I agree about hating carrying textbooks around. But now as a parent (whose career is in software development and automation) with my kids having everything digitized … I hate it. Crappy platforms. Logins not working. Having to click back and forth all over the place to go between the assignments and the source material. Kids are just learning to ctrl-f for a keyword to find the answer instead of reading the surrounding context and memorize little fragments from a study guide to scan for in multiple choice online quizzes and tests. It absolutely sucks. Go back to pencil and paper please.
As a math teacher I make booklets per unit. They’re almost entirely based on a textbook or two, but they’re all typed up by me in latex.
It works well — one small booklet to haul around at a time. There’s also room for them to write notes as well as work out practice problems. And an answer key, depending on the class.
I am not a kid anymore and all my books are ebooks.
I used to buy physical copies because I just love the way how they feel in my hands and the new paper smell until I ran out of space.
Reality sucks.
. This is the future. Some people hate it when I point it out but it is the truth. This is a digital age. Time moves forward with or with you. I encourage my nieces to get used to ebooks
Instead of chromebook, get a big, hig res tablet with a stylus. It is a saver!
I’m not lamenting technology being a thing. I’m lamenting how its adoption is hindering learning basic stuff like writing out all your work in pencil for math class. If everything is multiple choice quiz, they learn to work through the problem step by step or have the chance for partial credit by showing they understand the overall process even though they made a minor arithmetic mistake.
Sure, a tablet and stylus for free-hand writing can solve that. But why add that additional cost of providing that to every student in primary school instead of just using pencil and paper for it?
I’m pretty sire that kids were always scanning for the keywords they needed. As the education system decays it’s important to remember that it was always fundamentally flawed
Scanning the page with your eyes and brain is still better than hitting ctrl-f and having it pointed out for you. You’ll at least subconsciously pick up on other material on the page. And if they exact phrasing they’re scanning for manually isn’t found verbatim in the text, they’ll still be able to find relevant parts of the reading.
I agree about hating carrying textbooks around. But now as a parent (whose career is in software development and automation) with my kids having everything digitized … I hate it. Crappy platforms. Logins not working. Having to click back and forth all over the place to go between the assignments and the source material. Kids are just learning to ctrl-f for a keyword to find the answer instead of reading the surrounding context and memorize little fragments from a study guide to scan for in multiple choice online quizzes and tests. It absolutely sucks. Go back to pencil and paper please.
As a math teacher I make booklets per unit. They’re almost entirely based on a textbook or two, but they’re all typed up by me in latex.
It works well — one small booklet to haul around at a time. There’s also room for them to write notes as well as work out practice problems. And an answer key, depending on the class.
I am not a kid anymore and all my books are ebooks.
I used to buy physical copies because I just love the way how they feel in my hands and the new paper smell until I ran out of space.
Reality sucks.
. This is the future. Some people hate it when I point it out but it is the truth. This is a digital age. Time moves forward with or with you. I encourage my nieces to get used to ebooks
Instead of chromebook, get a big, hig res tablet with a stylus. It is a saver!
I’m not lamenting technology being a thing. I’m lamenting how its adoption is hindering learning basic stuff like writing out all your work in pencil for math class. If everything is multiple choice quiz, they learn to work through the problem step by step or have the chance for partial credit by showing they understand the overall process even though they made a minor arithmetic mistake.
Sure, a tablet and stylus for free-hand writing can solve that. But why add that additional cost of providing that to every student in primary school instead of just using pencil and paper for it?
A while back some people compiled a list of good/bad textbooks at our university:
https://ubcwiki.ca/academics/textbooks#✅-course-hall-of-fame
Generally, open source ones have nicer interfaces. The proprietary ones do various things to limit access and squeeze out profit
I’m pretty sire that kids were always scanning for the keywords they needed. As the education system decays it’s important to remember that it was always fundamentally flawed
Scanning the page with your eyes and brain is still better than hitting ctrl-f and having it pointed out for you. You’ll at least subconsciously pick up on other material on the page. And if they exact phrasing they’re scanning for manually isn’t found verbatim in the text, they’ll still be able to find relevant parts of the reading.
I learned so much against my will by having to visually scan for the keyword(s).