School Swaps Math Textbooks For iPads 439
MexiCali59 writes "Four of California's largest school districts will be trying something new on eighth-grade algebra students this year: giving them iPads instead of textbooks. The devices come pre-loaded with a digital version of the text, allowing students to view teaching videos, receive homework assistance and input assignment all without picking up a pen or paper. If the students with iPads turn out to do improve at a faster pace than their peers as expected, the program could soon spread throughout the Golden State."
In unrelated news... (Score:5, Funny)
Expensive (Score:5, Insightful)
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For a lot of places the "tech" funds are independent of their general budget. As you are likely aware you generally do not replace computers every year; however, if on the years you don't replace equipment you don't spend your tech money then you lose it for when you do need to buy new equipment.
Those funds are reserved for temporary budget shortfalls (such as an unexpected drop in enrollment for a year), they cannot handle a sustained loss of funding. Also, many places will ratchet your funding to your worst year - so even if budgetary conditions improve for the next year you won't get your budget back.
Re:Expensive (Score:4, Insightful)
The logic of the bureaucracy is simply lunacy.
"Why are you blowing your full budget?"
"I do not want to have my budget cut for next year."
"But you didn't need it all this year."
"Yeah, but I want more next year."
That's what is happening in every government agency. If the idiots in charge were not all collectively doing this, then, for starters, there would be a rainy day fund when they really needed it. Agencies would actually be able to request bigger budgets when they really needed it, and, this is crazy, we'd actually have money to give them.
It should be criminal to blow a budget simply to try and get the same amount or more for the next budget cycle.
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Because the USA, unlike the rest of the world, is immune to the idea that investing in education and infrastructure yields tangible benefits for society!
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Governments breed waste, inefficiency and tyranny and can never lead to a net gain for society when compared to a private institution.
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Private schools perform better because of selection bias. Parents who care about their child's education will go the extra mile, including spending extra money that doesn't always yield results. Stable families and finances are the determining factor in academic success, not the source of the funding for the school.
As someone who went to a private and a public high school, the only difference was that everyone at the private school never wanted for anything and most never had jobs other than school, while in public school a few miles away, they had night jobs just so they could make ends meet for their family. One major problem is that high schools in the US are treated like minimum security prisons for teenagers. Ending truancy laws once they turn 15 could solve the biggest problem of teachers being forced to control students who won't want to be there in the first place.
But really, your entire argument rests on the belief that anyone born poor or with learning disabilities does not deserve an education. That's a pretty low moral standard to aim for, and one you are strangely proud of.
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You know, I generally consider myself "libertarian-leaning," but I think you're oversimplifying this to a frightening extent in your pursuit of an ideal.
Why should mechanics read Shakespeare? Because communication is important - probably even more so than the mechanical knowledge, the basic skills of every day interactions - talking, reading, writing - are critical skills for living. Reading other people's writing, especially those who are good communicators, educates you in how to communicate more effectively. Writing your own thoughts down, and practicing expressing your thoughts & opinions has value, no matter how much you, personally, hated English class back in high school
You see, nobody exists in a completely insular little vacuum. Mechanics don't wake up, pork their wife (also a mechanic), and send their kids off to mechanic school (mechanics-to-be!), then go to the garage, where they do mechanic stuff all day without talking to a single other soul. Then come home, eat some Mechanic Cuisine tv dinners, and go to bed, and maybe if they're lucky, pork their mechanic wife again.
A purely utilitarian view of people like you've expressed - where we're all specialized widgets who have "no need" for any learning outside their narrow specialized niche is engaging in overly reductionist thinking, and it's probably not a society that any of us would care to be a part of for long.
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I believe the GP was saying that nobody should be forced to study things that go against the grain of his nature. That rarely helps.
Why should mechanics read Shakespeare? Because communication is important
I don't know what Shakespeare or other classics you were reading, but art of clear communication is not exactly the primary goal of fiction literature. Quite opposite, a lot of writing depends on things that are not said, on things that the reader completes in his head and acts out internally, as if he were one of the actors in that scene. Fiction books are written not to educate (that would be textbooks) - fiction is written first & foremost to entertain. Very few authors want write clearly (like Mark Twain; and compare to his well known critique of Cooper.)
And here comes another problem - the age of the reader. Shakespeare wrote his plays for adult audiences. Leo Tolstoy wrote his "War and Peace" for an adult, even bilingual audience. Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote his "Crime and Punishment" for an [initially] sane, adult reader. I'm sure you can add tons of books like that that are part of school courses in various countries. Invariably these books are far more complex than what a 12- or 14-year old student is ready for. This causes boredom and other problems.
When I was in school (which was quite a while ago) I hated literature classes the most. Not "language" classes as such - those were easy; but classes that asked you to read a book and then answer questions that are not answered in the book. For example let's take that "War and Peace." A general walks the field before the battle. Then he comes close to a tree and stands still for 10-15 minutes. Question: what did he think about during this time? I don't recall what was the officially blessed answer to that, but my answer would have been simply "Insufficient data." You can answer this question (probably incorrectly anyway) only by trying to relive these hours *as* the protagonist. But a school student can't relive a life of a 40-year old man who was a filthy rich, married aristocrat, with friends and enemies in high places.
Are there books that are more suitable for children? Most certainly so. Just to name a big name, Andre Norton has quite a few books written specifically for children, and even more in the genre of fiction. Children can associate themselves with protagonists of those books. Good and evil are easy to see, and often the hero is a young boy (or a girl, in Norton's case.) But those books are not studied. Instead, some heavyweight adult fiction that can easily hurt an adult's head is selected. (Dostoevsky is a great example in this department.)
So you were saying something about communication? There is precious little of that in those books. Implied inferences rule. "Martin's hand accidentally touched Kate's, and both felt a spark of electricity." I say, get proper antistatic gear before you put your hands where they don't belong :-) This is not the stuff that a school student should be personally familiar with, and that's just a fictitious example. In real books (like "Anna Karenina") the action unfolds about the marital conflict in a family of an aristocrat. Yes, that's the stuff a 14-year old pimple-faced boy knows all about, especially the part where the man *doesn't want* the woman.
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You realize that "implied inferences" and "understanding body language" and "nonverbal communication" are a major part of how we communicate, as human beings, right? So tell me again why learning empathy, understanding how to infer things, picking up on and interpreting nonverbal cues, and so on aren't skills that can be taught in books where "Implied inferences rule"?
The post I was responding to wasn't saying "Don't read Shakespeare, read Andre Norton." The post I was responding to was saying, "Don't read Shakespeare, learn how to be a better mechanic" -- in other words, we should skip things that are "non-essential" to the trade we've decided a kid has the most aptitude for, and simply focus on making them the best cog we possibly can.
My basic response to that is: By studying Shakespeare (or, for sake of the overly literal-minded, WHICHEVER author you feel is appropriate literature for a high schooler), one becomes a better person, and by as an incidental benefit, a better mechanic. Though for what it's worth, I think you vastly underestimate the mental capacity of high schoolers by claiming that they need "easy to see" depictions of good and evil, and heroes they can easily identify with, and that they can't handle the challenge of stepping outside their own experiences to imagine what someone else's life might be like. Sure, they may still need guidance, but a 15, 16, 17, 18 year old high schooler is capable of handling "difficult" topics, even if they have no direct experience of those topics.
It's called imagination, or empathy. You may not get it right, but you'd be surprised at how much a student *can* get right. Shit, 5 year olds play cops and robbers all the time, and invent all kinds of imaginary games and scenarios. It's what they do. Should we stifle that because they might not "get it right"? It's part of the learning process to project, and if you go off-course, the teacher should be there to help guide you back on track, and discuss with you where you went off course, and how. As I said, I think you're underestimating the imaginative ability of young people.
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As an example of well-constructed communication & written thought? Every part.
You see, we can learn from examples, even if we don't speak now like people did in Shakespearean times.
But if it makes you feel better, let's eliminate Shakespeare from the curriculum, but agree that reading well-written poetry, prose, and drama from modern writers has an educational benefit far beyond how quickly you can rebuild a V6 Toyota engine?
And good luck learning anything from a technical manual in the brave new world where mechanics don't have to learn to express their thoughts in written or verbal form. After all, if fundamental literacy is irrelevant to mechanics, who's going to be able to write down how to fix the engine, and who's going to be able to read it even if someone did?
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Um, how does it? Lets imagine a scenario with no public schools at all.
Why imagine it ? Just go back a hundred-odd years in history then look at everything before that.
The world wouldn't suddenly collapse, people would just learn more efficiently. People would have a greater deal of specialization which would allow them to better perform in the workplace. Lets face it, why should Joe Sixpack who is really great at, say, diesel mechanics have to read Shakespeare when he can simply be learning how to be a better mechanic?
How do you propose he figures out whether he's better at fixing diesel engines or standing on stage ?
Its silly that we've put people on a treadmill to "higher education" that basically screws the poor and the working-class.
Right. Because having them grow up illiterate and uneducated - or in the best case class-stratified and railroaded into whatever jobs their families already do - wouldn't screw them in the slightest.
Because of government-run schools, a high school diploma is basically worthless, its not a qualification. If you walk into almost every job interview situation and proudly proclaim you graduated high school you will get laughed at. So what happens? Even for entry-level positions employers now want a college degree and that screws the poor.
That has nothing to do with government-run schools and everything to do with a badly run education system.
Consider Joe Sixpack, he is a great diesel mechanic but bad at English, Algebra and History.
How does he know ? Without public schools he's never had the chance to even *try* English, Algebra and History because he's been working 12 hours a day down at the local subway station with his dad shining shoes for a dollar each since he was 5.
So rather than Joe Sixpack being able to really study mechanics and being a better worker, he has to sit through classes that are boring for him and cost taxpayer dollars. Not only that but thanks to a high school degree being basically worthless, Joe Sixpack now has to go to tech school or a university at his own expense basically screwing him financially for the next ten years of his life unless he magically finds a job that doesn't require that, which is rare these days.
You've described a poorly run education system, not any fundamental problem with a publicly funded education system. I'll admit to not being familiar with the American system, but in the systems I am familiar with students are free to start choosing most of their subjects and specialising (outside of a few core requirements like English and Maths) as of about 14 years old.
Post-highschool study is always going to be required if you want to be a skilled worker, of any stripe. In some cases you get this at a University, in others you get it at a trade school, and in still others you get it on the job. The point is that nobody outside of unnatural prodigies can acquire the necessary skills by 17 to be finely skilled at anything, without grossly neglecting the rest of the education and going back to the days of class stratification.
Most people should not go to college its silly that its so forced on people, we now have people only being productive from 22+ years or older and piled on with debt, or too poor to get into college and have a door slammed on them by potential employers for not going to college.
Now you are describing a broken hiring culture in a addition to a broken education system. Again, the problem here has nothing to do with government, it is solely the fault of private enterprise's unrealistic expectations.
The elimination of the public school system would allow for greater specialization, better workers, better innovators who aren't wasting their time and my money.
Bullshit. It would result in the same thing it resulted in previously. Child labor, class stratification, dramatically reduced class mobility, an illiterate, ignorant public and the inaccessibility of education to anyone except rich or extraordinarily lucky individuals.
Public education is, quite possibly, one of the greatest achievements and defining features of modern civilisation.
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Its been shown time and time again that people will donate when they believe they are actually making a difference, and private groups would be able to use decision making to give support to people who actually need it unlike the government.
Pure horseshit. Call my bluff and link to a peer reviewed study.
There's a reason roads aren't private, and power is regulated, and water is a public utility. That reason is because you cannot trust a corporation with needs, unless those needs can be plentifully produced and naturally lend themselves to real competition. That means MP3 players and apples need very little regulation, because it's pretty easy to tell what these things are, what they are made of, and what purpose they serve.
Hell, when the founding fathers were talking about what the government should run, the latest technology at that time - the post and road systems - was something they all wanted folded into the government. The reason is because under government supervision it could be properly accounted for and equitably distributed across America, and not subject to the whims of aristocracy or price gouging by private entities. That cheap, reliable, price-regulated infrastructure is the bedrock of all modern economies. The intelligence and capability of the workforce is a vital part of that infrastructure, and shouldn't be left to chance by some entity who is only concerned with that quarter's profit return instead of the well being of American society for the long haul.
You want a place where money rules and weak government is powerless to regulate commerce? Pick just about any place in Africa and see how you like the income distribution there. You'll quickly learn that it's pretty tough to have a middle class when the majority of your population can't read or write. But hey, the market said they should just dig in the dirt and have all of their natural resources sold out from under them and funneled into the hands of the tiniest sliver of their upper class. And if the market did it, it's got to be right.
Right?
Government programs benefit those who game the system rather than people who actually might need it. Private programs can deny people which makes it a whole lot easier to give help to those who need it.
Your ideas on economics are fatally childish and unrealistic, unless you have no problem with old women dying in hospital parking lots for lack of kidney dialysis, or a vast population of uneducated and unskilled workers roaming the slums, or kids selling their bodies for their daily bread if they happen to be unlucky enough to be an orphan. Those are all realities right now across the undeveloped world. And true, some of it is due to government corruption, but that just shows you how important a strong and legitimate government is to the well-being of a society.
If all of this libertarian horseshit were true, than the weak states across the world would be drowning in money and happiness. They are not.
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Peer-review does not make something correct
Peer review means it has received documented critical analysis by people in the same field, which makes it much more difficult to pass off simple assertions.
I trust corporations with my need for food all the time
No you don't. The FDA (when properly funded and empowered) is the entity that keeps you from dying of salmonella and ecoli. The libertarian solution is for your child to die and for you to "learn" that you shouldn't buy food from the same vendor again.
The rest of your comment ignores the simple truth that YOU are in control of YOUR government, if you live in a functioning democracy. All of the whining and hand wringing about powerful politicians is pathetic apathy, masquerading as a red herring about imagined injustice.
It is your job to make sure that your politicians are acting in your interests, through your vote and your participation in politics. Once you hand that sort of power over to a private entity which doesn't even have to pretend to have your interests in mind, or be afraid that you have any way to fire his ass, you'll quickly find yourself living in an oligarchy with no rights.
we can no longer adequately explain 1) the rise of the American system before the close of the War of Northern Aggression (Civil War) and America's transformation into an empire or 2) why despotisms are generally incapable of improving their countries, even when they are 'legitimately' put in power by the people.
1) I do not see a point to comprehend - are you really trying to compare the offshoot of British imperialism with tribal societies under the thumb of British and European imperialism?
2) There's an entire section of history concerning enlightened despotism. It's the most effective form of government, but far too dangerous to give any one person that much power in the event someone like Stalin or Hitler becomes that person.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enlightened_absolutism [wikipedia.org]
Who modded this libertopian crap insightful? (Score:5, Insightful)
Governments breed waste, inefficiency and tyranny and can never lead to a net gain for society when compared to a private institution.
Private institutions breed greed, cartels and perverse incentives and can never lead to a decision-making process which would choose a net gain for society over a greater gain for itself.
Yes, both of these sentences are moronic oversimplifications.
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Governments breed waste, inefficiency and tyranny and can never lead to a net gain for society when compared to a private institution.
Never? Taking that at face value you must advocate the elimination of laws, courts, police, and military (all government institutions) to be replaced with the might makes right anarchy of every man for himself (the ultimate private institution). To me that sounds like a net loss for society.
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No, you can't throw money at it, but at the same time, that's not necessarily what the GP is talking about.
Invest is a transitive verb--it's usually used to refer to money, but you also invest time and effort. In particular, investing in education and infrastructure is as much about allowing or encouraging people to invest their efforts as it is about the money--when you are investing in a non-established company, you are giving them money yes, but you are giving them an opportunity to try new things that might not work, and refine their technique over a period of months or years until they find a solution.
Investing in new technology in order to see if the students, or the teachers, can do more with them is investing money in their potential. It may be smart, or foolish, depending on what the students and teachers are like, but that's mostly to say "we haven't figured out how to do it yet."
Governments breed waste, inefficiency and tyranny and can never lead to a net gain for society when compared to a private institution.
Government, in my mind, has a singular purpose: to do with economies of scale what would be either impossible for a single entity (social security, medicare, disaster relief), or which it would be unreasonable to assume someone would do (charity, police/military, waste management).
I'm not saying it isn't very often a bad thing, or that it doesn't open up lots of bad opportunities for people, but go find somewhere on this planet where trash, septics, fresh water, etc are not even touched by government of any level, then compare it to the first world, and tell me government has nothing to offer.
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the idea that investing in education and infrastructure yields tangible benefits for society!
But it doesn't. You can't just throw money at a problem and find a solution...
I just want to point out that your response doesn't match what you're responding to. The idea was not "throwing money at the problem of education yields tangible benefits".
Or do you think that money spent on education is a waste? A society should not bother educating their citizenry? Is it all that simple, that investments in education are all simply waste?
Or would it be fair to say that education costs money, but an effective and efficient education system will ultimately be worth the resources directed toward its operation? Let's assume for the sake of argument that you're right, and that private schools are better. So let's say I spend $120,000 putting my child through private school. Is that $120k not well spent? Could you not conceive of the possibility that, over the course of my child's lifetime, society will gain more that $120k worth of added societal value and productivity from my child's education?
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"Why is it that almost every single privately educated student is better educated than a public school educated student despite massive redistribution of wealth? With a private school, they have to make every dollar count."
That's, like, one of the dumbest and most disingenuous arguments I've ever seen. The actual answer is simply: Because private schools are rich and spend about twice as much money on average.
The secular private schools analyzed in the study spent $20,100 on each student in the 2007-08 school year vs. $10,100 in public schools. [Washington Post, "Per-Student Spending Gaps Wider Than Known", Aug-31, 2009]
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/30/AR2009083002335.html [washingtonpost.com]
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You also missed that private schools get to select students to avoid all the problem students that suck down lots and lots of resources in the public school system, so Private Schools can more efficiently use their resources.
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Because the USA, unlike the rest of the world, is immune to the idea that investing in education and infrastructure yields tangible benefits for society!
But it doesn't.
Congratulations on just proving his point.
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Note that these benefits are specific to devices like the iPad and not PCs. PCs are much more expensive, delicate and difficult to set up, maintain and use.
PCs are a hell of a lot easier to batch set up and load. AFAIK you can't just remotely load up 200 iPads, on the other hand its pretty damn easy to do that with PCs, just network boot them then push all the stuff in from the network.
And the problem isn't the paper, its the publishers. Without copyright you'd pay $2-3 for a textbook, not $50-100 for one. eBook editions of things really aren't all that cheap. Plus, there is a durability/resale question. A textbook is pretty easily readable in 10 years, especially a math book, things aren't going to fundamentally change. History books, science books? Yeah. Math, English, etc? No. But they used this for math and not the other subjects. Will an iPad even hold a charge in 10 years? Won't publishers simply screw schools out of books because with digital ones you can remove the older ones and make them pay for all new books whenever you want to upgrade, etc.
As far as I can tell, yes, this is throwing money at a problem to get in the headlines. Any return on investment is minimal because the iPad doesn't eliminate the need for many things, plus, iPads are fragile. Drop a book in the hall? No big deal. Drop an iPad and you are out ~$500, lose a book and you might be out ~$50-100, lose an iPad and you are out ~$500, someone steals a book? No huge deal. Someone steals an iPad? It lands in a pawn shop somewhere. Etc.
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iPads are much more durable than laptops or netbooks. We've been evaluating them at my company. They are also much easier to set up.
Um, ok. So, battery dies in an iPad, what do you do? You can't just put in a new one, the batteries aren't user replaceable. Flash chip goes bad in an iPad, what do you do? You can't just take it out like you could a standard SSD and load up a standardized image on it. Screen breaks on an iPad, what do you do? Its certainly not as easy as changing a laptop's screen.
Also, you can't easily set up limited user accounts. Yeah, there are "parental controls" but that isn't going to be as safe as individual accounts.
You seem to think that there is no problem with a textbook being 10 years old. Well, a lot you (don't) know about textbooks. Not only do they need updating much more frequently then that, many schools don't have enough to give to students. They have to share them in class and cannot take them home. It's a huge problem and a huge expense.
Um, throughout high school I regularly used textbooks that were 10 years or more old for subjects that don't change Math, English, Keyboarding, etc. other than parts in the math textbook talking about a record store, it was just fine.
And so, you mean to say that somehow a school can't afford a $50 book, but can afford a $500 device + $50 book?
As for the $500 for a device. Well, that's as cheap or cheaper than all the texts a middle or high schooler uses and you didn't include all the other teaching content - interactive and all - that can be included. You can make parents share financial responsibility or assume all of it. We used to have to pay for lost or damaged textbooks. Why not iPads?
paper is not the main cost all the iPad is, is just the thing to run it. The book isn't free. You are still paying $50 a book on an iPad, the difference is that the book is electronic and not physical. If the paper was the main culprit I'd have my nook loaded up with all best sellers and would be saving a ton of money. You still have to buy the books. Yeah, there might be a slight discount, its not free though.
Like it or not, the publishers are all moving fast in this direction. Where you see that its because they can make more money I see it as they can provide more value and replace some more expensive assets.
What the fuck don't you get?
A) School pays $500 per student for an iPad
B) School pays $50 per student per book for the iPad
Is the digital model. The paper model is
A) School buys a paper book for $50 per student per book.
Yeah, e-books have some nice extras. Do they justify an extra $500 per student. Hell no.
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At the expense of losing my mods here, I must intervene.
You're a lunatic to think that textbooks need "updating much more frequently than that". Textbooks need to be decently done, and then you can keep using them. Exceptions would be perhaps history/social study textbooks. The problem is that no grade level textbook is ever methodically worked on and improved. This used to be the case in the times long forgotten, but not nowadays, not in the U.S.
Textbooks are mediocre to start with, they get superficial changes made to them to warrant new editions, and then somehow all bridges are burned and we get a newly written textbook. Newer, but just as mediocre, or worse. And so the mediocricity is maintained. Noone wants to seriously edit, expand and improve upon "old" texts.
Feynman did some rather methodical reviewing of certain California textbooks in mid-1960s. I'm an optimist, so I thought that things have improved. So, a couple years ago I borrowed a bunch of mid- and highschool physics/science textbooks used in Ohio, and I read through them. The quality is rather uniform -- that of bovine manure. I still have nightmares about that -- drowning in manure pits and such. All of the authors, every single one of them, had absolutely no effing clue what they were writing about. I have no excerpts handy, but it was disgusting. Superficially, it all "made sense" and was seemingly fine. But as soon as you started reading and paying attention, it was all crap. A text that others depend upon for learning, without prior experience of the subject taught, must adhere to pretty high standards. The way it is, though, is exactly the opposite. Mistakes, falsehoods and demonstable lack of understanding abounds in those books.
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The Internet, by which we participate in this conversation, was created by people willing to think and plan and code not for personal monetary gain but for the betterment of society. Fame and glory. There is no reason this will not work for textbooks. The Open Slate Project [slashdot.org] advocates fully integrating tablet computers into secondary education, and open source content ranging from Ebooks to apps. The content piece is called Chalk Dust. [slashdot.org]
If this sort of thing appeals to you, consider joining our SourceForge mailing list. [sourceforge.net]
MIT has been doing great work with Open Courseware [mit.edu].
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They didn't just throw money. They bought an electronic device that proved to be much more effective than what they replaced.
No, the results of this test aren't in yet. A salesman for the education firm pushing this program says that it's effective. This deployment is a test to see if it's true. Even the initial results of this experiment won't be ready for another few months.
Personally I don't believe this is the best use of that kind of money, but I'm open-minded. Maybe it'll work out. Who knows?
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I worked as the Director of Technology for a charter school for 3 years and I looked at pretty good reporting on how one-laptop-per-child programs saw a 15% gain in performance on standardized testing. So I'd lay pretty good odds they will see some sort of increase from this, but probably not as great as they expect since they are doing a weird one-subject parallel.
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That's a ridiculous statement you make considering the US spends more per student, by far, than any other country on Earth. The small city where I live spends more than the next highest country which is in Northern Europe. And it's not a little more, it's thousands more they spend. The city has had budget problems for decades now. A significant portion of the population is low-income.
The problem is that too many schools in the city are still crap. But the money ends up going to garbage. If it's not a gimmicky program then it's an overpaid administrator sucking up that money. These idiots hired some administrator from some big city. Her income is well over $250k a year and she's refused to forgo raises claiming she needs them for cost-of-living increases. And she's done next to nothing to improve the educational system in this city. Of course a huge part of the problem are irresponsible parents who don't discipline their kids and instill the value of education in them, so things are never so simple.
The problem with Americans, particularly when it comes to social programs, is that they think simply throwing money at the problem will fix it. When people start talking about needing money for schools what they actually mean is that teachers want significant pay increases and cushy benefits. I'd love to have the job security and generous benefits some teacher friends of mine enjoy. The money never goes to directly improving education for students. When it does trickle its way down too often it ends up being something stupid like these iPads.
How will these iPads improve education? They wont improve a thing. In fact, they're going to be a massive distraction. Kids already are easily distracted, they don't need yet another toy to make things worse. And given how careless they will be with these things schools are going to be replacing them every few months. Money flushed down the toilet.
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No...Think of the environment!!! No costs must be spared to save the dozen or so trees that would have otherwise be converted into textbooks.
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(as if any new government program ever results in cost savings anyway)
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Collegiate textbooks cost around $100
Re:Expensive (Score:2)
And how much is the cost of that electronic textbook's license per student? Probably less than $100, but definitely not free. Plus that electronic license probably won't be recycled for 4-5 years like a paper book might be.
I looked at the numbers a few weeks ago for some textbooks for Grad school. My numbers came close without even the cost of an iPad (in my case a Kindle). I can't imagine it would be economical for 8th graders, who will probably not be extremely careful with those iPads.
Re:Expensive (Score:4, Insightful)
And how much is the cost of that electronic textbook's license per student? Probably less than $100, but definitely not free.
Free.
Schwarzenegger launched a program in 2009 to create digital textbooks in math and science owned by the state board of education. At the end of 2009 they had ten texts, including math through Calc 1 and 2.
Re:Expensive (Score:5, Informative)
Between the cost of a textbook and the rate at which they become 'obsolete' for the state testing...
Are you asserting that books last less than three years? Because I'm relatively certain that there will be nearly no usable iPads in that same amount of time. They're simply not designed to outlive their replacement models.
Re:Expensive (Score:2)
There's been only 1 iPad out, what are you basing this assertion on?
Re:Expensive (Score:4, Interesting)
Years and years of experience with consumer electronics.
Or is the iPad made of magical pixie dust and will therefore not be subject to industry norms? I can see Jobs now, "Profit be damned! There will be only one iPad, and no one will ever want to upgrade it, EVER!"
Yeah, no.
Re:Expensive (Score:2)
Re:Expensive (Score:4, Insightful)
How many school children have had unsupervised access to your devices?
Re:Expensive (Score:4, Funny)
Uhh, yes it is.
No, no it's not. They're clearly two different concepts.
Not to be inflammatory, but did you actually manage to get so much of Steve Jobs in your mouth that it hit your brain?
Re:Expensive (Score:2)
Well, someone still has to buy the textbook content (and other software) to put on the iPad. I'm not sure the expected lifespan for an iPad, but I'd argue that textbooks are more durable in the face of handling by a highschool (or younger) student who doesn't own it. Also consider that Apple designs its products to be used for a certain duration and then discarded (so you'll buy the new one).
The concept may have merit if the software adds value above and beyond what you get from a textbook. I cannot see it being cheaper than textbooks unless/until it can replace multiple textbooks for a given grade.
Schwarzenegger's ebook program (Score:2)
Personally, the idea of an impersonal video showing boring math material would be even worse than have an instructor do it, but perhaps this will allow the more "advanced" students to go at their own pace.
I did attend an "open classroom" for several years and in one of those years, I was allowed to race ahead and finished the english and math curriculum several months ahead of schedule so I could spend more time on that wonderful TI-99 4A [wikipedia.org] hooked up to the beautiful color monitor.
I don't think the iPad based curriculum will work for every child.
Not necessarily expensive (Score:2)
Its a pilot program, an experiment, it might work (Score:5, Informative)
California is in the middle of a hiring freeze for the State, and a huge deficit. Where exactly are they getting the money for these iPad projects for these districts, let alone for the rest of the State if they decide to advance it?
This is a pilot program, Houghton Mifflin and/or Apple are probably subsidizing it.
A pilot program is designed to measure the effectiveness of the device and the costs. It is plausible that a reusable digital device loaded with numerous textbooks could be less expensive than the corresponding set of paper textbooks. Also keep in mind that today's $500 iPad will probably be around $250 in a couple of years. and those are retail prices not educational institution prices.
Re:Cheaper would be.... (Score:2)
Re:Cheaper would be.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Much as I dislike them, why not a Kindle loaded with text books. That would be much much less than iPads and less likely to be used for other purposes (like watching YouTube during class).
1. Color is extensively used in modern textbooks.
2. Textbooks are incorporating more software and multimedia.
I had the opportunity to work with a textbook publisher regarding the software bundled with a chemistry textbook. This software included chemical diagramming (2D - for reports and such) and 3D model building and visualization. We also had a few movies illustrating some basic principles. All of this could easily be done on an iPad and be bundled with the textbook. Not so for today's Kindle. I hope future Kindle's offer color and touch to make such things feasible.
Re:Cheaper would be.... (Score:2)
You want them to be useful for the other tasks, though. The revolution in education will not come from simply digitizing the old ways of educating, it will come from using computers to do things you couldn't do without them. Kindles won't permit that.
In fact, the studious inability for the education world to realize this and act on it is a significant part of the reason why they disgust me so.
fallout from CA free digital textbook initiative? (Score:3, Interesting)
This may be partly a reaction to California's Free Digital Textbook Initiative [bbc.co.uk]. I went to a symposium about the FDTI last summer (more about that symposium here [theassayer.org]. The people interested enough to come were an odd-bedfellows mixture of free-information enthusiasts, commercial textbook companies, and computer hardware companies. The ones with a really, really strong pecuniary motive for participating are the hardware companies. This is a gigantic potential gold mine for them. From the point of view of the book publishers, it was clear that they were about as enthusiastic about it as they would be about a skunk at a bridal shower, and the only reason they were there was to gauge how horrible the threat was.
This pilot program would then represent the perfect confluence of interests between the publishers and the hardware companies. Once you get rid of the pesky idea of having the textbooks become free, it becomes a wonderful potential gravy train for all of them.
Not so sure about this. My kid just started high school, and she had IIRC 30 lb of books. Since she sometimes walks to and from school, we bought her her own copies of some of her books to keep at home. They were actually surprisingly inexpensive, especially compared to the exploitative cost of college-level textbooks.
But computer companies have a long-established practice of being willing to lose money in order to get impressionable K-12 kids used to their hardware and software, on the theory that the kids will then be loyal customers after they grow up. Apple has done this using educational discounts on their hardware. MS did it in their early history by winking at piracy. Amazon has of course been losing money hand over fist on the Kindle in order to build market share.
Re:Expensive (Score:2)
From the money they hope to save in providing books on the long term I guess. At $50-150 (or more once you get to college) per book these costs really add up. I believe the current average textbook expenses in the US is somewhere near $1000/student/year and you have to take into account that in that number, many rent or buy second hand books and many more simply can't afford the books (like in my city school district where nobody has textbooks). Add to that the gigantic logistics cost of tons (literally) of books that have to be printed, transported, distributed and at the end of the year picked up, transported and recycled (as they are usually useless the next year).
Hopefully they haven't locked themselves in again with certain publishers so teachers can just go ahead and give them a link from Apple's or Amazon's e-book store ($5-15 for a decent math book).
Re:Expensive (Score:2)
there are very few high school text books which are useless the next year.
in fact, per the local school district, they EXPECT to get at least 5 years per textbook of life span.
some are even longer.
and per the article, this is for a GRADE 8 CLASS. Meaning these aren't even high school students in most districts.
Re:Expensive (Score:2)
Isn't it obvious? The money will come from the parents who have so much spare cash to throw around. Supporting a family in this economy practically pays for itself, right?
Re:Expensive (Score:4, Interesting)
400 students for a pilot program? That doesn't sound like too much money to prove (or more likely squelch) the theory that more computers = smarter students.
Also, I'd guess these are being provided either free or at-cost by Apple, with partner Hughton Mifflin bearing the brunt of other costs. By the wording of the article, they seem to be the ones having commissioned the study, not the other way around.
As a side note, why is it always that "something is going bad here, so we shouldn't do anything about anything else until that is fixed." I've heard that people are starving, so why send people into space. We're at war with Russia, why do we need a civilian network. This isn't an A or B choice. When the state is broke, you have to find ways to make basic research continue to happen. Maybe the study will prove that, as I suspect, throwing money at technology is less effective than throwing money at smaller class sizes. Maybe it will show that the extra expense is worth it, especially as it can be amortized over several classes. Students cost thousands of dollars per year anyway. Or maybe there will be a little bump, and California will jump in with India's $100 tablet effort.
Or maybe we need a giant K-12 edu-wiki, which can be drawn from by all teachers and students across the state, and across the country. Oh right, somebody stubbed a toe, so we should just go home until they feel better.
Re:Expensive (Score:2)
LA unveils $578M school, costliest in the nation
LOS ANGELES – Next month's opening of the Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools will be auspicious for a reason other than its both storied and infamous history as the former Ambassador Hotel, where the Democratic presidential contender was assassinated in 1968.
With an eye-popping price tag of $578 million, it will mark the inauguration of the nation's most expensive public school ever.
The K-12 complex to house 4,200 students has raised eyebrows across the country as the creme de la creme of "Taj Mahal" schools, $100 million-plus campuses boasting both architectural panache and deluxe amenities.
Re:Expensive (Score:2)
Re:Expensive (Score:2)
If it is, in fact, more effective at teaching students, it could potentially lead to larger class sizes, which could easily pay for the device. I am skeptical that it will be effective, but it could be - that's why they do pilot programs. I'm sure they will quickly begin to use it for other courses, too. I can see it being particularly useful for foreign languages (where being able to hear the text is important). I think the interactive textbook idea can also be really useful in science (especially at the early levels of biology, chemistry, and physics, where animations are so useful), geography (being able to pinch and zoom thousands of old maps, and being able to play games to reinforce learning), civics (being able to actually pull up the essential documents immediately). In fact, it's hard for me to think of a class that couldn't benefit from an iPad.
I think this will really turn out to be best for the students who want to move faster than the class and/or learn the material more thoroughly than required. For those students, this could help counter-balance the modern trend to dumb down the curriculum to produce high standardized test scores, rather than deeply examining the subject and teaching students to appreciate learning and thought. For most students, though, I expect this to be an overpriced toy with little educational value.
Free from apple right? (Score:2)
There are cheaper alternatives (Score:5, Insightful)
I've seen Android devices for a fraction of the price. When you consider how much text books are going for nowadays, the thought that a student or school can rent textbook access could be a major game changer. I had semesters in college where textbooks alone were $300+ and that was 15 years ago.
Re:There are cheaper alternatives (Score:2)
I should add that when I worked in the university's library, I was always told that the rapidly increasing costs for texts and periodicals was attributed to the cost for paper (just as for comics).
Re:There are cheaper alternatives (Score:4, Insightful)
In all honesty, using free primary sources and teaching the class from that would be a lot cheaper than textbooks for most classes.
Khan Academy. (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.khanacademy.org/ [khanacademy.org] really does kick ass. I'm using some of his 5-10 minute videos to supplement my graduate level Linear Algebra stuff. Most of it's straight to the point and if I need clarification on a subject I don't have to turn to the book.
Now how this saves money. I won't know. Then again text books aren't cheap. What ever happened to the OpenSource textbook that I thought CA was assembling to be 'free'?
Re:Khan Academy. (Score:2)
It just occurred to me they're probably not going to just replace the text books. Probably looking at replacing the Math teachers too.
Why pay someone with experience or an education when you can get a babysitter for minimum wage and force all the kids to watch Khan Academy on their iPads?
Re:Khan Academy. (Score:2)
The key word here is "supplement". I can't count the number of times I've been frustrated by being made to watch a video after Googling around for a tutorial on something or a solution to some technical problem. Reading is simply faster and more efficient than watching videos (unless of course you're dyslexic), yet, "instant access to more than 400 videos" is the major selling point of this program.
I could maybe see the value of providing iPads to kids with learning disabilities...that is, if such a program weren't so obviously prone to abuse (kids pretending to be disabled) and the whole "me too" mentality. Reading used to be fundamental...Why is this no longer the case?
Doesn't replace books (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe I'm just a Luddite, but half the appeal of learning from a book (especially for a subject like math) was the ability to quickly flip between half a dozen pages to get to the right charts, reference sheets, and examples, and being able to scribble my illegible notes in the margins. I guess you could do it with an iPad with bookmarks and annotations, but I can't imagine it being anywhere near as natural or as easy as you can with a regular old textbook.
Re:Doesn't replace books (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know about in California, but when I was in 8th grade I would sure as hell have gotten in a lot of trouble for writing in my books.
Re:Doesn't replace books (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Doesn't replace books (Score:2)
I'd rather have an electronic book with a notebook feature that lets you clip out sections and arrange them right next to each other so you don't have to flip at all. Plus a clickable index, "jump to page X", bookmarks, and searching.
That'd beat the hell out of dog ears and page flipping.
Re:Doesn't replace books (Score:3, Informative)
quickly flip between half a dozen pages to get to the right charts, reference sheets, and examples
eBooks are searchable.
being able to scribble my illegible notes in the margins.
Good god no! Writing in books is evil.
Re:Doesn't replace books (Score:3, Interesting)
to be fair, it does let you use your finger.....
you can write with it, erase with it, etc all just like a pen.
It just doesn't feel natural to me. Rather than feeling like writing with a pen, it feels like I'm writing with finger paints.
First Line (Score:4, Interesting)
The first line FTFA was what got me:
A pilot project in four California school districts will replace 400 students' eighth-grade algebra textbooks with Apple iPads in an attempt to prove the advantages of interactive digital technologies over traditional teaching methods.
Didn't we prove that computers have educational value back in the 80's? Then, wasn't it proved a hundred more times throughout the 90's? I guess sometimes you can never have quite enough proof.
Re:First Line (Score:3, Informative)
Just put it (Score:2)
online. Anyone with any reasonable device should be able to access it.
Re:Just put it (Score:2)
Seriously, why limit the students to iPads? When did the school system suddenly become a venue for creating lock-in where it doesn't need to exist? And with all the DRM on iPads, I really do not want to see textbooks on that platform -- textbook publishers pull all sorts of evil tactics already, why give them even more options for trampling on students?
for those laughing (Score:2)
There are an increasing number of open source textbooks that are quite suitable for the classroom. Most of the classics taught in school can be downloaded for free or very cheap. Many libraries have electronic books, which reduces the loss at the library.
Why an iPad instead of a Kindle? The iPad has tools the kids can use. For instance, some schools use individual white board for in class assessment. The iPad will do that. Some schools give out calculators, at the cost of thousands of dollars to replace damages and lost machines. The iPad will do this, only need calculators maybe for testing and practice for testing. I would love to see the 9th grade kids play Gravity HD, or use Osmosis for end of the year. There is even a circuit simulator that can be used in any number of classes.
Of course the kids will lose them, break them, and sell them. But we have to not be so afraid of new things that we are held hostage by the old. Ideally, kids would be asked to buy the iPads through fund raising activities so they have some interest. Make them available to everyone, but not everyone has to have one. It is like other supplies. Lose it, then have to do things by hand.
Not yet there (Score:2)
Additionally, the hardware is more of a novelty than anything else at this point- too expensive, too fragile (especially for middle schoolers), too much of a target for theft, and not advanced enough.
The textbook companies love this concept, since it kills secondhand ownership. You can sell licenses to eBooks just like software!
Also, math input without a stylus or keyboard (and I doubt they're teaching LaTeX for any sort of efficient math input) can't be fun.
The Oops Factor (Score:4, Insightful)
And who will pay for the lost, drowned or bashed Ipads? Eighth grade kids are rougher than boot camp at Paris Island!
Re: The Oops Factor (Frankly I'd sell my "lost" .) (Score:4, Insightful)
you means "Oops, I lost it (i.e. I sold it for $400), please give me another..."
in these discussions, people are assuming that the digital textbooks are FREE, kinda like assuming that digital music (e.g. MP3) is free and that all the costs are in the CD media (in the book format itself)... WRONG...
all you're doing is trading $10 worth of a pretty rugged yet not very steal/lost-susceptible format with a 5+ year life (a book) for a $400, fragile, VERY steal/lost prone format (ipad) with an at-best 2 year life... the costs of the content is going to be similar.
At last (Score:2)
For the ADD/ASD kids in class who
could not write down notes fast enough because their fine motor coordination was shot to hell and the idiot teacher didn't understand that their 8 x 11 piece of paper wasn't as wide as a 16ft whiteboard
couldn't follow said teacher half the time because the kids whispering behind them drowned out the teacher's loud voice
who were denied the copious examples they needed to understand how stuff worked due to the easy-odd-problems-with-answers-hard-even-problems-no-answers BS that math textbook authors kept pulling
who could have just understood matrix math if they could have seen an interactive demonstration where the matrixes rotated and the numbers one-by-one multiplied themselves by each other
the digital replacement of math textbooks with interactive instruction that can be replayed over and over again in a quiet area and can on-the-fly create copious needed examples is long overdue.
Re:Wow (Score:2)
Re:Wow (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Wow (Score:2)
I still don't get why Gold is an investment...especially if the world breaks down. It's always said that if the civilazation ends, Gold will be the last thing worth something. If the world is at it's edge, the last thing I'd want to carry around would be gold.
People have held it as valuable since the dawn of time. Why would anything change that?
Besides, all the 'really valuable' stuff is either completely intangible (like knowledge) or transient (like food/water). You simply cannot carry these things in any appreciable quantity...
Re:Wow (Score:3, Insightful)
I can't eat gold, I can't drink gold, gold doesn't entertain me, and it won't protect me.
Gold requires a certain level of civilization for it's OOOH SHINY effect to be worth while.
I guess if you had a gold bar you could beat someone senseless with it though.
Re:Wow (Score:2)
Re:iPad FAIL ( +1, Helpful ) (Score:2)
Re:iPad FAIL ( +1, Helpful ) (Score:2)
Isn't that the point? They don't have evidence, so they're trying this out to see what happens.
Re:iPad FAIL ( +1, Helpful ) (Score:2)
In the Middle Ages, the perfect gentleman was illiterate, but he knew how to read icons [wikipedia.org], "baton sinistre on azure field", etc. No one had much use for reading and writing because books could only be found in the very few libraries that existed. Literacy was the field of experts only.
When the printing press was invented, books became available to everybody. People became literate. The perfect gentleman was expected to know the intricate details of spelling, calligraphy, grammar, punctuation, syntax, prosody, etc.
In the middle twentieth century programming computers was the field of experts only. No one had much use for programming skills because computers could only be found in the few data centers that existed.
When the personal computer was invented, computers became available to everybody. The perfect gentleman forgot how to read and write and went back to icons. WTF???
Re:iPad FAIL ( +1, Helpful ) (Score:2)
The problem I see is that almost all of the teachers I've seen around or heard of and the recent students I'm in contact with all show they know very very little about how to really use a computer. They know only how to click on a few things and if you change an icon or move something, they are lost. That lack of skill with the device at the educator level is why nothing changes and I doubt this iPad math class is going to be successful.
LoB
Re:iPad FAIL ( +1, Helpful ) (Score:3, Insightful)
Have you heard the word "hypothesis?"
Re:replace an $80 textbook with a $400 iPad, wow!! (Score:2)
If you think an iPad will withstand even 4 years of the abuse textbooks go through, you're crazy. If I assume that they replace the textbooks every year (they don't) and assume the iPad can last 5 years (they won't), then they will break even if the publishers don't charge for electronic updates (they will).
Re:Wait... (Score:2)
Re:Wait... (Score:2)
No. Of course Republican and tea party fear mongers would have you believe otherwise.
They are having budget issues. Issue that are the end result of prop 13.