need to refer back to a previous page. On a Kindle this process is complex, irksome, disruptive and slow. There is nothing (yet?) on a Kindle that will replace little slips of paper (or - horrors - dog-ears) used as bookmarks for important predecessor material.
Games and A.Is which teach kids best according to their abilities using the most effective teaching strategies, backed up by human teachers.
Motivation is a problem, but it's a problem with kids sitting at desks in schools.
http://homepages.gold.ac.uk/polovina/learnpyramid/about.htm
I'm not sure I'd call what we have just now as "providing education".
Deleted
Asinine.
The author has a serious problem with public school teachers that borders on the obsessive, and clouds all reasonable discussion with him on this subject, it would seem.
The problem in schooling isn't teacher salaries, administrative overhead, the cost of school construction, etc. it really has to do with the basics (and while I'm no fan of public school teachers, they are but one piece of a much bigger puzzle).
We've had free lending libraries since the time of Franklin, and to imagine that by somehow taking books off a shelf and injecting them into a shiny electronic device will somehow get kids to read and read and read for 5-10 years is just silly.
Homeschooling is not a new phenomenon, it's how people used to learn things. People homeschool their children for many reasons, teacher salaries isn't typically the main reason - either because the parents want a faith-based education for their children, or they feel the public schools wouldn't benefit their child, OR the parents simply think they "know better", which may or may not be true.
There are many, many subjects that require more than simply "reading a book, writing an essay" to impart mastery. I'm reminded of the scene in Good Will Hunting where Robin William's character dresses down Matt Damon's character and explains "living a life" as opposed to reading about other people's lives in books.
Ken
If the title of the article is a question, the answer is probably "no".
Brain surgery - it's not rocket science!
Mom, I could have sworn that I had 1984 on my Kindle! How am I supposed to do my homework now?
Back when I was in school, if you had a book in your house when you went to sleep, it was still there when you woke up.
Palm trees and 8
My kids are taught by several different people (various classes, working out a deal with a local vet clinic for a kind of 'job shadow' every week, etc) My kids gets lots of stimulus from their peers - they have friends inside and outside the classes they take, and other activities they do throughout the week with other kids. They sure could turn out different - good thing the alternative isn't locking them in a basement all day or homeschoolers would sure be in trouble! I'm not on the fence - I can do a better job of providing my child's education when possible and coordinating it when necessary - I'm convinced most parents could do the same. Money is the only legitimate barrier for most people, but based on my own experience and the experience of people I've met I think most couples can afford to have a parent stay home even if they don't think they can. For most people, it's a question of how much importance they place on being able to have a parent stay home with the children. 'Learning' isn't something that has to happen in a class room, and the idea that 30 kids listening to one adult who may or may not be qualified in the subject read from a text and ask questions is the optimal way to provide education is severely lacking in credibility. Sending the kids to school is the path of least resistance and it's 'what's done'. There are arguments for doing that but 'that's the best possible option' is a hard one to defend. School takes the form it does in our culture because of the day care aspect of it - if that weren't a factor we'd all have education that combined real experience, specialised tutors and classes, and was targeted at the learning style and interests of the child.
> The early days of TV were full of hope for its widespread educational potential, too.
Same thing: depends on how you use it. TV can be tremendously educational if you use it for that purpose, and it's only gotten more so with the plethora of cable channels and the convenience of DVRs. I just watched a bunch of excellent PBS documentaries about Roman, Egyptian, and Japanese history on YouTube.
As for iPads in the classroom, that's the equivalent of letting kids watch sit-coms in school. The Khan Academy is all about e-learning, but they do NOT recommend computers in the classroom. On the contrary, students are given e-lectures as homework assignments. (In his TED talk, Khan calls this "flipping" the classroom.) Students absorb the lecture at home, at their own pace, then the next day they go through the "work" part at school where they can interact with the teacher and other students. In this way, the teacher can focus his/her energy on individual students' needs, without the headaches of trying to lecture at a pace that doesn't either bore the smart kids or lose the "challenged" kids. Students get the benefit of "on-demand" lectures... they can pause and replay any parts they don't understand, without the embarrassment of holding up the class with a "dumb" question.
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