7 ms·
Considering your anecdote about professors who need real chalk on their hand, I wonder if this is a generational thing. Do many people born in the 90s and later
by mwcampbell 9y ago
Considering your anecdote about professors who need real chalk on their hand, I wonder if this is a generational thing. Do many people born in the 90s and later still prefer reading from paper and handwriting (regardless of surface)?
FWIW, since I have low vision (from birth), the notion of handwriting being desirable is utterly foreign to me. I could do handwriting, slowly and tediously, but I was happy to do my homework (and later in-class note-taking) on a computer as soon as I could.
- ktta 9y ago>I wonder if this is a generational thing Exactly.
- lomnakkus 9y agoI don't think the grand-parent poster said anything about preference. It may very well be the case that retention of information is better from dead tree books even though people prefer digital media. (Example: I'm sure most people would prefer to eat chocolate most of the time, but that doesn't really work out so well...) That said, I think the accessibility argument is an strong one, especially if text can be read out loud and/or re-flowed properly (like on web pages) based on font size, but I honestly don't see why textbooks couldn't be provided both as digital and text. Surely the cost of producing the textbook is pretty marginal if you're already doing whiz-bang animations, etc. for the digital version? The bulk of the text should be identical, I should think.