6 ms·

Huh. I read on a tablet all of the time, I guess that makes me a prisoner of hype! Minority view, yes.

TeMPOraL 9y ago
Education is not about just reading, but regardless - you know what's better for reading than an iPad? A paper book. And if your concern is weight, you know what combines the best qualities of a paper book and a tablet? An e-book reader with e-Ink display. (This is sad, really. As I understand, e-Ink tech is patented to death, so there's little progress there.) Still, I'm not saying iPads are useless in general. The topic is relative merit of iPad vs. other possibilities, in education. My claims are as follows: - iPad is a bad idea in education, partly because of the low capabilities of the device, and partly because not much apps that would would make full use of the capabilities of the device in order to encourage learning (this is kind of similar to "edutainment" or "educational games" for PC - utter crap that only fools parents) - given that, iPad looses to plethora of other tools available for teachers, most of which are low-tech - neither of the two points above will prevent iPad from succeeding on this market, as the hype is strong enough to overcome rational obstacles -- Incidentally, I feel like back in 2015. I thought iPads already succeeded in getting sold to schools en masse, and it already turned out to be a colossal waste of money. I'm pretty sure we already had those discussions on HN.
- greglindahl 9y ago
  Wow. As a highly educated person, I had no idea I was choosing inferior tools! Thanks for letting me know. I gave all my nieces and nephews tablets, and they all used them, I hope I didn’t destroy their lives. Seriously, I have a hard time believing you can quote any evidence that a paper book is much better than a tablet for everyone. Which appears to be your assertion, although it’s hard to tell.
  - sincerely 9y ago
    books can last decades. an ipad absolutely won’t.
    - schoen 9y ago
      I have a printed book that's the same age as the U.S. constitution (now 231 years) and another printed book that's a few decades older (293 years), both of which are still completely legible. "Decades" feels like a big understatement to me. :-) We mostly think of paper as a poor archival medium because of a few decades, mainly at the end of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century, when high-acid wood pulp paper was very widely used. (Newspapers are also sometimes printed on cheap acidic newsprint.) Acidic paper can become brittle within 20 years or so, or in any case much less than a century, although this also depends on many other factors. But both before and after this period, many books were printed on acid-free paper, and these are likely to survive for centuries, even with occasional use. The observations about paper's longevity in, for instance, Nicholson Baker's polemical Double Fold, tallies well with my experience as the son of a bookdealer. My father routinely sells books that are over a century old to people who fully expect to read them. And I remember visiting an antiquarian book fair where a first folio Shakespeare was for sale for millions of dollars. It was still possible to turn the pages with no damage and all the printing was completely legible, even though the book was already 380 years old or so. Books on low-acid paper are really a very durable technology when treated with respect.
      - greglindahl 9y ago
        I've digitized a bunch of 16th century books so I (and everyone else, they're out of copyright) can read them on a tablet or whatever. Added a search function, too. I am suggesting that claiming that one thing is best for everything and everyone is not true.
      - eecc 9y ago
        Assuming the file format is documented, also bits remain completely legible throughout time. Perhaps we haven’t yet worked on a redundantly encoded, self documenting file format but eventually we will. At that point in time - assuming all relevant content won’t be copyrighted to death for 1000 years, that’s a big one - we will be able to simultaneously have unfettered access to any content
        9y ago
  - hiq 9y ago
    As a starting point, can you quote any evidence that a tablet is better than a paper book? Both for reading and for more general educational activities? I assume your family doesn't use their tablets with candycrush-like apps unlike some of my acquaintances. Which apps do they use to make it worth it? I tend to assume that the burden of the proof of value is on the new tool, otherwise we just keep changing and nothing gets ever battle-tested. Paper, pen and other boring educational tools have drawbacks and benefits that are well-known; what about tablets?
    - greglindahl 9y ago
      I was expressing a personal anecdote, which I said (up one) that I knew was a minority opinion. I wasn't saying that I was expressing a universal truth. Sorry that I wasn't obvious.
    - coldtea 9y ago
      >As a starting point, can you quote any evidence that a tablet is better than a paper book? Both for reading and for more general educational activities? Have we regressed to the point where the simplest statement requires third party ("scientific" references)? A table offers 100x the functionality of a paper book. Even just in reading mode, it can carry 1000s of books in it, one can take notes, highlight, search them, remember its position on each, it has its own light (adjustable to match ambient levels or go beyond them), increase the font size (ever though about those with no perfect eyesight? Sucks to be them with paper books huh?), even spoken to the reader through TTS. Not to mention that the price of ebooks is much cheaper than paper books to boot (and that one can even pirate the latter, if they are so inclined). Or that there are also 100,000s of FREE ebooks (classics, and such) but seldom (if ever, except for charity or so) free paper books.
      - coldtea 9y ago
        I meant, "a tablet". A table offers different kinds of functionality...
        goshx 9y ago
  - TeMPOraL 9y ago
    Wow, this subthread is getting out of hand... My assertion is in context of education. If you're going to use a tablet as an electronic version of paper books, then paper books are better, because: - they're much faster to skim through and search through - print has better resolution than screen - you can actually make notes on them - I mean free-form notes, made in an efficient way - you can pull out multiple books and compare them - they're much nicer on your eyes Note again, I'm talking about education. That's different from recreational reading of fiction, and more akin to reading technical books - you need the ability to skim, skip, quickly move around and cross-reference stuff separated from each other by many pages. Now tablets could be better if electronic textbooks actually exploited the medium they're using - the way Bret Victor has been talking about for ages now. See e.g. http://worrydream.com/KillMath/ http://worrydream.com/KillMath/ or http://worrydream.com/ScientificCommunicationAsSequentialArt/ http://worrydream.com/ScientificCommunicationAsSequentialArt... (just got on HN frontpage, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16836530 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16836530). However, I'm yet to see that happening in the wild. Ultimately, my point isn't that tablets are bad. Hell, I'm happy user of such devices, and they definitely help me read on the go (they beat Kindle for technical books, due to color and better workflow with PDFs). My point is that tablets get dumped on schools and are used to view textbooks, which is something at which they're worse than regular textbooks. Both teachers and publishers have little clue on how to use these devices to their full potential, and there doesn't even seem to be a movement to help them get that clue.
    - enitihas 9y ago
      How on earth are paper books faster to search through?
      - fsloth 9y ago
        Not OP but I can second this. When I have a really hard topic I need to understand that requires rapid context switching to check on details nothing beats a book. Highlighters and post it book marks make it much faster to browse through than PDF on my IPad.
- make3 9y ago
  - e-ink has garbage level latency, which makes it useless for anything even slightly dynamic, including educational videos of course - e-ink doesn't have color, color is helpful in educational material to make it friendly and accessible - there are outlets everywhere, so unless you're going camping, the battery life is not that big of an advantage, more of a slight convenience thing all of these points are why tablets aren't going anywhere
  - pjmlp 9y ago
    Tablets have strong light intensity that make them unsuitable for reading causing more eye strain than e-ink. The first thing I did after trying to read on a tablet was to buy a Kindle. Reading on a tablet, minutes, reading on a e-ink device, hours.
  - schtitt 9y ago
    The ReMarkable has, by some black magic, managed to reduce the latency by quite a lot compared to, say, a Kindle.
    - rhaps0dy 9y ago
      Only for writing, not for getting to the next page.
    - ptman 9y ago
      Because they update a small part of the screen, full page turns still take time
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- Fnoord 9y ago
  Good points, but if children resort to Android devices I am not sure that makes me happy given they fall pray to advertising and profiling. An e-reader has some disadvantages compared to a tablet. For example, it does not have a capacitive screen and does not have the ability to draw (low refresh rate) or use a stylus as input. It is a great tool for reading and it does that better than any other device (if you agree with its advantages over paper book which is weight vs amount of content) but not for say practice and exams.
ekianjo 9y ago
there are better devices for reading. Objectively.
- greglindahl 9y ago
  And the source you are citing is... ? And it would have to be a lot better to be the obvious choice for 100% of readers that some folks in this thread appear to think that it is.
  - Fnoord 9y ago
    E-readers, for example. The battery lasts far and far longer, they're a lot cheaper (at least 50% of the price), and probably lighter. Source: my own experience with them two Kobo devices.
- jrs95 9y ago
  You’re right. But it’s not about making textbooks digital. It’s about bringing more interactive software into the mix. IMO a combination of text, video, and interactive applications would be much more effective than just reading a book. And for what it’s worth, textbooks are rarely “read” anyways. Subsections of chapters are used and often not in order. And that’s mixed with a plethora of other content which is still largely being managed in a manual and ad-hoc manner. Clearly we can do better than this.
axaxs 9y ago
Are you a k12 student? If not, why are you replying at all? Anyone who asserts that iPads are a good choice for education are completely out of touch at best, or ignorant at worst. I'm sorry if this borders on a personal attack, but it feels like you're just looking for a reason to be offended.
- jrs95 9y ago
  I had an iPad in high school and loved it, despite not having any apps for any of my school stuff. Just the browser and the form factor was enough to be a pretty good device. Note taking was the main thing I couldn’t do with it, and now it’s a great device for note taking. That is a big enough differentiator from Chromebooks to make it the best choice IMO. But of course this is just based on my limited personal experience, I could be totally wrong.
- greglindahl 9y ago
  I'm not offended, so if that's what you're reacting to, now you know. Instead, I was giving a personal anecdote in reaction to a statement which looked like an over-generalization. My nieces and nephews were k12 when I gave them tablets. Apparently I missed the news that tablets were terrible 100% of the time! Which appears to be what you're saying, but I can't really tell, what with all the names you called me. "Out of touch" or "ignorant", what a choice!
  - axaxs 9y ago
    Perhaps we are looking at it from two different angles. It seems you may be looking at it from the 'educational to have one', while i'm looking at it from feasibility at an institutional level, which I thought OP was referring to. I know nothing about ipads, so I'm not questioning it as a device. What I'm questioning is why anyone thinks it is realistic for schools to spend the money on the, vs similar options at a fraction of the cost. Teachers in multiple states are walking out over pay, right now. Teachers in most states are underpaid. Most students are on free lunches. Where does the money come from to buy kids an ipad? Seems the state doesn't have it, nor the parents.
- deleted 9y ago
coldtea 9y ago
Considering hundreds of millions have bought an iPad, and sales are strong 8+ years on, it's not much of a minority view.

Education is not about just reading, but regardless - you know what's better for reading than an iPad? A paper book. And if your concern is weight, you know what combines the best qualities of a paper book and a tablet? An e-book reader with e-Ink display. (This is sad, really. As I understand, e-Ink tech is patented to death, so there's little progress there.) Still, I'm not saying iPads are useless in general. The topic is relative merit of iPad vs. other possibilities, in education. My claims are as follows: - iPad is a bad idea in education, partly because of the low capabilities of the device, and partly because not much apps that would would make full use of the capabilities of the device in order to encourage learning (this is kind of similar to "edutainment" or "educational games" for PC - utter crap that only fools parents) - given that, iPad looses to plethora of other tools available for teachers, most of which are low-tech - neither of the two points above will prevent iPad from succeeding on this market, as the hype is strong enough to overcome rational obstacles -- Incidentally, I feel like back in 2015. I thought iPads already succeeded in getting sold to schools en masse, and it already turned out to be a colossal waste of money. I'm pretty sure we already had those discussions on HN.

greglindahl 9y ago
Wow. As a highly educated person, I had no idea I was choosing inferior tools! Thanks for letting me know. I gave all my nieces and nephews tablets, and they all used them, I hope I didn’t destroy their lives. Seriously, I have a hard time believing you can quote any evidence that a paper book is much better than a tablet for everyone. Which appears to be your assertion, although it’s hard to tell.
- sincerely 9y ago
  books can last decades. an ipad absolutely won’t.
  - schoen 9y ago
    I have a printed book that's the same age as the U.S. constitution (now 231 years) and another printed book that's a few decades older (293 years), both of which are still completely legible. "Decades" feels like a big understatement to me. :-) We mostly think of paper as a poor archival medium because of a few decades, mainly at the end of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century, when high-acid wood pulp paper was very widely used. (Newspapers are also sometimes printed on cheap acidic newsprint.) Acidic paper can become brittle within 20 years or so, or in any case much less than a century, although this also depends on many other factors. But both before and after this period, many books were printed on acid-free paper, and these are likely to survive for centuries, even with occasional use. The observations about paper's longevity in, for instance, Nicholson Baker's polemical Double Fold, tallies well with my experience as the son of a bookdealer. My father routinely sells books that are over a century old to people who fully expect to read them. And I remember visiting an antiquarian book fair where a first folio Shakespeare was for sale for millions of dollars. It was still possible to turn the pages with no damage and all the printing was completely legible, even though the book was already 380 years old or so. Books on low-acid paper are really a very durable technology when treated with respect.
    - greglindahl 9y ago
      I've digitized a bunch of 16th century books so I (and everyone else, they're out of copyright) can read them on a tablet or whatever. Added a search function, too. I am suggesting that claiming that one thing is best for everything and everyone is not true.
    - eecc 9y ago
      Assuming the file format is documented, also bits remain completely legible throughout time. Perhaps we haven’t yet worked on a redundantly encoded, self documenting file format but eventually we will. At that point in time - assuming all relevant content won’t be copyrighted to death for 1000 years, that’s a big one - we will be able to simultaneously have unfettered access to any content
      - 9y ago
- hiq 9y ago
  As a starting point, can you quote any evidence that a tablet is better than a paper book? Both for reading and for more general educational activities? I assume your family doesn't use their tablets with candycrush-like apps unlike some of my acquaintances. Which apps do they use to make it worth it? I tend to assume that the burden of the proof of value is on the new tool, otherwise we just keep changing and nothing gets ever battle-tested. Paper, pen and other boring educational tools have drawbacks and benefits that are well-known; what about tablets?
  - greglindahl 9y ago
    I was expressing a personal anecdote, which I said (up one) that I knew was a minority opinion. I wasn't saying that I was expressing a universal truth. Sorry that I wasn't obvious.
  - coldtea 9y ago
    >As a starting point, can you quote any evidence that a tablet is better than a paper book? Both for reading and for more general educational activities? Have we regressed to the point where the simplest statement requires third party ("scientific" references)? A table offers 100x the functionality of a paper book. Even just in reading mode, it can carry 1000s of books in it, one can take notes, highlight, search them, remember its position on each, it has its own light (adjustable to match ambient levels or go beyond them), increase the font size (ever though about those with no perfect eyesight? Sucks to be them with paper books huh?), even spoken to the reader through TTS. Not to mention that the price of ebooks is much cheaper than paper books to boot (and that one can even pirate the latter, if they are so inclined). Or that there are also 100,000s of FREE ebooks (classics, and such) but seldom (if ever, except for charity or so) free paper books.
    - coldtea 9y ago
      I meant, "a tablet". A table offers different kinds of functionality...
      - goshx 9y ago
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  Wow, this subthread is getting out of hand... My assertion is in context of education. If you're going to use a tablet as an electronic version of paper books, then paper books are better, because: - they're much faster to skim through and search through - print has better resolution than screen - you can actually make notes on them - I mean free-form notes, made in an efficient way - you can pull out multiple books and compare them - they're much nicer on your eyes Note again, I'm talking about education. That's different from recreational reading of fiction, and more akin to reading technical books - you need the ability to skim, skip, quickly move around and cross-reference stuff separated from each other by many pages. Now tablets could be better if electronic textbooks actually exploited the medium they're using - the way Bret Victor has been talking about for ages now. See e.g. http://worrydream.com/KillMath/ http://worrydream.com/KillMath/ or http://worrydream.com/ScientificCommunicationAsSequentialArt/ http://worrydream.com/ScientificCommunicationAsSequentialArt... (just got on HN frontpage, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16836530 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16836530). However, I'm yet to see that happening in the wild. Ultimately, my point isn't that tablets are bad. Hell, I'm happy user of such devices, and they definitely help me read on the go (they beat Kindle for technical books, due to color and better workflow with PDFs). My point is that tablets get dumped on schools and are used to view textbooks, which is something at which they're worse than regular textbooks. Both teachers and publishers have little clue on how to use these devices to their full potential, and there doesn't even seem to be a movement to help them get that clue.
  - enitihas 9y ago
    How on earth are paper books faster to search through?
    - fsloth 9y ago
      Not OP but I can second this. When I have a really hard topic I need to understand that requires rapid context switching to check on details nothing beats a book. Highlighters and post it book marks make it much faster to browse through than PDF on my IPad.
make3 9y ago
- e-ink has garbage level latency, which makes it useless for anything even slightly dynamic, including educational videos of course - e-ink doesn't have color, color is helpful in educational material to make it friendly and accessible - there are outlets everywhere, so unless you're going camping, the battery life is not that big of an advantage, more of a slight convenience thing all of these points are why tablets aren't going anywhere
- pjmlp 9y ago
  Tablets have strong light intensity that make them unsuitable for reading causing more eye strain than e-ink. The first thing I did after trying to read on a tablet was to buy a Kindle. Reading on a tablet, minutes, reading on a e-ink device, hours.
- schtitt 9y ago
  The ReMarkable has, by some black magic, managed to reduce the latency by quite a lot compared to, say, a Kindle.
  - rhaps0dy 9y ago
    Only for writing, not for getting to the next page.
  - ptman 9y ago
    Because they update a small part of the screen, full page turns still take time
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
Fnoord 9y ago
Good points, but if children resort to Android devices I am not sure that makes me happy given they fall pray to advertising and profiling. An e-reader has some disadvantages compared to a tablet. For example, it does not have a capacitive screen and does not have the ability to draw (low refresh rate) or use a stylus as input. It is a great tool for reading and it does that better than any other device (if you agree with its advantages over paper book which is weight vs amount of content) but not for say practice and exams.

ekianjo 9y ago

there are better devices for reading. Objectively.

greglindahl 9y ago
And the source you are citing is... ? And it would have to be a lot better to be the obvious choice for 100% of readers that some folks in this thread appear to think that it is.
- Fnoord 9y ago
  E-readers, for example. The battery lasts far and far longer, they're a lot cheaper (at least 50% of the price), and probably lighter. Source: my own experience with them two Kobo devices.
jrs95 9y ago
You’re right. But it’s not about making textbooks digital. It’s about bringing more interactive software into the mix. IMO a combination of text, video, and interactive applications would be much more effective than just reading a book. And for what it’s worth, textbooks are rarely “read” anyways. Subsections of chapters are used and often not in order. And that’s mixed with a plethora of other content which is still largely being managed in a manual and ad-hoc manner. Clearly we can do better than this.

axaxs 9y ago

Are you a k12 student? If not, why are you replying at all? Anyone who asserts that iPads are a good choice for education are completely out of touch at best, or ignorant at worst. I'm sorry if this borders on a personal attack, but it feels like you're just looking for a reason to be offended.

jrs95 9y ago
I had an iPad in high school and loved it, despite not having any apps for any of my school stuff. Just the browser and the form factor was enough to be a pretty good device. Note taking was the main thing I couldn’t do with it, and now it’s a great device for note taking. That is a big enough differentiator from Chromebooks to make it the best choice IMO. But of course this is just based on my limited personal experience, I could be totally wrong.
greglindahl 9y ago
I'm not offended, so if that's what you're reacting to, now you know. Instead, I was giving a personal anecdote in reaction to a statement which looked like an over-generalization. My nieces and nephews were k12 when I gave them tablets. Apparently I missed the news that tablets were terrible 100% of the time! Which appears to be what you're saying, but I can't really tell, what with all the names you called me. "Out of touch" or "ignorant", what a choice!
- axaxs 9y ago
  Perhaps we are looking at it from two different angles. It seems you may be looking at it from the 'educational to have one', while i'm looking at it from feasibility at an institutional level, which I thought OP was referring to. I know nothing about ipads, so I'm not questioning it as a device. What I'm questioning is why anyone thinks it is realistic for schools to spend the money on the, vs similar options at a fraction of the cost. Teachers in multiple states are walking out over pay, right now. Teachers in most states are underpaid. Most students are on free lunches. Where does the money come from to buy kids an ipad? Seems the state doesn't have it, nor the parents.
deleted 9y ago

coldtea 9y ago

Considering hundreds of millions have bought an iPad, and sales are strong 8+ years on, it's not much of a minority view.