Posted on 12/22/2013 7:15:22 PM PST by DJ MacWoW
WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. (AP) - At Archbishop Stepinac High School, the backpacks got a whole lot lighter this year because nearly every book - from freshman biology to senior calculus - is now digital, accessible on students' laptops and tablets.
"The last couple of years, this would have been like 30 pounds," says sophomore Brandon Cabaleiro, whose load nowadays includes just his iPad, his lunch and a jacket.
snip
The online history books, for example, include videos on subjects ranging from Woodrow Wilson to Malcolm X. The science books show scientific processes in motion. The English books grade an essay and offer a student a worksheet on the proper use of commas if it's needed. Students can highlight passages or leave notes to themselves in the margins, without ruining the book for anyone else.
(Excerpt) Read more at apnews.myway.com ...
Malcolm X? What the hell does he have to do with history?
And if your kid can't read, not to worry....the book will read itself to you.
Freshman Michael Bilotta says he is particularly fond of a feature that allows the digital books to read themselves out loud. "So when you're tired, on the bus or something, you can just put earphones on and hear the lesson."
Why, are the parents restricted under the law from accessing the information on the the students laptops or iPads?
Lots of that information is only available on the school’s wifi network.
do they have any videos on anybody you'd want to learn about?
From the short list I’m guessing that’s a “No”.
The technological disadvantages are serious ranging from internet down time at just the wrong time to glitches in the programs themselves that leave entire classes sitting and wasting time. (My wife teaches one calculus class with a digital “textbook”. She keeps her old “real” textbook on hand just for those occasions.)
Then there is the design of the texts themselves. She thinks that the “pages” don’t lend themselves to student learning. They’re hard to navigate. And she really dislikes that they send different “exercises” to each student’s ipad. So, instead of everyone working on a problem with her being able to tutor step by step, she has oftentimes each student with a different problem all at the same time. Whatever the rationale behind that, she says it is ignorant and unworkable by any model of teaching she has ever practices, seen, or heard of.
It sounds as bad as I thought it would be.
Remember the old days when “they” said watching too much TV will ruin your eyes?
Now, all kids do is stare at a TV screen 24/7. Soon they’re be wearing glasses prematurely.
If I had kids, I’d take them out of that school. I retain more reading from a book than from digital content.
Sorry,my mistake.
MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR.
Tuition is $9,000 a year. For what?
S’ok. One of the other things they can do is update the information that’s actually ON the ipad or other device daily. So what the parent looks at one day might be completely different the next.
And I loved that last sentence: "It's all great," said junior Joseph Terrigno. "As long as the Wi-Fi doesn't go down."
She’s right. Little techno pads will never take the place of real books because they are hard to “flip” through. When you know basically where something is located in a book, you can find it very quickly, and especially when a class has to flip from 1 section to another to another in the course of a couple minutes. Or if you just want to go back to check on the equation from 7 pages back again and again.
There are great things about hi tech but still many shortcomings.
Had it been done “right”, this would be a great idea. High school loads kids down with a heavy book for each academic class (and even some of the non-academic ones), and often you get homework in most if not all of the subjects. Putting all of those books on a read-only SD card, in a hyperlinked pdf format (so subjects can be cross-referenced within the text), would be ideal. That way, kids don’t have to drag 30+ pounds of paper all over the place, and they don’t have to worry about returning “damaged” books at the end of the year the way I did in HS. Instead , you get the crap in the article, where the books are all in the “cloud”, and there’s no consistency (and, as pointed out, the text can change).
This is WAY overdue.
Textbooks are a rip-off. Information and history changes constantly. Producing books annually just to keep up is expensive and time-consuming.
Not to mention the kids getting back sprains and injuries carrying textbooks in their backpacks.
I say digitize all textbooks and put it on a Kindle e-Reader, which is easier on the eyes than a laptop, which would save time, money, and hauling 50lbs of books on your back. Do it for all kids in Middle School and up.
yep.
Which is not good.
I’ve already said that I was sorry for my statement.
I am now wondering how long it will be before the WI-FI is hacked into.
I remember when schools rushed to get computers and grades went down. New technology isn’t always the answer.
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