Neuroscientist Jared Cooney Horvath said older generations “screwed up” giving students access to so much technology: “I genuinely hope Gen Z quickly figures that out and gets mad.”
I don’t think it’s as black-and-white as it’s being presented. I think it comes down to how the laptops and tablets were used, not that they were used. Devices should be used in combination with textbooks (edit: and more traditional teaching methods). It’s just that the methodology was trash. Teachers relied on these devices entirely.
I grew up using computers in combination with textbooks in the 90s because the capability of computers was limited back then, and I did very well in school. And I did very well in college after. So did my cohorts. But my teachers and professors knew how to use these tools together.
Yeah, I would have loved to have one notebook/laptop instead of 6 heavy books and have to waste time going to my locker to change them out so I didn’t carry all of them at once. Also would be easier to take notes
first of all, everyone needing their own, individual copies of a textbook was bullshit pushed by the textbook publishers to make sales. They could just be in the classrooms and shared between classes and replaced as necessary.
second, taking notes on a laptop/tablet would have been awesome, too.
third, being able to use the internet for research while in high school? also would have been great, and was in college-- although… the internet back then was also a much more straightforward academic resource and not the toilet it is today, along with instructors who actually gave me pretty good advice on how to use it. Nowadays, there would need to be an entire class on how to use the Internet for research purposes while steering clear of the turdbergs of mis/disinformation out there.
Education supplier contracts should be dependent on efficacy. I worked for one that sold English courses around the world and they knew it was rubbish, the exams had very low pass rates, not because the students were stupid but because the course was shit. That was a textbook based course.
I don’t think it’s as black-and-white as it’s being presented. I think it comes down to how the laptops and tablets were used, not that they were used. Devices should be used in combination with textbooks (edit: and more traditional teaching methods). It’s just that the methodology was trash. Teachers relied on these devices entirely.
I grew up using computers in combination with textbooks in the 90s because the capability of computers was limited back then, and I did very well in school. And I did very well in college after. So did my cohorts. But my teachers and professors knew how to use these tools together.
Yeah, I would have loved to have one notebook/laptop instead of 6 heavy books and have to waste time going to my locker to change them out so I didn’t carry all of them at once. Also would be easier to take notes
first of all, everyone needing their own, individual copies of a textbook was bullshit pushed by the textbook publishers to make sales. They could just be in the classrooms and shared between classes and replaced as necessary.
second, taking notes on a laptop/tablet would have been awesome, too.
third, being able to use the internet for research while in high school? also would have been great, and was in college-- although… the internet back then was also a much more straightforward academic resource and not the toilet it is today, along with instructors who actually gave me pretty good advice on how to use it. Nowadays, there would need to be an entire class on how to use the Internet for research purposes while steering clear of the turdbergs of mis/disinformation out there.
When I was in Uni 10 years after you, we all got our textbooks from our peers on a Dropbox that just got passed down from student to student.
Took me a few years to figure this out, and saved me a tooon of $$ by not having to buy textbooks.
And I always preferred the digital version. So much faster to Ctrl+f or flip back between the appendix and the chapter.
That’s what I did for my second undergrad degree and for my masters. Definitely saved a lot of time and money ❤️
Education supplier contracts should be dependent on efficacy. I worked for one that sold English courses around the world and they knew it was rubbish, the exams had very low pass rates, not because the students were stupid but because the course was shit. That was a textbook based course.