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Keep in mind that you were self-experimenting with a tablet in limited ways vs the holistic approach this school is taking. Problems that you encountered tryin

by crusso 14y ago

Keep in mind that you were self-experimenting with a tablet in limited ways vs the holistic approach this school is taking. Problems that you encountered trying to use a tablet in a book-oriented environment could be solved by curriculum changes, technology improvements, UI changes, etc. While improvements to a tablet approach can resolve all of the problems you're mentioning, a regular book will never be regex searchable. A regular piece of paper will never let the teacher know your scores immediately so she can help you past problems and provide instant feedback. A regular set of class books will never decrease the need to linearly increase the number of pieces of paper needed for the amount of materials you want the students to have.

alanctgardner2 14y ago
I've pointed out in a couple places, I don't buy the "instant feedback" solution. If I write some maths on paper, my teacher can see where I went wrong. If I check a box on a tablet, it's a boolean. Was I right, or wrong? The teacher saves some time in marking, but now I'll have to go and show them my work (on the forbidden paper!) to see where I went wrong. As far as searching, the index at the back of a book is likely more useful than full-text search. Usually I'm not interested in a particular term, but 'that thing that we covered last week, with the Fourier Transform', or something like that. There aren't any keywords, regexes won't help - you need a well-organized textbook where the headings and sub-headings facilitate this kind of searching. Curriculum changes seem like the wrong way to go as well - if a tablet isn't good for teaching a subject, don't jam the subject into a format the tablet can understand. This is clearest in the testing case, but it's generally applicable: the tablet, as a device, exposes an interface. Paper exposes the ultimate interface: it accepts any free-form input. At best tablets can work in a similar way, but we have a hard time doing anything useful with this input. As we normalize the input to make it easier to process, we move away from a general purpose input device, and we force students to think and express themselves in the specific way we designed the interface to work.

by crusso 14y ago

alanctgardner2 14y ago

I've pointed out in a couple places, I don't buy the "instant feedback" solution. If I write some maths on paper, my teacher can see where I went wrong. If I check a box on a tablet, it's a boolean. Was I right, or wrong? The teacher saves some time in marking, but now I'll have to go and show them my work (on the forbidden paper!) to see where I went wrong. As far as searching, the index at the back of a book is likely more useful than full-text search. Usually I'm not interested in a particular term, but 'that thing that we covered last week, with the Fourier Transform', or something like that. There aren't any keywords, regexes won't help - you need a well-organized textbook where the headings and sub-headings facilitate this kind of searching. Curriculum changes seem like the wrong way to go as well - if a tablet isn't good for teaching a subject, don't jam the subject into a format the tablet can understand. This is clearest in the testing case, but it's generally applicable: the tablet, as a device, exposes an interface. Paper exposes the ultimate interface: it accepts any free-form input. At best tablets can work in a similar way, but we have a hard time doing anything useful with this input. As we normalize the input to make it easier to process, we move away from a general purpose input device, and we force students to think and express themselves in the specific way we designed the interface to work.