Will the Kindle Change Education?

[ficbot]

Originally Posted by kazbates

Children are remarkably receptive to new technology and are very quick to pick up the nuances of usage. If they are reading something on a touch screen, the learn to follow along without actually touching the screen.

I don't think I would want them to 'learn' not to follow along with their finger. That is how they read at that age. An older child, I can definitely see them using an ebook reader, but I just don't see it as being a good literacy program for young children. As a supplement,it may have uses. But I would not want to use it as the sole reading program for a five-year-old, no matter how good the technology gets. Think of it like math, they still make them learn ow to do it the paper and pencil way, even though we have calculators, because they want them to understand how to actually do it before introducing the technical aids. I say let emergent readers touch, look and browse the paper books on their own before introducing technology into it.

[kjk]

Originally Posted by Penforhire

I don't recall a shortage of reading material way back when I was in school.

Me neither, Penforhire, but my cousin is a schoolteacher in a mid-low income school district, and she and her fellow teachers have to search out and buy used textbooks every year to have enough for their students. It is a real issue for many these days, and the texts they do get are often old and out of date.

I'm not saying that eBooks are the near-term solution for them (or anyone), but the situation in today's classrooms isn't anything close to what it was when I was in school (where it was just a given that every student got all the books every year).

Hopefully the potential advantages of eBooks (updatable, portable, distributable, cost efficient) will one day help in the educational market. At least, that's my hope. Probably a ways off still.

[kazbates]

I'm not suggesting they don't need to use their finger to follow along with the words on the page. I used to teach first grade (6 year olds) and understand how important it is for some children to learn to read that way, although that's not how every child learns. Some children are more tactile than others. Some children do better with bookmarks held underneath the line of text and yet others seem to be natural decoders who just pick up reading with little outside help. However, if needed, they can learn to follow along without actually physically making contact with the page or screen. There's a lot more to learning to read than being able to point to the words on the page. Frankly, by the time they get to the end of first grade, I would prefer that my students do not follow along with their finger. They should be past that basic step and have learned to follow text with their eyes just like any other established reader. There will always be exceptions to this, of course, but the main purpose of teaching is helping the student to keep moving forward in the learning process.

I do agree with you that it shouldn't be the only way for children to experience text, but it could be the main component.

You can't really compare reading to math. To learn mathematics, children need to learn the basic concepts which build on each other to help take the learning to the next step of mathematical calculations and many of those concepts are better learned through hands on manipulation. Once the basic concepts are learned and the student shows mastery, I have no problem with a child who wants to use a calculator to reduce the time needed to do complicated computations so they might continue on to the next concept. If they already know how to do it on paper, using a calculator isn't going to alter that knowledge. Learning to use the calculator is part of the elementary mathematics curriculum.

[Alisa]

I think ebooks will revolutionize education but not the Kindle itself as it stands today. Eventually the hardware will catch up in functionality to truly make studying easier. It's not there yet. Ebooks will make it easier to navigate books, search on related topics, and recombine the information. Eventually, you will be able to integrate lesson plan data with the book. However, I think the biggest change will be simply in the access to information. As hardware costs go down, it will be far easier to bring an internet connection and computers to a small village in Africa than it will be to bring a library.

[LDBoblo]

Originally Posted by Alisa

I think ebooks will revolutionize education but not the Kindle itself as it stands today. Eventually the hardware will catch up in functionality to truly make studying easier. It's not there yet. Ebooks will make it easier to navigate books, search on related topics, and recombine the information. Eventually, you will be able to integrate lesson plan data with the book. However, I think the biggest change will be simply in the access to information. As hardware costs go down, it will be far easier to bring an internet connection and computers to a small village in Africa than it will be to bring a library.

I agree, especially with the word will. Ebook devices will hopefully become fast and useful enough for academia, or notebook computers with great portability and battery life will make it easier to use ebooks for many educational purposes.

Kindles and Sony Readers and the like still come up quite a bit short. Their biggest advantage now is the combination of light weight with long battery life. Paper has a much better battery life and offers far superior reading quality, but accumulates quickly and becomes much heavier and less portable than an ebook reader. A nettop has a decent portability advantage and very broad functionality, but generally lackluster battery life, and currently limited sunlight readability (but good low-light viewability). Ebook readers have terrible usability and very limited functions, but they do offer a crude, primitive document reader with pretty good thinness and very good battery life.

All of them have some kind of advantage or another, and the latter two groups are going to evolve a bit more. Whichever one becomes a great tool for book replacement first is hard to say, but I will say this about today's tech: I can absolutely recommend a netbook to students if they have a lot of academic reading to do beyond novels and short stories, and I will not recommend an ebook reader to any student unless they have money to burn and want to do a lot of casual reading in addition to their studies. If there are more lightweight strong-battery netbooks with transflective displays like Pixel Qi in the near future, that gap will get even bigger for a while.

[dmaul1114]

I can see some tablet device replacing text books down the road once cost, battery life etc. are improved as tech improves.

They really need something with larger screens, color, ability to highlight etc. to be a functional as a paper textbook.

That said, even that won't change education. The textbooks is largely the same in that instance, just a different medium to read and study it on.

[kjk]

Originally Posted by dmaul1114

That said, even that won't change education. The textbooks is largely the same in that instance, just a different medium to read and study it on.

Putting the same old textbooks controlled by the same people who produce the same old textbooks onto eBooks won't change anything. The potential for eBooks is to escape that model, and giving access to a much wider (and less censored/controlled) range of study materials.

[dmaul1114]

Originally Posted by kjk

Putting the same old textbooks controlled by the same people who produce the same old textbooks onto eBooks won't change anything. The potential for eBooks is to escape that model, and giving access to a much wider (and less censored/controlled) range of study materials.

Possibly. But as a professor I can tell you I wouldn't be very likely to spend the time exploring that stuff to find no materials to use vs. just sticking with the old books I've been using and have my lectures etc. based around.

Maybe I'd look into it a bit for new courses I hadn't prepped yet. But I wouldn't go back and do that level of re-prepping for old courses and waste valuable time that could go into my research work.

So I still don't see it having much of an impact. Professors are still going to pick among the books that come across their desk from publishers who are more aggressive in promoting their text books for adoption.

The only difference will be with e-books it will be easier for them to get complimentary copies to professors to consider for adoption.