Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
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/
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!
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.
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
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
I can name two of those mysterious forces: "feedback" and "immersion"
Examples:
Students fall asleep en masse --> a good teacher tries to be less boring
Student doesn't pay attention -> student is reminded by the teacher to concentrate on the subject
and likewise, beeing physically at a place helps to focus on what's going on there, espescially if that place is dedicated to a task. (Like schools, offices, churches..)
bickerdyke