Why is this getting down voted? This whole thread is fully of techno nerds who seem to be under 30 and grew up in the generation this article is talking about and smoking copium to make themselves feel better for being part of the less capable generation.
Nope this conclusion is general everywhere. Replacing textbooks and pen and paper for tablets and digital technology has damaging effects on the learning process. We as a species are not built to learn by clicking and swiping on screens. We learn by touching, feeling and writing on coarse paper. Learning is an incredibly complex process and attempting to simplify it only leads to superficial gains as opposed to real knowledge.
Now when learning 3d geometry for example, people think that buying a bunch of 3d shapes they can touch and bend and visualize easier is better. But what they don’t realize is the effort to visualize the shape with ones mind’s eye is far better for the learning process even if it takes practice and it is slower.
This race for immediate results in everything created the impression that learning a few things quickly and applying them without actually understanding their depth is better than slowing things down and building knowledge. But the curve must go up up at all costs!
tehn00bi@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
Throbbing_banjo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 12 hours ago
Everyone knows the real problem was moving from clay tablets to papyrus. So unnatural.
amateurcrastinator@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
It is not the same thing and you know it but you do you!
drmoose@lemmy.world 16 hours ago
What a silly naturalist falacy. Were not built by anyone and evolutionary speaking pen writing is not any more special than writing on a digital screen. All of the science here is unconvincing at best and fake bullshit at worst.
It’s entirely a skill issue.
amateurcrastinator@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
It could be a skill issue but if that’s the case I’d argue that introducing digital learning should have been a slower process. Anyway there are countless studies showing the differences between typing and handwriting (like this one: pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11943480/) but I also have a story. Years ago I had a friend who was doing different neurological studies and she measured once the difference in the brain when writing vs typing. She said it was night and day. When writing the brain lit up almost completely, because handwriting engages so many centers for so many motions and memory recall etc. Typing she said looked almost the same as pressing a single button over and over. There wasn’t much engaging of other motions. I found it very interesting. This was years ago before social media, I don’t think smartphones were a thing yet much less tablets.
I am not saying that there is no place in learning for digital technology. It would be stupid to ignore them. But some things are better learned with pen and paper.
drmoose@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
I feel like that’s still an implementation issue not the fact of that “digital is worse” and yeah you’re probably right - the roll out should be better. Using proprietary apple devices and shit by multi trillion budget enterprises (countries) is stupid. The government should task entire governed system with years of preparation and diligent implementation with optimized ebook software and curriculum distribution.
This is entirely a skill issue not a technology / medium issue.
Digital is clearly here to stay and superior form of information exchange - it’s literally called IT. To say that we should go back to pen, paper and text books is just pure incompetence. I speak from experience myself as I am a published author but I’m never writing an educational book again when websites exists - physical textbooks are incredibly archaic and should be abandoned entirely and I’ll die on this hill.
amateurcrastinator@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
I am a scientist myself and I cannot see how you can solve maths and physics problems on a tablet. Maybe I am incompetent and lack the imagination but the physical limitations of these devices just make them cumbersome at best. Again I am not arguing against tablets computers etc. Just that some things are better learned with pen and paper. There are far fewer distractions and you get a much better picture when you have 3 pieces of paper in front of you with all the steps you took to get to where you are now in your solution than swiping back on the tablet. I am obviously biased but it just makes more sense to me.
Writing an article absolutely digital I would never argue against it. But actual learning is better analogue in my opinion.
And then there are the issues you mention about forcing people to use a certain brand for their education. Pen and paper is for everyone. Easily available and ready to use. I can see your argument for textbooks and here it is where a tablet could be useful (provided is distraction free). Load it up with textbooks and go. But even then my bias makes me skeptical. There are mental mechanisms to remember information from books. One can remember the placement on a page, the place in the book. In a digital version that constantly changes depending on how you read that.