Comment by silisili

Comment by silisili 4 days ago

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I definitely agree that just giving kids a laptop/chromebook instead of books is not working. My own child and her friends just don't have the focus required, and easily get distracted out to email, group chats, everything else going on right next to the text.

That said, one thing I appreciate is that she doesn't have to lug around 30lb backpacks like kids did when I was a child. We had lockers, but realistically they didn't provide adequate time to utilize them, so everyone just carried around all their books for the day. Most of us hunched forward because of the weight.

It seems like something like a dumb ereader would be a good middle ground? Put all the textbooks into one place, but don't give it the ability to do anything but read? That or keep the textbooks in the classroom and share.

jpcom 4 days ago

Physical books are still better than e-readers because you can put sticky notes on the pages, jump back and forth between pages quickly, and even start to know where pages are simply based on how many leaves/pages are split between your left and right hand. Textbooks are basically reference books, my favorite dictionaries I start to "learn by hand" to know where to flip to approximately to start my search.

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  • sharkjacobs 4 days ago

    On the one hand, yes, I agree. There's something about the tactility of a book, about dogeared pages, and marginalia, and having muscle memory to open a book at about the same spot where I left off.

    I grew up with that and it's a very comfortable skill set.

    On the other hand, I've learned ways to manage and reference information in digital formats. Bookmarks and links and pasted snippets. Attachments and full text search. Not to even get into real sicko stuff like Notion and Obsidian and DEVONthink.

    Being able to easily flip back and forth between pages is a very useful technique, but so is being able to snap a screenshot of a pdf and keep it open it in another window.

    I'm a sucker for paper but I'm resistant to the idea that all of these things are irreplaceable

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    • Suppafly 4 days ago

      >I'm a sucker for paper but I'm resistant to the idea that all of these things are irreplaceable

      This, I'm really comfortable with technology, but I feel like a boomer when I watch kids that have grown up with it their entire lives. Some people don't need the ability to cross reference things much, but folks who do develop the skills the need without having to revert to printed material.

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  • imadethis 4 days ago

    I'd agree except for the ability to search in an e-book. There's nothing worse than knowing the textbook in front of you contains the answer you need but not remembering which of the 1500 pages contains it. Being able to CTRL-F saved me hours of time when I went back to school after e-books became common.

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    • jcranmer 4 days ago

      For a current project, I've been using a physical book as a reference manual for the API I'm working with rather than using the more typical internet search for the function name. And it's actually somewhat surprising how efficient a physical book is!

      Sure, there's a lot of efficiency to Ctrl-F a text string and just find all the places in a document. I won't deny that it takes me longer to pull up the index, search for the function name in the index, then flip to the page. But then I can just leave the book open at that page on the desk (or my lap). I never have to Alt-Tab, or fiddle with the location of windows to switch between looking at documentation and looking at the code I'm working on.

      This difference was more stark when I was trying to close-read a different specification to ensure that I understood it well enough to make sure a PR implemented it correctly. I needed to have three different parts of the specification open simultaneously to bounce between all of them. With physical paper, that's just a swish of a hand away. With a PDF reader, well, goto that other section, scroll down to the piece I wanted, now goto the first section again and scroll down again and wait what was that back thing again goto and scroll and scroll and goto and descent into insanity. Trying to use multiple windows ameliorates the problem somewhat, but it also takes an inordinate amount of time to set the view up correctly, and I often end up running into the "focus doesn't follow the eye gaze" problem of typing in the wrong window and ruining the view.

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      • Suppafly 4 days ago

        >With a PDF reader, well, goto that other section, scroll down to the piece I wanted, now goto the first section again and scroll down again and wait what was that back thing again goto and scroll and scroll and goto and descent into insanity.

        I pretty much just use screenshots in snagit for that stuff.

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    • groby_b 4 days ago

      A decent index solves that just fine. And usually outpaces ctrl-f chasing for a given word, because it's indexing by ideas, not words. (If it's a decent index, that is :)

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      • doug_durham 4 days ago

        That not how indices work. It is by person or subject not "idea". You can do the same thing but better with a "ctrl-f" search.

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      • iforgot22 4 days ago

        If your PDF has a traditional index in it, you can read it then jump to the right page.

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      • smarx007 4 days ago

        It is quite disheartening to see a comment about book indexes being downvoted. In professional publishing houses, indexing is a job done by a qualified indexer and is not as trivial as one may think [1]. Some rather important reading guides [2] recommend to judge a book by its Contents and Index, which are often overlooked in books that were not edited by professionals or were edited in haste.

        [1]: https://abookindexer.com/why-use-a-qualified-indexer/

        [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Read_a_Book

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  • iforgot22 4 days ago

    My high school was mainly textbooks, then things were more digital in college. Normally I'm against fancy new tech, but this felt like an improvement in hindsight. I was never missing the book I needed, there's cmd+f and page skip, I can annotate without ruining it...

    The real problem seems to be licensing. Lots of books are physical-only, and the digital versions are those annoying "epub" files instead of PDFs.

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    • nottorp 3 days ago

      Aren't PDFs a relic of the past, when you wanted to print digital documents on paper?

      Epubs can be reflowed to fit any screen. If done properly at least. For PDFs you basically need an A4/letter screen to read them comfortably.

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      • iforgot22 3 days ago

        Idk, unless I'm using a very unusual aspect ratio, it hasn't been an issue. The only real difference I've noticed with epubs is I can't just open it in Preview or the iPhone PDF viewer like normal. And it may have DRM.

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      • dredmorbius 3 days ago

        Yes and no.

        PDF's work well for a sufficiently large e-book reader. Full-sized isn't essential, though I find the 13.3" display I use is quite pleasant to read --- roughly equivalent to a large iMac Retina display for reading ease (less overall real estate, but more comfortable to hold in one's hands, and of course, read under bright light / direct sunlight), and vastly superior to a typical smartphone.

        Smaller displays of 8--10" should work in most cases and are far more affordable. The exceptions are typically scans from print, especially of small-font and tightly-rendered journal articles, or works with extensive graphics and diagrams. Those with young eyes can probably manage better than the olds.

        ePub fits any sized display, but there are times when fixed layout truly is preferable for reading, context, understanding, and juxtaposition of text and graphics, etc. With a fixed layout and a competent layout engine or editor this can be optimised. With a flexible layout* (HTML, ePub, etc.) the dynamic element pretty much always leads to compromises or gaffes in layout and positioning.

        Fixed-layout also means that spatial memory of where within a document, chapter, and/or page specific elements / contents are. Dynamic layout greatly reduces the ability of those who have strong spatial memory of written materials.

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  • Suppafly 4 days ago

    >Physical books are still better than e-readers because you can put sticky notes on the pages, jump back and forth between pages quickly, and even start to know where pages are simply based on how many leaves/pages are split between your left and right hand.

    Only because you prefer to work that way, someone that has grown up with everything digital has equivalent skills doing that stuff using tabs, digital sticky notes, bookmarks, and such.

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  • nfw2 4 days ago

    Many of the beneficial affordances you mention that are available for print but not in ebooks is partly because ebook technology is kind of bad. Navigation and annotation for example could be much better in ebooks if developers put more care into those ergonomics.

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  • throw5959 4 days ago

    My sister that's studying medicine says that her books would be totally ruined in half a year if she used them like she uses the virtual ones.

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    • ndr42 4 days ago

      The same is true for my students (german school system, iPads form 7th to 13th grade): They are marking, annotating and rearranging parts of the digitized pages as they like. It would be impossible with printed books. (ok, they could take a picture with the camera and do the same) They have/use printed books but most of the students are borrowing them from the school and are not allowed to write in them.

      So I use mostly digital material and most of the books stay at home for studying (the books are heavy).

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  • eviks 3 days ago

    > jump back and forth between pages quickly

    You can't do it quickly. Jumping between random pages isn't useful (and not faster than in an ebook), so you want to jump to a specific page, and here ebook is much faster, whether you're opening a page number or a page with some content you remember

    > know where to flip to approximately to start my search.

    Or you can start precisely with an ebook

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    • dredmorbius 3 days ago

      With the use of bookmarks (prepared or improvised with index cards, etc.) or sticky notes, precision jumping within a physical book is very quick, easy, and useful.

      Reply View 6 replies
      • eviks 3 days ago

        Of course it's not, you can't fit all the words in a book on index cards, you can't fit all the appearances of a given character in a story, all the memorable highlights- all trivially done at scale in a digital book. You can't jump from the index at the end to the required 5 pages where this term appears at the speed of a click

        And then your highlights also can't unstick because there is some dirt that ruined the stickiness of a note. And your carefully prepared unsticky bookmarks (you didn't have sticky notes around, so you've followed your advice and improvised) can't all fall out just because your book fell with its back up

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  • the_clarence 4 days ago

    I personally never used any of these things back when I was a student

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kccqzy 4 days ago

My high school doesn't use entire textbooks; it uses either excerpts from a textbook or lecture notes produced by the teacher. This solves the 30lb backpack problem nicely: you realistically only bring the necessary notes or textbook required for the last few days of instruction. Anything that's earlier gets left behind at home because you won't need to refer to it often.

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  • silisili 4 days ago

    Interesting. This is actually a pretty nice middleground. If books were designed more like a binder of notebooks, perhaps by chapter, it would solve the weight issue while still allowing for all the things people love about paper books.

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    • kccqzy 4 days ago

      These days some textbooks are available as loose leaf textbooks too.

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  • iforgot22 4 days ago

    We did this in high school. I kept forgetting what I had to bring for all my textbook-based classes each day or what I had to bring home, so I simply carried ~50lb of stuff everywhere. That's ok cause I got swol. Some kids said this was dumb, but they forgot stuff too.

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  • fifilura 4 days ago

    How do they handle copyright?

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    • kccqzy 4 days ago

      The teachers produced most of the lecture notes. The textbooks excerpts were short and in hindsight must be covered by fair use.

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    • anticensor 2 days ago

      Statutory exemption for face-to-face education (this is separate from fair use)?

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IshKebab 4 days ago

Heavy backpacks full of textbooks are an American style of education. There are other options between huge textbooks and laptops.

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chrisco255 4 days ago

Carrying weight from books is good for you. Takes care of your physical fitness and mental fitness.

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  • dalke 4 days ago

    If the bag is too heavy (especially if unbalanced, like carrying it on one shoulder) then the kid can cause back problems.

    See https://scoliosisinstitute.com/heavy-backpacks/ for more details.

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    • ninalanyon 4 days ago

      There is no excuse for schools being so badly organized that this is a problem. It certainly was not a problem when I was at school in the '60s and early '70s. All the books I needed fitted in a briefcase. It also was not a big problem for my children going to school in Norway between 1990 and 2015.

      But children should also be taught how to carry backpacks properly, not unbalanced on one shoulder.

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      • dalke 4 days ago

        I'm not disagreeing with you. But given silisili's lived experience of dealing with 30lb backpacks, chrisco255's statement about that being 'good for you' is simply not correct, unless perhaps that kid is a high school football player weighing 200+ lbs.

        Also, only nerds and dweebs use both shoulder straps.

        Rather, I don't think it's a simple matter of education, given that there are also social pressures involved.

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  • nfw2 4 days ago

    To a degree. I was tiny in school, always smallest kid in my grade, and lugging 30 pounds of books around every day means I now have scoliosis.

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    • Suppafly 4 days ago

      >and lugging 30 pounds of books around every day means I now have scoliosis.

      Doctors claim that heavy backpacks don't cause scoliosis, but can make the associated back pain worse.

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Suppafly 4 days ago

>I definitely agree that just giving kids a laptop/chromebook instead of books is not working.

I'm not really sure why people are pretending it's an either/or situation. Plenty of things are taught just fine or better with technology, but books still have a purpose.

>My own child and her friends just don't have the focus required, and easily get distracted out to email, group chats, everything else going on right next to the text.

That stuff is usually blocked or limited on school owned laptops. If it's not your child's school is failing at something that is very basic.

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rags2riches 3 days ago

I was talking to my ten-year-old about some recent event and came to ask him how he'd learned about it. "Oh, I often check the news in school at the the beginning of class". I hadn't realized just how far the use of laptops had reached in his school. Putting distractions like that between a young child and the things we want them to study is insane, if you ask me.

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cynicalsecurity 4 days ago

Have you ever tried using e-reader? It's slow as hell. Slow in turning the pages, slow in rendering anything that is not text. Making notes functionality is a disaster. Sure, you can search through text, but if it's PDF or images, you are screwed.

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  • scythe 4 days ago

    My advisor used a reMarkable 2 and loved it. I think that there is a range of quality available.

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duxup 4 days ago

Amen. My son's backpack is light as a feather.

I remember carrying my bag full, and still carrying books and notebooks in my arms. It was horrible and I'd end up digging through them to find things, not need it all ... not fun or efficient.

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scythe 4 days ago

Although I do agree that the idea of making a dumb ereader that is specifically tailored to the educational environment sounds like a cool hacking project, there's a much simpler approach that basically solves 90% of the problems: just take the WiFi card out!

The problem here is not with electronic textbooks per se, but the pervasive adoption of networked applications for school assignments — which in turn is used to decrease grading time so that schools can shove more students onto a single teacher.

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ToughKookie 4 days ago

This always seemed like a bad idea to me. I got done high school right before laptops were provided in schools all over the place. I never had one.

Are kids actually able to just get on social media on these things? I figured they would be super restricted.

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  • fn-mote 4 days ago

    > Are kids actually able to just get on social media on these things?

    Where there's a will, there's a way.

    I think the actual interest is in playing games. (IO games, Minecraft online, etc.)

    By the time they are old enough to be into social media (14+ years?), most here in the US have their own phones to provide internet access.

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  • georgebcrawford 4 days ago

    Nowhere did they mention social media :-) but emails and Teams work just fine - though one of my students mentioned they can't initiate chats. I'm sure there's workarounds. I just keep my students off laptops as much as possible.

    Blocking games websites is like playing whack-a-mole. Our IT dept took all of our Year 7 and 8 students out two classes at a time, installing software or doing something to block a raft of websites.

    They were back playing Retrobowl etc a day later. It was pretty funny.

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  • silisili 4 days ago

    Depends on the school. Some are super locked down, and some don't seem to care at all.

    But kids are kids. For example, mine and her friends are using a shared Google slides to drop memes and chat amongst themselves. They always find a way :).

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  • duxup 4 days ago

    In my experience, when the kids had iPads or Chromebooks all their traffic was routed through the school network and a web filer.

    Yeah you could in theory get around it and kids did (generally to play minecraft), but social media was generally well blocked, and all traffic monitored. It is made very clear that these devices are NOT personal devices for personal activity / they're monitoring them.

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sniglom 3 days ago

In Sweden kids get their own desk where their books are stores, as can be seen in the picture of the article.

The only lugging around is for homework.

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cashsterling 3 days ago

Going away from physical book-based learning was possibly well intentioned (but I have my doubts)... but it was really dumb.

There are clear studies that show reading a physical book (versus a screen) and using and physical pen or pencil on a piece of paper, versus typing or drawing on a screen, leads to higher comprehension and retention of information... and thus much better overall learning outcomes. This doesn't even consider the fact that youtube, discord, and a bunch of other apps are a swipe away on an iPad.

A common solution to the "carrying books around problem" used to be there was the copy you were issued (and mostly stayed at home) and there was a shared classroom copy.

Carrying around 2-3 books plus a binder is not a big deal (and is not a 30lb backpack... more like 10-15 lbs)... we act like this is some sort of massive hardship yet so many of us did this for over a decade of our childhood with no ill effect.

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krunck 4 days ago

And yet we want kids to get exercise in some way... When I was a kid we walked to and from school with 40lb packs, uphill. Both ways.

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highcountess 4 days ago

The 30lb backpacks were only a function of our deranged society, economy, and government. I am sure others here will be able to attest that education in Europe not only was better for reasons that cannot be openly discussed in our censorious society, but the textbooks were denser with information that was also better structured, while also being lighter in weight. Lockers are simply not even a thing in Europe because children are carrying less and they have standardized backpacks.

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  • apelapan 4 days ago

    We had lockers in the European high school that I went to. As I recall it was not allowed to bring backpacks into the classroom, you were supposed to only bring the relevant items to each class and keep the rest in your locker.

    I don't think the combined weight of all books used in an entire semester would add up to 30lb, maybe if including dictionaries and atlases and other reference litteraturen that was kept in each classroom (or carted around on trollies by the teachers).

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    • highcountess 3 days ago

      You are conflating things, and then also making my argument, but are unnecessarily cantankerous so you just want to argue. Are you a Brit by any chance?

      Have you ever seen the school books that Americans had to carry around? They were/are 2"/5cm thick books, weigh a few pounds each, and kids carried around about 6-8 per semester.

      You made my point in that European school books are a lot less heavy and also less physically voluminous. The theory behind American books being that more spacing and less information per page makes learning easier, even though all the evidence clearly indicates that is very likely inaccurate.

      Even though you are clearly one of those necessarily contrarian types for reasons that are your own, my point still stands that even if you had lockers for other reasons, the fact that school books in most European countries in which I have visited schools, utilize books that are a lot less heavy and are more information dense and can easily be carried around.

      What is it with you types that you latch onto meaningless and nonsense things like that you did have lockers, while totally missing the core of the point, that the argument was about the weight and size of books??? That sounds like something you may want to think about.

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  • _Wintermute 3 days ago

    I'm not sure which European country you're thinking about, but we had lockers, individual backpacks and heavy textbooks. I never used my locker because we didn't have enough time between lessons, so I just carried all my heavy textbooks for the day as did most people.

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  • JadeNB 4 days ago

    > education in Europe not only was better for reasons that cannot be openly discussed in our censorious society

    Huh?

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    • highcountess 3 days ago

      I would explain it to you, but there are topics that simply cannot be discussed, regardless of how correct, important, and critical they are. I may as well try to tell you about the heliocentric model in the 17th century.

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      • JadeNB 3 days ago

        It's certainly up to you, but "my ideas are as important as the heliocentric model, but humanity is so far behind me that I can't even tell you about them" does not speak favorably about your ideas. (Not to mention that it's hard to imagine that the consequences for whatever your heresy is several posts deep in an anonymous HN comment thread would be anything worse than a few downvotes.)

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