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Thread: eBooks in education.

  1. #1
    Oliphaunt The Original An Gadaí's avatar
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    Default eBooks in education.

    I read recently that there is a campaign here now to get all students at Secondary level (analogous to High School in the US school system) using eBook readers instead of books. It isn't an entirely coherent campaign as yet but I imagine calls for such things will become more common in the years to come.

    One of the reasons parents and teachers are asking for this measure to be taken is because kids typically have to carry large, inch thick textbooks for each of the up to 10 subjects they are studying that day. Many schools have lockers but some don't, and also if a student has work to do from a textbook for homework they have to drag it home with them.

    I think it will be interesting to see how this all pans out (I really wish I had taken this as my phd topic and not music technology ). The problems with bringing in a new system like this, especially suddenly are potentially manifold.

  2. #2
    The Queen Zuul's avatar
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    Considering the sort of agony those kids can put their backs through with all of their books, I can see why there'd be a push for this, but you're right about the potential problems with switching over to such a radically different system.

  3. #3
    Oliphaunt The Original An Gadaí's avatar
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    Mandatory retirement here for teachers is 65 (IIRC) and most teachers start working in their early 20s. There must be a significant crop of teachers now who were trained 20 years and ago where although there was some conjecture on IT in education, very little IT training or IT based curriculum existed in this country at least but who also have perhaps decades left before retirement. I can imagine some of these would be a significant block on adopting an all electronic class room system.

    Electronic devices (ebooks or netbooks or whatever) are probably also more prone to wear and tear that would put them out of action than a well bound textbook so while ostensibly it seems that ebooks will be a saving for parents, at least at the present time they would be expensive to replace. I'm curious out of a school of say 500 students, how many ebook readers would be needed in a school year.

    Once you have them using these devices in the classroom it is perhaps harder to limit their use of their mobile phones etc. which is already a significant problem.

  4. #4
    Elephant artifex's avatar
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    I don't know about the readers - there are some schools where that would work, but at a lot of public schools there are many students who just don't care, who would deface or destroy them just for fun. (I'm thinking about a high school teacher friend of mine in a small border town, who, daily, gets cursed at, stuff in the classroom gets damaged, kids are suspended; one kid got suspended for stealing my friend's cell phone and stashing drugs in the battery compartment.)

    But the electronic book thing, I like. I have online access to the full text of a few of my books, and I love it. It's searchable, I can c&p text, click embedded links to other references; I particularly appreciate this with my one textbook that weighs 11lb by itself, since I just take my netbook to school instead of it.

  5. #5
    Jesus F'ing Christ Glazer's avatar
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    In order to work the E-book would have to be ruggedized to Mil Spec standards at least. And the student (parents) would have to buy the hardware. But at least the hardware could be used for several years.
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