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 ...
I agree with you. Yes, there are some limitations to Kindle and other electronic books, but the advantages far outweigh them. For children this is especially the case because they can more readily adapt.
When Kindle was first announced (not even built yet) I sent the info to the local school district to the attention of the person in charge of their one-to-one initiative. I said this was the future. They did eventually shift to that device. The biggest problem I have seen so far is the lack of textbooks. This is the case for the local community college as well.
Mark my words, Laddie, the Day is a-commin, an ye'll find out the hard way: ye canna eat a car!!
And what subjects, pray tell, would a Detroit baby-mama be homeschooling her kids in? It would probably, besides pubic education, consist of The Three Rs: Rapping, Robbing, and Rampaging.
As an ideal, I agree with you; but as a practicality, public education, in one form or another, is going to need to be around for a long time to come. It is the function, scope, and form that needs considerable revision; then, just maybe, universal homeschooling could become a reality.
The key is to first restore local, or at least state, control of education, junking the federal government's role in it, most especially the funding.
It took 200 years to go from parental homeschooling & apprenticing, to parents hiring a neighborhood or town teacher and providing a building, to forming locally elected school boards and enacting mandatory attendance ordinances, followed by legislatively mandated state school boards & superintendents, to the current bloated and unresponsive federal bureaucracy. It will take considerable time, thought, and effort to reverse course.
Just in case you didn’t notice when replacing your books with your e-reader, the stores don’t charge prices that are terribly different for e-content as they do for dead tree editions. That’s a constant source of comment on the Barnes & Noble website, in my experience. The “reasons” texts are expensive will continue to exist, whether a tree falls in the forest or not.
Who will pay for that “free 3G wireless?” I’d truly like to know since I’ve not found such a thing.
I develop training/teach new AF recruits their career field foundation. We moved from paper to Net Books and I don’t like them - awkward to get good notes with and it seems we are washing more folks out. In the classroom, paper works best for me.
There is good and bad. My wife’s class goes through the district server and most everything on the web is off limits, so there’s no interesting surfing that’s possible.
Plus, the class itself is hard and the kid’s have to focus, and she’s a walk around the class kind of teacher.
Hard to believe it took until post 17 in this thread for a sensible opinion to be brought forth.
e-Books are not part of any grand conspiracy to keep conservatives from knowing what their kids are being taught. That’s just silly.
I love my actual books, but when I am (as I usually am) reading 3 or 4 books at a time, my Nook makes it a whole lot easier.
And the objection that you cannot find stuff easily in ebooks, have you never heard of a) bookmarking, and b) using the search feature. I daresay finding an obscure passage in an e-book is order of magnitudes easier that with a paper book.
The real question is WHO is selecting the historical or scientific information and HOW are they CHANGING the history or science? In a digital world, it is very easy to change the FACTS.
Students in the LA school district hacked the ipads very quickly and the district recalled them - see links below.
Many people are not aware that the new common core curriculum utilizes ipad technology (required/ stimulus funded) and the link between technology and converting to Islam and the caliphate.
Common Core – The Qatar Connection: A Wahhabi State Skypes With Your Children – Connect All Schools
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/3058348/posts
Already being implemented in TN
Common Core Lesson Plans: A call to Jihad, Converting to Islam, 5 Pillars of Islam, submitting to the Will of Allah
http://bradleycountynews.wordpress.com/2013/08/20/common-core-lesson-plans-a-call-to-jihad-converting-to-islam-5-pillars-of-islam-submitting-to-the-will-of-allah/
Greg Gutfeld on redeye
LA School Officials Take Back Free iPads
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzyYKByGXdc
LA to give every student an iPad; $30M order
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3033355/posts
Go to the 19:10 min mark and see how the testing evaluates students with the technology.
As children take tests a wristband will take their pulse
The mouse will measure their stress level
The chair will test posture
The camera is focused on face during testing - evaluating emotions.
The Glenn Beck Program: Common Core and Education
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Oz7XOKcyRE0
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