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It can do things that paper textbooks don't; it isn't competing just on price. For instance, how about you mark stuff as important which not only lets you flip

It can do things that paper textbooks don't; it isn't competing just on price. For instance, how about you mark stuff as important which not only lets you flip through just those bits later but it also puts that chunk of information in your automated "review-stuff" queue. Give that queue a "which things to pop-up when" scheduler based on measurements of your retrieval success rate fall-off over time and some memory science, i.e. it can be a textbook that reinforces the important bits just before your brain was about to forget them. You could even reward a regimen of shoving information through the student's attention... "rewrite these notes for extra points." The size, sure it can be streamlined some, but this isn't for mostly passive content consumption and casual gaming so it should never be iPad sized.

donw 16y ago
Um, why shouldn't it be iPad sized? I've spent two years looking at memory algorithms, and a similar amount of time implementing and dogfooding learning systems... call it my hobby. Cro-Mag Rally is way more computationally intensive than anything I've worked with or seen. Perhaps more importantly, the more intricate scheduling systems don't perform any better than the simpler systems. The real key to making any sort of repetitive study system work isn't really in the scheduling algorithm -- it's in making the system easy to use and always available. If it's a lot of work to get information into or out of a spaced repetition system, then you won't use it. If you can't study whenever you've got a spare five minutes, then you won't use it. If you can't hit it from your desktop, iPad, Motorola Droid, iPhone, laptop, and computer in the library, then you won't use it. Because it's inconvenient. So please, bring on the iPad learning systems. It's portable, lightweight, and can speak WiFi and 3G. Anything that makes studying more convenient is good.
- nooneelse 16y ago
  Very good point on the need for a repetitive study system to be always available. The bit about iPad being too small comes from asking something like "why aren't textbooks the size of fictional paperbacks?" I suppose it could be just historical accident or the need for enough page mass that the book lays flat and open. But seems to me that the answer also includes something along the lines of different types of information being better shown at different sizes, with richer learning material needing more room. When the target users already carry a bag all the time, should portability of a textbook replacement be so overriding a concern that the area for showing and writing information is slashed by something like half (iPad screen to college notebook ratio) up front? Shouldn't form follow function a little more than that? The really old college textbooks (1950's and earlier) I have are actually smaller than modern versions, with text areas comparable or smaller than an iPad screen. So perhaps the question can be reformulated as "why did textbooks get bigger over the past century?" Or maybe there is just a lot less reasoning behind their sizes than I'm presupposing.
  - donw 16y ago
    My guess has more to do with sales and marketing than anything else. I've got more than a few textbooks from the 50's and 60's on a variety of subjects, and for the most part, they are a joy to read, because they assume the reader is intelligent enough to not try and eat the chalkboard erasers. Big textbooks, with lots of diagrams, pictures, and colors, look impressive. They give the impression of a tome filled with knowledge and wisdom, whether or not they actually are. Which is why school districts and professors in charge of lower-division courses buy the damn things -- they get impressive-looking textbooks to wow the students and parents, and they don't have to think much about the choice. It's just good marketing.

donw 16y ago

Um, why shouldn't it be iPad sized? I've spent two years looking at memory algorithms, and a similar amount of time implementing and dogfooding learning systems... call it my hobby. Cro-Mag Rally is way more computationally intensive than anything I've worked with or seen. Perhaps more importantly, the more intricate scheduling systems don't perform any better than the simpler systems. The real key to making any sort of repetitive study system work isn't really in the scheduling algorithm -- it's in making the system easy to use and always available. If it's a lot of work to get information into or out of a spaced repetition system, then you won't use it. If you can't study whenever you've got a spare five minutes, then you won't use it. If you can't hit it from your desktop, iPad, Motorola Droid, iPhone, laptop, and computer in the library, then you won't use it. Because it's inconvenient. So please, bring on the iPad learning systems. It's portable, lightweight, and can speak WiFi and 3G. Anything that makes studying more convenient is good.

nooneelse 16y ago
Very good point on the need for a repetitive study system to be always available. The bit about iPad being too small comes from asking something like "why aren't textbooks the size of fictional paperbacks?" I suppose it could be just historical accident or the need for enough page mass that the book lays flat and open. But seems to me that the answer also includes something along the lines of different types of information being better shown at different sizes, with richer learning material needing more room. When the target users already carry a bag all the time, should portability of a textbook replacement be so overriding a concern that the area for showing and writing information is slashed by something like half (iPad screen to college notebook ratio) up front? Shouldn't form follow function a little more than that? The really old college textbooks (1950's and earlier) I have are actually smaller than modern versions, with text areas comparable or smaller than an iPad screen. So perhaps the question can be reformulated as "why did textbooks get bigger over the past century?" Or maybe there is just a lot less reasoning behind their sizes than I'm presupposing.
- donw 16y ago
  My guess has more to do with sales and marketing than anything else. I've got more than a few textbooks from the 50's and 60's on a variety of subjects, and for the most part, they are a joy to read, because they assume the reader is intelligent enough to not try and eat the chalkboard erasers. Big textbooks, with lots of diagrams, pictures, and colors, look impressive. They give the impression of a tome filled with knowledge and wisdom, whether or not they actually are. Which is why school districts and professors in charge of lower-division courses buy the damn things -- they get impressive-looking textbooks to wow the students and parents, and they don't have to think much about the choice. It's just good marketing.