[HN Gopher] Sweden brings more books and handwriting practice ba...
___________________________________________________________________
Sweden brings more books and handwriting practice back to its
schools (2023)
Author : redbell
Score : 239 points
Date : 2025-01-15 19:34 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (apnews.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (apnews.com)
| whalesalad wrote:
| I have always preferred physical books to digital ones.
| _tariky wrote:
| Right choice is to use e-ink tablets, not to switch back to text
| books.
| thrawa8387336 wrote:
| Nah, try again. Producing that device, in Asia, is worse for
| the environment than whatever a tree here and there could.
| fullstop wrote:
| The books might be printed in Asia as well.
| pwillia7 wrote:
| That depends on the number of books obviously
| lagrange77 wrote:
| Are e-ink displays especially bad for the environment, or are
| you talking about electronics in general?
| newsclues wrote:
| Choice is an excellent option.
|
| Printed books and or electronic versions, seems like the best
| way to go for education.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| Really sad the e-ink hasn't seen more widespread use. It's like
| no one wants a middle ground between tech-hype and tech-doom.
| silisili wrote:
| I definitely agree that just giving kids a laptop/chromebook
| instead of books is not working. My own child and her friends
| just don't have the focus required, and easily get distracted out
| to email, group chats, everything else going on right next to the
| text.
|
| That said, one thing I appreciate is that she doesn't have to lug
| around 30lb backpacks like kids did when I was a child. We had
| lockers, but realistically they didn't provide adequate time to
| utilize them, so everyone just carried around all their books for
| the day. Most of us hunched forward because of the weight.
|
| It seems like something like a dumb ereader would be a good
| middle ground? Put all the textbooks into one place, but don't
| give it the ability to do anything but read? That or keep the
| textbooks in the classroom and share.
| jpcom wrote:
| Physical books are still better than e-readers because you can
| put sticky notes on the pages, jump back and forth between
| pages quickly, and even start to know where pages are simply
| based on how many leaves/pages are split between your left and
| right hand. Textbooks are basically reference books, my
| favorite dictionaries I start to "learn by hand" to know where
| to flip to approximately to start my search.
| throw5959 wrote:
| My sister that's studying medicine says that her books would
| be totally ruined in half a year if she used them like she
| uses the virtual ones.
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| How does she use the virtual ones?
| pwillia7 wrote:
| encoded
| throw5959 wrote:
| Ndr42 said it better than I could.
| ndr42 wrote:
| The same is true for my students (german school system,
| iPads form 7th to 13th grade): They are marking, annotating
| and rearranging parts of the digitized pages as they like.
| It would be impossible with printed books. (ok, they could
| take a picture with the camera and do the same) They
| have/use printed books but most of the students are
| borrowing them from the school and are not allowed to write
| in them.
|
| So I use mostly digital material and most of the books stay
| at home for studying (the books are heavy).
| imadethis wrote:
| I'd agree except for the ability to search in an e-book.
| There's nothing worse than knowing the textbook in front of
| you contains the answer you need but not remembering which of
| the 1500 pages contains it. Being able to CTRL-F saved me
| hours of time when I went back to school after e-books became
| common.
| groby_b wrote:
| A decent index solves that just fine. And usually outpaces
| ctrl-f chasing for a given word, because it's indexing by
| ideas, not words. (If it's a decent index, that is :)
| doug_durham wrote:
| That not how indices work. It is by person or subject not
| "idea". You can do the same thing but better with a
| "ctrl-f" search.
| bluGill wrote:
| Not really. An index is also a list of ideas you should
| search for. Search for a synonym and control-f fails, but
| the index will have a "see also" for that, or worst case
| lets you scan for interesting words without reading the
| whole book. The index will also leave out all the places
| where a word happens to be used but are not useful to
| someone searching for the term.
|
| Of course a good index is hard (read expensive) to write
| and so many books didn't have good indexes.
| smarx007 wrote:
| Good indices are built atop a taxonomy that is then used
| extensively to list related taxonomic terms. This will
| give you direct hierarchical terms (loosely maps to what
| I guess you refer to as by subject) but also related
| terms. A good indexer will also exercise judgement and
| check with the author if certain terms are related and in
| what way.
|
| Let me give you an example of a high-quality index entry
| from the Software Architecture in Practice (Bass et al.
| 2021) [1]:
|
| Availability
|
| analytic model space, 259
|
| analyzing, 255-259
|
| broker pattern, 240
|
| calculations, 259
|
| CAP theorem, 523
|
| CIA approach, 147
|
| cloud, 521
|
| design checklist, 96-98
|
| detect faults tactic, 87-91
|
| general scenario, 85-86
|
| introduction, 79-81
|
| planning for failure, 82-85
|
| prevent faults tactic, 94-95
|
| recover-from-faults tactics, 91-94
|
| summary, 98-99
|
| tactics overview, 87
|
| As you see, it lists a number of taxonomic terms that are
| merely related to each other and you might not think
| about Ctrl+F-ing for them unless you already want to
| search for them. You may come to this entry knowing about
| CAP and navigate away to analytic model space, 259.
|
| [1]:
| https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/14786083-software-
| archit...
| smarx007 wrote:
| It is quite disheartening to see a comment about book
| indexes being downvoted. In professional publishing
| houses, indexing is a job done by a qualified indexer and
| is not as trivial as one may think [1]. Some rather
| important reading guides [2] recommend to judge a book by
| its Contents and Index, which are often overlooked in
| books that were not edited by professionals or were
| edited in haste.
|
| [1]: https://abookindexer.com/why-use-a-qualified-
| indexer/
|
| [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Read_a_Book
| op00to wrote:
| It is quite disheartening to see a comment about farriers
| being downvoted. In professional blacksmith shops, horse
| shoeing is a job done by a qualified farrier and not as
| trivial as one may think.
| smarx007 wrote:
| Not quite. Not a big fan of analogies of questionable
| fit, but let's try:
|
| It is quite disheartening to see a comment about
| importance of horse shoes being downvoted. In
| professional blacksmith shops, horse shoeing is a job
| done by a qualified farrier and not as trivial as one may
| think. The importance of horseshoeing for horse wellbeing
| is also highlighted in certain key equestrian literature.
| iforgot22 wrote:
| If your PDF has a traditional index in it, you can read
| it then jump to the right page.
| jcranmer wrote:
| For a current project, I've been using a physical book as a
| reference manual for the API I'm working with rather than
| using the more typical internet search for the function
| name. And it's actually somewhat surprising how efficient a
| physical book is!
|
| Sure, there's a lot of efficiency to Ctrl-F a text string
| and just find all the places in a document. I won't deny
| that it takes me longer to pull up the index, search for
| the function name in the index, then flip to the page. But
| then I can just leave the book open at that page on the
| desk (or my lap). I never have to Alt-Tab, or fiddle with
| the location of windows to switch between looking at
| documentation and looking at the code I'm working on.
|
| This difference was more stark when I was trying to close-
| read a different specification to ensure that I understood
| it well enough to make sure a PR implemented it correctly.
| I needed to have three different parts of the specification
| open simultaneously to bounce between all of them. With
| physical paper, that's just a swish of a hand away. With a
| PDF reader, well, goto that other section, scroll down to
| the piece I wanted, now goto the first section again and
| scroll down again and wait what was that back thing again
| goto and scroll and scroll and goto and descent into
| insanity. Trying to use multiple windows ameliorates the
| problem somewhat, but it also takes an inordinate amount of
| time to set the view up correctly, and I often end up
| running into the "focus doesn't follow the eye gaze"
| problem of typing in the wrong window and ruining the view.
| Suppafly wrote:
| >With a PDF reader, well, goto that other section, scroll
| down to the piece I wanted, now goto the first section
| again and scroll down again and wait what was that back
| thing again goto and scroll and scroll and goto and
| descent into insanity.
|
| I pretty much just use screenshots in snagit for that
| stuff.
| sharkjacobs wrote:
| On the one hand, yes, I agree. There's something about the
| tactility of a book, about dogeared pages, and marginalia,
| and having muscle memory to open a book at about the same
| spot where I left off.
|
| I grew up with that and it's a very comfortable skill set.
|
| On the other hand, I've learned ways to manage and reference
| information in digital formats. Bookmarks and links and
| pasted snippets. Attachments and full text search. Not to
| even get into real sicko stuff like Notion and Obsidian and
| DEVONthink.
|
| Being able to easily flip back and forth between pages is a
| very useful technique, but so is being able to snap a
| screenshot of a pdf and keep it open it in another window.
|
| I'm a sucker for paper but I'm resistant to the idea that all
| of these things are irreplaceable
| Suppafly wrote:
| >I'm a sucker for paper but I'm resistant to the idea that
| all of these things are irreplaceable
|
| This, I'm really comfortable with technology, but I feel
| like a boomer when I watch kids that have grown up with it
| their entire lives. Some people don't need the ability to
| cross reference things much, but folks who do develop the
| skills the need without having to revert to printed
| material.
| iforgot22 wrote:
| My high school was mainly textbooks, then things were more
| digital in college. Normally I'm against fancy new tech, but
| this felt like an improvement in hindsight. I was never
| missing the book I needed, there's cmd+f and page skip, I can
| annotate without ruining it...
|
| The real problem seems to be licensing. Lots of books are
| physical-only, and the digital versions are those annoying
| "epub" files instead of PDFs.
| nfw2 wrote:
| Many of the beneficial affordances you mention that are
| available for print but not in ebooks is partly because ebook
| technology is kind of bad. Navigation and annotation for
| example could be much better in ebooks if developers put more
| care into those ergonomics.
| the_clarence wrote:
| I personally never used any of these things back when I was a
| student
| Suppafly wrote:
| >Physical books are still better than e-readers because you
| can put sticky notes on the pages, jump back and forth
| between pages quickly, and even start to know where pages are
| simply based on how many leaves/pages are split between your
| left and right hand.
|
| Only because you prefer to work that way, someone that has
| grown up with everything digital has equivalent skills doing
| that stuff using tabs, digital sticky notes, bookmarks, and
| such.
| kccqzy wrote:
| My high school doesn't use entire textbooks; it uses either
| excerpts from a textbook or lecture notes produced by the
| teacher. This solves the 30lb backpack problem nicely: you
| realistically only bring the necessary notes or textbook
| required for the last few days of instruction. Anything that's
| earlier gets left behind at home because you won't need to
| refer to it often.
| silisili wrote:
| Interesting. This is actually a pretty nice middleground. If
| books were designed more like a binder of notebooks, perhaps
| by chapter, it would solve the weight issue while still
| allowing for all the things people love about paper books.
| kccqzy wrote:
| These days some textbooks are available as loose leaf
| textbooks too.
| fifilura wrote:
| How do they handle copyright?
| kccqzy wrote:
| The teachers produced most of the lecture notes. The
| textbooks excerpts were short and in hindsight must be
| covered by fair use.
| iforgot22 wrote:
| We did this in high school. I kept forgetting what I had to
| bring for all my textbook-based classes each day or what I
| had to bring home, so I simply carried ~50lb of stuff
| everywhere. That's ok cause I got swol. Some kids said this
| was dumb, but they forgot stuff too.
| duxup wrote:
| Amen. My son's backpack is light as a feather.
|
| I remember carrying my bag full, and still carrying books and
| notebooks in my arms. It was horrible and I'd end up digging
| through them to find things, not need it all ... not fun or
| efficient.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| Carrying weight from books is good for you. Takes care of your
| physical fitness and mental fitness.
| dalke wrote:
| If the bag is too heavy (especially if unbalanced, like
| carrying it on one shoulder) then the kid can cause back
| problems.
|
| See https://scoliosisinstitute.com/heavy-backpacks/ for more
| details.
| ninalanyon wrote:
| There is no excuse for schools being so badly organized
| that this is a problem. It certainly was not a problem when
| I was at school in the '60s and early '70s. All the books I
| needed fitted in a briefcase. It also was not a big problem
| for my children going to school in Norway between 1990 and
| 2015.
|
| But children should _also_ be taught how to carry backpacks
| properly, not unbalanced on one shoulder.
| dalke wrote:
| I'm not disagreeing with you. But given silisili's lived
| experience of dealing with 30lb backpacks, chrisco255's
| statement about that being 'good for you' is simply not
| correct, unless perhaps that kid is a high school
| football player weighing 200+ lbs.
|
| Also, only nerds and dweebs use both shoulder straps.
|
| Rather, I don't think it's a simple matter of education,
| given that there are also social pressures involved.
| nfw2 wrote:
| To a degree. I was tiny in school, always smallest kid in my
| grade, and lugging 30 pounds of books around every day means
| I now have scoliosis.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| I would call it "schooliosis" if I were you.
| Suppafly wrote:
| >and lugging 30 pounds of books around every day means I
| now have scoliosis.
|
| Doctors claim that heavy backpacks don't cause scoliosis,
| but can make the associated back pain worse.
| ToughKookie wrote:
| This always seemed like a bad idea to me. I got done high
| school right before laptops were provided in schools all over
| the place. I never had one.
|
| Are kids actually able to just get on social media on these
| things? I figured they would be super restricted.
| silisili wrote:
| Depends on the school. Some are super locked down, and some
| don't seem to care at all.
|
| But kids are kids. For example, mine and her friends are
| using a shared Google slides to drop memes and chat amongst
| themselves. They always find a way :).
| duxup wrote:
| In my experience, when the kids had iPads or Chromebooks all
| their traffic was routed through the school network and a web
| filer.
|
| Yeah you could in theory get around it and kids did
| (generally to play minecraft), but social media was generally
| well blocked, and all traffic monitored. It is made very
| clear that these devices are NOT personal devices for
| personal activity / they're monitoring them.
| fn-mote wrote:
| > Are kids actually able to just get on social media on these
| things?
|
| Where there's a will, there's a way.
|
| I think the actual interest is in playing games. (IO games,
| Minecraft online, etc.)
|
| By the time they are old enough to be into social media (14+
| years?), most here in the US have their own phones to provide
| internet access.
| georgebcrawford wrote:
| Nowhere did they mention social media :-) but emails and
| Teams work just fine - though one of my students mentioned
| _they_ can 't initiate chats. I'm sure there's workarounds. I
| just keep my students off laptops as much as possible.
|
| Blocking games websites is like playing whack-a-mole. Our IT
| dept took all of our Year 7 and 8 students out two classes at
| a time, installing software or doing something to block a
| raft of websites.
|
| They were back playing Retrobowl etc a day later. It was
| pretty funny.
| krunck wrote:
| And yet we want kids to get exercise in some way... When I was
| a kid we walked to and from school with 40lb packs, uphill.
| Both ways.
| highcountess wrote:
| The 30lb backpacks were only a function of our deranged
| society, economy, and government. I am sure others here will be
| able to attest that education in Europe not only was better for
| reasons that cannot be openly discussed in our censorious
| society, but the textbooks were denser with information that
| was also better structured, while also being lighter in weight.
| Lockers are simply not even a thing in Europe because children
| are carrying less and they have standardized backpacks.
| JadeNB wrote:
| > education in Europe not only was better for reasons that
| cannot be openly discussed in our censorious society
|
| Huh?
| apelapan wrote:
| We had lockers in the European high school that I went to. As
| I recall it was not allowed to bring backpacks into the
| classroom, you were supposed to only bring the relevant items
| to each class and keep the rest in your locker.
|
| I don't think the combined weight of all books used in an
| entire semester would add up to 30lb, maybe if including
| dictionaries and atlases and other reference litteraturen
| that was kept in each classroom (or carted around on trollies
| by the teachers).
| cynicalsecurity wrote:
| Have you ever tried using e-reader? It's slow as hell. Slow in
| turning the pages, slow in rendering anything that is not text.
| Making notes functionality is a disaster. Sure, you can search
| through text, but if it's PDF or images, you are screwed.
| scythe wrote:
| My advisor used a reMarkable 2 and loved it. I think that
| there is a range of quality available.
| IshKebab wrote:
| Heavy backpacks full of textbooks are an American style of
| education. There are other options between huge textbooks and
| laptops.
| scythe wrote:
| Although I do agree that the idea of making a dumb ereader that
| is specifically tailored to the educational environment sounds
| like a cool hacking project, there's a _much_ simpler approach
| that basically solves 90% of the problems: _just take the WiFi
| card out!_
|
| The problem here is not with electronic _textbooks_ per se, but
| the pervasive adoption of networked applications for school
| assignments -- which in turn is used to decrease grading time
| so that schools can shove more students onto a single teacher.
| Suppafly wrote:
| >I definitely agree that just giving kids a laptop/chromebook
| instead of books is not working.
|
| I'm not really sure why people are pretending it's an either/or
| situation. Plenty of things are taught just fine or better with
| technology, but books still have a purpose.
|
| >My own child and her friends just don't have the focus
| required, and easily get distracted out to email, group chats,
| everything else going on right next to the text.
|
| That stuff is usually blocked or limited on school owned
| laptops. If it's not your child's school is failing at
| something that is very basic.
| niborbit wrote:
| love this
| somethoughts wrote:
| Not that this would be better but I'm surprised no ebook maker
| has had success in the educational market. Eink seems like it'd
| be great for education as it'd really only support text based
| distractions/bullying which while bad is less bad than the
| trifecta of video, images and text distractions/bullying. Its
| also lighter and the battery is longer lasting than a laptop.
| layer8 wrote:
| Being able to flip through a physical book is so much better
| UX.
| MathMonkeyMan wrote:
| I've noticed this with my Kobo ereader (which I love). If I
| want to go back a few pages, and then return to where I am
| now, it's a whole ordeal. The UX is there, but I have to
| learn it and remember it, and it's different for every device
| (not that I use many different devices). All physical books,
| miraculously, have the same UX.
|
| The parent post to yours makes me think that a large e-ink
| display would be useful in a school setting. Rather than
| carry around a backpack of enormous overpriced textbooks that
| we might use 30% of in a semester, just have one large
| ereader that you can use from 1st grade through your PhD.
|
| It's like a book, but lighter! And no internet, no games, no
| social media, no animations. No private enterprise capturing
| public education to sell schools a bunch of stupid shit. Just
| an improvement on a stack of textbooks, which schools or
| parents have always paid for. Might be nice.
| fullstop wrote:
| My daughter has a chromebook for school. As a device, it's
| actually pretty nice and the administration aspects of it are
| fantastic. It can be wiped and re-imaged easily, her "files"
| are all stored on the network, and it's snappy. Except for PDF
| viewing.
|
| When it comes to PDFs, it sometimes really struggles. I think
| that the device can handle them, but I'm pretty sure that the
| PDFs themselves are often a collection of scanned images and
| not text. Once she has more than a few tabs open, it takes
| longer and longer to switch between them and she ends up using
| a desktop to complete her work.
|
| In this case, the school provides the tools for her to do her
| assignments but we have the means to provide better ones at
| home and not every child will have this advantage.
|
| Personally, I can read data sheets all day on a monitor but I
| absolutely can not do the same with fiction. I either need a
| paper book or a Kindle, and I don't know why that is. Perhaps
| it's because I am looking ahead and not down?
| graemep wrote:
| Even on slow devices the only problem I have had with PDFs
| has been when they are rendered using the JS renderer.
|
| The developer of pdf.js replied to my comments on performance
| somewhere once, and I think it might have been HN, but was
| quite happy to acknowledge (IIRC) that its not a high
| performance solution.
| fullstop wrote:
| I'll have to look at it the next time she complains. It may
| very well be pdf.js.
| VyseofArcadia wrote:
| Kudos to Sweden for responding to research.
| NegatioN wrote:
| I think books are the best medium for learning some things, and
| probably in some aspects for writing.
|
| However I'm worried some countries seem to be throwing the baby
| out with the bathwater.
|
| There are many things that are easier to learn with
| computers/screens than without as well, they just need to fit the
| medium. [0]
|
| Intended as a reply, but the comment got deleted, so I might as
| well include it here:
|
| The article [0] is focused on homeschooling, so the exact points
| listed there doesn't necessarily have a leg up on traditional
| media (implying you're in the right environment to facilitate
| learning these skills well without computers, which I don't think
| most kids are).
|
| One off-hand example [where screens can be better than a book],
| would probably be using simulations to assist in learning
| physics, instead of just solving the equation on a page. Things
| where interactivity sets the learning in better context than a
| book probably would.
|
| I'm also very excited to try teaching our child math using apps
| like DragonBox, which seems to allow for much easier
| visualization of how to solve equations than I got at school. [1]
|
| 0: https://www.fast.ai/posts/2024-10-29-screen-time/
|
| 1: https://dragonbox.com/products/algebra-5
| hiAndrewQuinn wrote:
| Personally, I would hate this. As a student I far preferred PDFs,
| etc. because I could quickly make Anki cards out of them, strip
| mine them for insights and good practice problems and then just
| burn them into my long term memory over the next few months. We
| should be teaching children about spaced repetition systems and
| helping them instill the one habit actually proven to help them
| remember what they learn, not banishing them back to the
| Carboniferous Era!
|
| EDIT: I'm getting downvoted, and I stand by what I said. :) Your
| kid's inability to focus should not be the reason my kid can no
| longer remember his material. That's a separate problem which can
| be solved with an approach as simple as "turn off the modem".
| pwillia7 wrote:
| Nah -- the schools should teach to the average student and
| address the average problems. I don't begrudge the school
| system for not catering to me when I went through it.
| bluGill wrote:
| Schools need to teach everyone basic skills for life in
| society. Whatever those are. In lower grades that is about
| the same for everyone, but as you move on schools need to
| push kids to where they will do well. I took metal shop in
| school, but I was always on the college track and so this was
| just a fun class I only took because I have one block that
| nothing else fit in - for all other kids in that class it was
| essential to their future life and they knew it.
| graemep wrote:
| No one is really average. Even people who are average overall
| are not average in every skill and every subject. /classroom
| This is an intrinsic problem with classroom teaching. There
| is an HN discussion about home education (or "homeschooling"
| as people misleadingly call it) at the moment...
| hiAndrewQuinn wrote:
| The average student shouldn't be expected to remember more
| than 5% of what they learn through school because teaching
| them to use a computer program for half an hour is too hard?
| That's bleak.
| fn-mote wrote:
| Downvotes should not be for disagreeing with content!!
| add-sub-mul-div wrote:
| I suppose it depends on how you think of free speech:
|
| 1. Free speech means I should be able to say anything (or in
| this case vote in any manner) that's legal, and that's the
| only consideration.
|
| 2. Free speech is a foundation for a higher level goal of a
| society that also values etiquette, respect, and discretion.
| hiAndrewQuinn wrote:
| I don't begrudge them for downvoting. They are, nonetheless,
| wrong in their belief that a return to printed books makes
| long term sense.
| cooper_ganglia wrote:
| That is quite literally what they are for!
| golly_ned wrote:
| What would stop a kid from doing the same with physical books
| rather than PDFs?
| hiAndrewQuinn wrote:
| You can't screenshot a physical book nearly as easily as a
| PDF. That's an issue for making flashcards out of a whole
| host of useful informational visuals, not to mention stuff
| that is just plain hard to communicate in plain text.
| alkonaut wrote:
| > Your kid's inability to focus should not be the reason my kid
| can no longer remember his material.
|
| The books are brought back (at a cost) _because_ the kids have
| proven to learn better from books, or a mix of mediums. They
| haven 't, and won't, use only physical or only digital
| material. They'll use a mix.
| hiAndrewQuinn wrote:
| You need to measure long term remembrance of the material,
| not short-term learning. A 5% increase in the speed of
| children learning a fact for the first time doesn't matter if
| the fact has disappeared from all their brains 6 months
| later, but to accomplish the latter at scale, there's no
| substitute - you _need_ some kind of spaced repetition
| system. Otherwise you may as well have not taught the fact at
| all, and let them spend the time having fun or getting some
| exercise instead.
| alkonaut wrote:
| I have no idea what the actual science referenced here is
| on this but I'm sure whatever they used to convince people
| to spend that much money is based on science that isn't
| just "the tests go better" but actually "the learning is
| better".
|
| And spaced repetition has been part of education since
| forever hasn't it. Yes it's slightly easier with a PDF. But
| you'd have to assume they thought of that too...
| impossiblefork wrote:
| I didn't actually know we'd switched to computers. I knew there
| was a party, 'Liberalerna' that was for it, arguing for a kind of
| naive general digitalisation etc. but I always assumed it was too
| crazy to be implemented, so I'm very happy with this.
| Haddocken wrote:
| There isn't a single source in that article.
| Animats wrote:
| Right. This was announced back in 2023.[1] Somehow it showed up
| in India Defense Review recently.
|
| It's for preschoolers. The announced goal was to "completely
| end digital learning for children under age 6".
|
| [1] https://apnews.com/article/sweden-digital-education-
| backlash...
| dang wrote:
| OK, we've changed the URL to that above. Thanks!
|
| Submitted URL was
| https://indiandefencereview.com/in-2009-sweden-chose-to-
| repl.... The same story (and even the same article text)
| shows up on a bunch of other sites too: https://www.google.co
| m/search?q=Sweden%20is%20investing%20%E.... Usually it's
| pretty easy to sift out the blogspam and find the original
| but I was at a loss in this case.
| throw0101c wrote:
| Is cursive (hand) writing still taught?
|
| The province of Ontario brought it back in the curriculum for
| example:
|
| * https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/cursive-writing-ontar...
| bluGill wrote:
| It is a political thing as much as anything. Some old people
| feel they learned it so it must be good and therefore kids
| today must learn it. Same with "new math" - I didn't learn this
| way it must be wrong, go back to the way I was taught since I
| know math. At no point is anyone asking if the new way is
| better or not. Nor are we asking if maybe the skill is obsolete
| and not worth learning. Or maybe it is a niche skill that most
| won't need and we are better off spending time with something
| else (like going to the playground). There are probably other
| good points to debate as well, but generally it comes down to
| old people teaching what they learned.
|
| I do come down against teaching it. But then I never could read
| my own writing and am mad about all the trouble I got into in
| school for it (I have to credit the one teacher who did realize
| I wasn't lazy and tried to get experts to help me - but
| dysgraphia wouldn't exist for several more years so nothing
| came of his attempt). However I'm not clear if manual writing
| is obsolete for everyone or just me. Right note typing is a
| useful skill, but text to speech is making progress so maybe in
| a few years nobody will type and so teaching that skill was
| wasted.
|
| My school spent a lot of effort teaching me WordPerfect because
| that is what industry used. A complete waste of time that I
| never used again. Anyone care to guess what will be useful or
| not?
| pwillia7 wrote:
| What is new math
| bawolff wrote:
| It was a curriculum reform in the united states in the 60s
| that emphasized introducing abstract math concepts very
| early.
| pwillia7 wrote:
| I found this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Math
| Octoth0rpe wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Math
|
| My 2 cents, valid criticisms of new math are _vastly_
| outnumbered by ones more in the form of "I wasn't taught
| that way and so my kids shouldn't be either" / any change
| is bad change type thinking. There is a lot of overlap in
| these criticisms with common core (
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Core ) which isn't
| particularly related.
| fullstop wrote:
| My kids learned it this way, and it was somewhat useful
| to show that we could arrive at the same solution using
| different methods.
| bawolff wrote:
| > Same with "new math" - I didn't learn this way it must be
| wrong, go back to the way I was taught since I know math. At
| no point is anyone asking if the new way is better or not.
|
| I mean, i think feneyman did have something to say about if
| it was better or not, and why.
| bluGill wrote:
| Lots of people weighed in. The vast majority knew nothing
| about how kids learn or what is valuable. (this is on both
| sides of the debate, and there of course has been a lot of
| advancement in education in the 50-60 years since)
| throw0101a wrote:
| > _It is a political thing as much as anything. Some old
| people feel they learned it so it must be good and therefore
| kids today must learn it._
|
| Some evidence to indicate it is useful:
|
| * https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/the-athletes-
| way/202...
| bawolff wrote:
| I dont think i have ever used cursive outside of the class
| teaching me cursive.
|
| I think the problem is that modern ball point pens dont glide
| well, making it not a useful way to write.
| graemep wrote:
| Some people like handwriting notes. I know some that do that
| on tablets rather than paper though.
|
| I have terrible handwriting so type whenever possible.
|
| The only thing my kids have needed handwriting for (i.e. they
| did not have the option of typing) has been exams.
| bawolff wrote:
| I feel like most of my peers took handwritten notes, but
| most of them didn't write them in cursive (some did)
| watwut wrote:
| You do not have to use cursive for handwriting notes. What
| happens with young people (based on what teachers in my
| kids school said) is that they abandon cursive for
| handwriting the moment they can - and everyone basically
| invents own way of writing letters.
|
| End result is worst then if they were taught handwriting
| that is not cursive, looks more like printed text and is
| easier to read and write.
| lawn wrote:
| I write cursive all the time and I've never had a problem
| with any pen, new or old.
| beezlebroxxxxxx wrote:
| Aside from very occasional drops into printing, I exclusively
| write in cursive. Once you get proficient you can write very
| fast with cursive -- regardless of the pen/pencil. Can other
| people read my writing? Yes, if I slow down. But if it's
| notes for me, then I can go easily double the speed I have
| with printing and it feels as "seamless" as touch typing.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| To support paper-digital integration, we created
| https://www.smartpaperapp.com/
|
| It's not special paper--it's just a computer vision system to
| help teacher easily convert student work on paper to digital
| marks. The state of Rajasthan in India uses this product to
| assess math and literacy for 5 million students each year.
|
| At a personal level, I'm frustrated by son's school that uses a
| digital LMS to have teachers assign jpgs of pages of the books. I
| find it hard to help him because I don't know what he has done
| and what he will do--something that a book makes natural. At the
| same time, I'm a fan of cognitive tutors and other digital
| instructional materials. Balance is good!
| dalke wrote:
| My eldest doesn't like the computers they have in grade 2 (in
| Sweden). He thinks the things installed on them are too boring
| and easy. He would rather read books.
|
| Thing is, the school doesn't have a staff librarian any more. As
| I understand it, they got rid of that position as part of the
| cost shifting to switch to digital.
| georgebcrawford wrote:
| This is so upsetting to hear. The librarians at my school are
| amazing. The students don't know how good they have it, but us
| teachers certainly do.
| dalke wrote:
| I weep a little inside every time I pass the unstaffed school
| library.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| Apart from learning I'd also like to see more research into the
| effect switching to digital devices had on tactile skills. I used
| to mentor at a makerspace a few years ago and at least
| anecdotally, younger people seemed to have what we in Germany
| call "two left hands" (don't know if that's an English idiom
| too).
|
| At least to me it seemed like there's a real loss of fine motor
| skills. Digital devices are pretty impoverished interfaces. Even
| if I compare my own handwriting to my parents, who learned
| cursive more seriously and wrote more by hand I feel like my
| penmanship is just worse.
| bluGill wrote:
| > I feel like my penmanship is just worse.
|
| You cannot learn everything. Is good penmanship worth spending
| time on? What are the other options. What if I gave you (8 year
| old you, your parents when you were 8, and you today - I want
| all 3 answers) a choice: you can learn cursive, piano, or go
| out to the playground. What is the best use of your time? My
| parents would have selected cursive, but on hindsight I can say
| it was a waste of my time. I always wished I could play piano
| (this is why I put piano in the list - there are millions of
| other options you can teach a 8 year old that we do not), but
| playground time is also valuable and would have appealed to me
| as a kid.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| Sure fair enough, I wasn't trying to narrowly hone in on
| writing, if you want to make the case for more instrumental
| education I'm on board with that too. And someone recently
| actually asked me "where have all the high school bands
| gone?". It seems like (passive) digital entertainment is
| eating into all of these activities.
|
| I'm just broadly in favor of incorporating physical
| development, because who knows what it does to your brain if
| all you do is push buttons on a screen, as I said anecdotally
| I don't think anything good. The easy thing to writing about
| me is that you can basically incorporate it for free. People
| learning Kanji or math on paper, for one is likely better for
| retention but also even cheaper practically. As far as I can
| tell buying students tablets just cost a bunch of money.
| submeta wrote:
| I went fully digital some years ago, gave away most of my printed
| books and bought ebooks only. Now I have my whole library in
| Calibre and on my Kindle. Why? Because I have my whole library
| with me. And I can download my highlights and process them. Into
| notes in Obsidian, that I can link to in my study notes.
|
| Recently I started buying paper based books again. Man, I missed
| holding physical books in my hands. And I start to regret having
| gotten rid of my physical library. There were so many memories I
| had with most of these books. I remember their covers, and
| instantly my emotions , thoughts, feelings are triggered. I don't
| have these emotions when I think of my digital books.
|
| My spouse has books that she was gifted when she was a child.
| Still in our kids shelf. I cannot give her my digital books.
|
| I regret the decision having gone fully digital, which can only
| be a complement to physical books.
|
| Printed books are a physical experience. Something that allows me
| to attach thoughts, emotions, feelings to it. And they can become
| part of my life. Like a good friend.
| tikkabhuna wrote:
| I'd love to have bundles where you can get the physical and
| ebook at the same time. Going on holiday it is ideal to have an
| ebook reader to carry many books, but, like you say, there is
| something precious about having books lined up on shelves to
| see them.
| mistahchris wrote:
| Yes! A physical book and ebook bundle would be awesome.
| mistahchris wrote:
| I did the exact same thing. I'm back to buying real books, but
| I will say I still use my ereader in situations without good
| lighting or where the book is just too cumbersome. Sometimes
| that means I get the book twice which is suboptimal, but I
| strongly prefer the reading experience of a physical book. My
| appreciation of the work is even higher when the reading
| experience is better.
| graemep wrote:
| I will not buy DRMed ebooks. I hate the idea that someone can
| delete a book I bought. Once I have a book, I want to keep it.
|
| I have quite a lot of books that belong to be grandfather, and
| lots that belonged to my parents. A lot of those will last
| another generation, maybe more. That does not happen with
| ebooks either.
| galleywest200 wrote:
| It is trivially easy to remove DRM with a plugin for Calibre.
| protonbob wrote:
| Not with the latest encryption. Although you can always
| screenshot and ocr. Or maybe I've missed something new.
| EA-3167 wrote:
| Unless latest means "In the last few months" then no it's
| still trivial. I buy a lot of "Kindle" books, but I
| always rip the DRM and make an ebook version I actually
| use and archive. My attitude is that once I pay for a
| song/game/book/etc... it's no one's business, but my own
| how I use it (for myself I mean, obviously uploading it
| to others is a different issue).
| fullstop wrote:
| eBooks can be backed up and survive a house fire or a flood,
| though.
| thih9 wrote:
| Depends where the house fire or a flood is. If it's in a
| data center then they might suddenly disappear[1].
|
| [1]:
| https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/analysis/ovhcloud-
| fire...
| lowdownbutter wrote:
| If only we had more than one datacenter.
| maksimur wrote:
| You can keep multiple copies in different locations.
| dowager_dan99 wrote:
| the challenge is I don't love my books for the content, but
| for their essence, so ebooks just aren't as valuable. If my
| physically books were destroyed in a fire I would be sad
| because i lost the objects, not temporarily lost access to
| the contents.
| bluGill wrote:
| On that note, does anyone have a copy of "The C programing
| language" (first edition) that isn't falling apart because
| the acid paper is decaying? I was referring to my copy the
| other day and it is clear the days I own that book are
| numbered because of planned obsolesce in the 1970s. I never
| bought the second edition, but if I did I'm sure it too would
| be falling apart from age before my likely death.
| tartoran wrote:
| First edition may be collectible regardless of condition.
| And as well as newer editions it is resalable. Can you sell
| an used ebook you bought? How about can you buy an used
| ebook?
| bluGill wrote:
| I don't have it because it is collectable. I have it
| because it is a great book and I still refer to it once
| in a while. (mostly I can find what I need on the web,
| but once in a while what K&R really said is important -
| though mostly for online arguments)
| dokyun wrote:
| I got a lightly used copy off Amazon, along with "The UNIX
| programming environment" a year or two ago, probably.
| They're both fine with only a bit of wear, but I don't
| think they were ever of a super sturdy binding that would
| hold up well under heavy abuse.
| op00to wrote:
| I buy books and immediately rip the drm out. They get their
| money, I get my book.
| fcsp wrote:
| I'm jojoing on this for at least 15 years at this point. I
| really appreciate the physical experience of real books, the
| smell, the weight, just as you describe it. At the same time I
| really despise the storage space they take up, collecting dust,
| never to be touched again. So I go full digital for a while and
| read books on my Scribe. I get decision paralysis really
| quickly because of all the content available at a finger press,
| but the note taking and accessibility of it all are really
| nice. But after a while I grow tired of this and buy some
| hardcover books again and really enjoy that.
|
| This cycle has been repeating for me for a long time, I wonder
| if I'll find a good balance eventually. My current approach is
| to try and read more technical stuff digital while keeping
| novels, the humanities, history as paperback, we'll see.
| sitkack wrote:
| I understand your pain, we all seem to make dichotomies where
| none should exist.
|
| Getting rid of print books is not a prerequisite for carrying
| your entire library with you. Why not both meme.
|
| Hopefully ebooks will get to the point where they offer a
| _better_ experience than paper books. But my mind does not
| handle the information in nearly the same way when using
| ebooks. I find them wonderfully valuable and productive, but in
| the same deep introspective way. They are transactional,
| focused and very task directed.
| watwut wrote:
| I ebooks better for reading already. Physical books advantage
| is that I can read inside them in bookstore - bookstores are
| much better for me when I looking for something new.
|
| But I prefer actual reading on the phone.
| bluGill wrote:
| Are you reading, or are you studying? When reading my phone
| is great. When I want to study though I will want to take
| notes, compare tables on different pages and other such
| things that my phone doesn't work for.
| watwut wrote:
| I actually prefer ebook for both - including for
| studying. If the book I want to study requires larger
| screen, I prefer notebook. I never wrote into books, if I
| am taking notes it is on paper and sometimes
| electronically (with keyboard).
|
| For comparing tables, I prefer laptop.
| fullstop wrote:
| My wife donated all of her CDs and subsequently started buying
| the same albums on iTunes. I still don't know why.
| nytesky wrote:
| That bothers me less, as finding a device to play CD music is
| very hard and expensive now.
|
| Also the CDs will degrade in another decade to worthlessness,
| unlike books
| bluGill wrote:
| Pressed CDs - which most of them are (pressing is much
| cheaper in quantity) will generally last well. Record able
| CDs (like you buy from the individual artist won't last
| much longer.
|
| Either way though I have long since ripped my CDs to my NAS
| system. I keep the CDs in storage so if someone says
| copyright I can prove fair use as I still own the media.
| GuestFAUniverse wrote:
| I have a whole drawer full of barely used cdrom drives from
| decommissioned office PCs to play my audio discs, in case
| my Philips Player from 1995 is worn down -- didn't even
| need a repair yet, so no real worries... Additionally the
| CDs get backuped as FLACs.
|
| I don't see what's "hard" with that approach. Most new
| releases still get presses as CDs.
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| Was this recently (say, after 2014?) Try finding a computer
| with an optical drive today. You need to get an external USB
| device today, modern cases don't have external 5-inch bays.
|
| Another problem is all the music apps and services that we're
| _supposed to use_ according to the music industry are
| streaming services: Spotify doesn't have a CD-player feature;
| it wouldn't surprise me if today's new-computer-user had no
| idea that CD-ripping was even possible.
| fullstop wrote:
| It was before 2014 and we still had ways of either playing
| optical content or ripping the media and storing it
| ourselves.
| torcete wrote:
| I just recently discovered navidrome
| https://www.navidrome.org
|
| I converted all my old CDs to ogg and installed navidrome on
| my home server. Basically, now I have my own personal
| spotify.
|
| I am aware though that this solution won't work for
| everybody.
| fullstop wrote:
| Too late, the library has all of the discs now. :-)
|
| She could borrow them all back, one at a time, and re-build
| the library.
| myko wrote:
| I went this route as well, and I've now repopulated many of my
| favorite books from my youth in physical editions. I wish more
| physical books were like Goodman Games where any purchase
| includes a digital download code.
|
| Regretfully, I still prefer generally reading on my Kindle, so
| I end up buying two copies of the book.
| bowsamic wrote:
| The real question is why did you feel the need to be so
| extreme? Why couldn't you just do a little digital rather than
| fully? I don't understand this all or nothing stuff. Live
| moderately
| brtkdotse wrote:
| > Now I have my whole library in Calibre and on my Kindle.
|
| Funnily enough I'm contemplating buying a MiniDisc player since
| my music listening has gone way down since Spotify came along.
|
| Its like the abdunance of selection is overwhelming.
| darknavi wrote:
| I really enjoy audio books much more than reading (perhaps it
| helps me feed my need to "consume", as I can listen to them
| while doing other, menial things) but I also enjoy buying the
| same titles and filling out a physical book shelf.
|
| I love the visual appraisal of a library a lot more in person
| than on a screen.
| dowager_dan99 wrote:
| I never got hooked on audio books, even back in the "on tape"
| days. So slow and I have trouble visualizing and immersing
| myself in them.
| darknavi wrote:
| The narrator absolutely makes or breaks a book. I find my
| self more often following narrators versus following
| authors, which is crazy to say.
|
| If you want to give a narrator a shot, Ray Porter is super
| solid. Lots of cool sci-fi books out there that he
| narrates.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Physical has a spatial dimension that digital cannot replicate.
| Like I can't tell ya what page something is on but I can find
| it quickly by feel.
|
| Something is lost by moving to digital but what? By what
| metric?
| w00ds wrote:
| Exactly that which is not amenable to metrics...
| zem wrote:
| I'm kind of the opposite, I can't bring myself to let go of my
| collection of paper books, or even to stop buying a new one
| every so often, but I do not like the physical experience of
| reading one nearly as much as I like the experience of reading
| on a phone or kindle. holding a book in one hand and turning a
| page with a click is a really wonderful way to read.
| jhbadger wrote:
| Exactly. I've even gone to the trouble of getting ebooks of
| physical books that I have in some cases. I vastly prefer the
| size and weight of an e-reader as compared to most books,
| plus the ability to change the font size to something I can
| easier read as opposed to the small fonts often chosen by
| paper books to minimize pages.
| tsujamin wrote:
| The standard I arrived at is roughly "would I be sad if, in
| 15 years, I forgot about this book/piece of music?". If it's
| something that I enjoyed so much today that I'd be afraid to
| lose it amongst 10,000's of eBooks or songs on a streaming
| platform, I physically buy it.
| OJFord wrote:
| > I regret the decision having gone fully digital, which can
| only be a complement to physical books.
|
| I've long thought the purchase of a book should be considered a
| _licence_ : you pay a little more if you want a physical
| version too, but they're not separate things; the digital ebook
| comes free/is the basic way your licence can be exercised.
|
| (Ideally licenced people would be allowed to order cheap
| replacements if they damaged the physical copy, but how would
| you stop fraudulent sale & continual replacement-ordering.)
| globular-toast wrote:
| I read all fiction on my Kobo these days. I used to collect
| paperbacks but they take up a lot of space, especially if
| you're getting through 20+ books a year. I basically hoard
| books on my Kobo so I never don't have another book to read.
|
| I do remove the DRM, though. I still want to own books.
|
| But paper is still by far the best format for textbooks. It's
| not even close.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| I have a library of work-related books (military). Most of the
| great ones have no digital alternative. Authors of rare or
| definitive works know to avoid digital formats. Last year I
| paid 200+ to get my hands on a newly printed book because i
| know it will still be relevant on my shelf in 10/20/30 years.
| After reading it once I may leave it on that shelf for years.
| One day i will need it again. I will know where to find it no
| matter what OS i will then be using.
|
| Things like this cannot be bought digitally, nor would most
| readers want a digital copy.
| http://www.hisutton.com/pages/Book%20project.html
|
| I cannot champion this guy enough. His website belongs jn the
| 90s (it needs the "www") but his skills in open source analysis
| and drawing are unmatched. (He draws in MS paint!)
|
| http://www.hisutton.com/
|
| https://youtu.be/PdKkR_lbLN0
| dowager_dan99 wrote:
| I just love the experience of reading a paper book, especially
| in trade paperback - which is weird because it's not a great
| format, but something about the dimensions (as long as the book
| isn't too long), and the cover and the feel and the paper...
| jjice wrote:
| I love a paper back, but man did I fall in love with ebooks in
| the last year and a half. I own a Kindle and a Kobo and it's
| just so incredible for traveling (instead of carrying two books
| in my backpack) and in bed (the screen backlights are just
| fantastic).
|
| I absolutely buy certain books physical still, if they're of a
| certain quality or meaning to me. If Martin Fowler released a
| new book tomorrow, I'd get it physical. Hell, I might even buy
| a physical and digital copy.
|
| That said, digital is now my default way to read a book.
| NoboruWataya wrote:
| And let's be honest, a good book collection is a great addition
| to a room, aesthetically. People tend not to talk about that
| aspect, I think they worry about being seen as pretentious
| showing off their books. But I think a book collection can be a
| great decoration, just as flowers or a painting can be.
|
| And if you have family or friends over and one of them sees
| something they like, you can lend it to them there and then (if
| you are so inclined). Some of my earliest reading-related
| memories are being in an uncle's or neighbour's house and being
| fascinated by a book on a shelf that they kindly let me take
| home to read.
| djhn wrote:
| And they improve room acoustics a decent amount, making the
| space that much more pleasant.
| Obscurity4340 wrote:
| Are books like a natural version of those fancy futuristic
| sound panels in recording studios?
| Al-Khwarizmi wrote:
| I'm an avid reader. But about maybe 15 years ago, I stopped
| buying printed books because I felt guilty - they took up too
| much space, and it was running scarce. And surely ebooks were
| superior - no space wasted, I could take an entire library with
| me, etc. It was just a matter of getting used to them, and
| abandoning the impractical romanticism of fetishizing the
| printed page.
|
| At that time, I pretty much stopped reading. Now it's obvious
| why that happened, but at that point I didn't really connect
| the dots. I thought that I ran into a bad streak of books that
| just didn't hook me much, and then I was very busy, I always
| seemed to have something else to do rather than continue
| reading. So for those hypothetical reasons I went from reading
| several books per month to one per year, or even less.
|
| At some point, I read a printed book and it hooked me like in
| the old times. And then, it dawned on me that the books being
| bad, or me being busy, were just excuses. The real reason is
| that I didn't like electronic reading. I wasn't proud of this.
| It wasn't a rational attitude. Electronic reading was clearly
| superior (less space, more flexibility and so on), and the
| content was exactly the same. I was actually quite ashamed of
| myself: was I such a shallow person that I didn't appreciate
| the contents of the literature enough to abstract away from
| purely materialistic concerns? What kind of person can't
| appreciate culture or art just because they don't like the
| medium used to transmit it? But be that as it may, the plain
| truth was that ebooks didn't hook me, and physical books did,
| so I admitted it and started buying printed books again. And
| once again, I'm an avid reader.
|
| In the last few years, papers and studies have started to
| appear saying that with paper reading we retain more, we
| concentrate more, we learn more, etc... so I have started to
| reconcile with myself. Maybe I'm not a shallow materialistic
| asshole after all, and it's just human nature.
| carlhjerpe wrote:
| This shows how thoughtful our politicians are, they're shooting
| from the hip at best. It's just dumb luck we haven't fucked up
| more than we have, and that we have natural resources to lean on
| (Iron, wood, water).
|
| Everything is over budget, nobody is accountable and
| psychological wellbeing is way down the drain.
| carlhjerpe wrote:
| My point being that politicians were going "ooh computers are
| good, let's slap a computer onto everything", but then only
| where they can bikeshed computers into the system as it seems
| easy at first (education). But without national guidelines to
| make it good, and no guidelines for medical IT and friends. It
| seems like Estonia "did computers right" more than Sweden.
| fn-mote wrote:
| I'm unclear if this is a real article.
|
| It claims to be published in 2025 but it refers to 2022-2025 in
| the future tense.
|
| > [...] Sweden's putting 104 million euros into bringing books
| back into classrooms from 2022 to 2025
|
| See the comment identifying a legitimate source:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42716448
| Suppafly wrote:
| Plus 104 million euros seems like a normal amount of money to
| spend updating the curriculum for an entire country. This is
| likely just updating the curriculum over a few years from older
| books to newer ones and basically unrelated to the divide
| between laptops and printed books.
| greekanalyst wrote:
| Physical reading/writing >> Digital reading/writing
| illwrks wrote:
| I can't speak for everyone else, but in the same vein I've dusted
| off my old iPod as well... no distractions, popups or
| subscriptions - divine.
| MathMonkeyMan wrote:
| I replaced the battery in my second hand first generation iPod
| maybe three times over ten years.
|
| Then for a number of years I used a late generation Zune that I
| got new at Walmart for a steal.
|
| Now I use Spotify on a smart phone, and it's a slow web app
| full of ads, delayed page reloads, unnecessary videos, and a
| buggy seek widget. The only controls are a touch screen.
|
| It is convenient to have my music player in the same device
| as... wait, all I wanted was a music player.
| torcete wrote:
| I "discovered" libraries. They are cool! They usually offer more
| services than just books. But you have plenty of books that you
| don't need to keep after having read them, and the trip to the
| library is like a discovery journey.
|
| Even more, my library also has comics and comic books. These are
| usually quite expensive, and now I can just read them for free.
| SpaceToast wrote:
| I recently learned that my library has 3D printers for anyone
| to use, and microfilm of local newspapers going back to 1797;
| it really is incredible what you can discover in them!
| skirge wrote:
| I read a lot of books while being at primary and secondary school
| and most of my colleagues didn't, they had other things to do.
| Now I read on Kindle and others watch Netflix or scroll Facebook.
| Form of the book is not a root cause of the problem.
| AcerbicZero wrote:
| I'm 95% sure my college would have just handed me a degree after
| the first quarter if they'd let me type my essays instead of
| writing them by hand.
| battkajs wrote:
| This comment was responding to the original link
| miltonlost wrote:
| You think the Associated Press and its website is AI? The
| Associated Press that has been in existence for decades? The
| article does have sources in it, AND links to the website you
| link to!
|
| Your writing style is also very LLMy... I think you're AI, and
| not hiding it well.
| battkajs wrote:
| I was replying to the original link:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42716448
|
| And I am not a native English speaker hence my language is
| AI-ish from my translation tools
| ddingus wrote:
| Good.
|
| Tactile thinking remains quite useful and having the basic motor
| skills translates into manufacturing, the arts, and more of life
| than many may realize.
|
| Early in my life, I began to "calibrate" my perception. I call it
| the "eyecrometer"
|
| Today, I can call out sizes, distances, speeds, feeds and more to
| fairly high accuracy a majority of the time. It has paid off in
| manufacturing and prototyping more times than I can count.
|
| This all starts with the basics:
|
| Read it, hear it, see it, feel it, do it, say it.
|
| A younger coworker has began a similar journey. And they just
| started a robotics group on it too.
|
| Be digital. It helps. It has power, but don't trade your
| potential for the love of trees.
|
| Augment said potential instead.
| shw1n wrote:
| One belief I have is that a major lifehack in a digital world is
| making things as physical as possible.
|
| Spend all day at a computer? Get a mechanical keyboard so every
| keystroke is satisfying.
|
| Learn keyboard shortcuts so you're on the mouse less.
|
| Find yourself frequently turning something on/off via your phone?
| Get a physical button and map it -- e.g. physical volume knob
|
| Gotta mock something up or understand a codebase? Physical draw
| it in a notebook
|
| Got a dense book to read? Buy the print copy and go somewhere
| without a phone
|
| Obviously costs more money and space, but anything I can offload
| to a 'spatial' part of my brain is welcome these days
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-01-15 23:00 UTC)