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Question of the Day: Have you ever been to an airshow?
Schoolbooks going digital
- Thread starter rpm
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It would be more helpful if they instilled a culture of learning in US primary and secondary schools instead of one of jock mentality. That would go a longer way than gadgets.
Guess they gonna have to buy these students MP3 capable Sony Ebook readers/Kindles so that the kids can listen to Britney instead of turning da pages. Nice.
Guess they gonna have to buy these students MP3 capable Sony Ebook readers/Kindles so that the kids can listen to Britney instead of turning da pages. Nice.
cookiemonster
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Why did they not do this instead of that stupid flop: One Child Per Laptop? Kids in Africa can't read, and don't have books to learn to read... give them a laptop... 
R13...
Honorary Master
Why did they not do this instead of that stupid flop: One Child Per Laptop? Kids in Africa can't read, and don't have books to learn to read... give them a laptop...
laptops can be used to read digital books on top of everything else they can do.
must say i have not heard about this one child one laptop thing. only thing was some cheap laptop story and zuma's one teacher one laptop idea.
Pretty dumb idea if you ask me Arnold - What school kid is going to want to be reading is textbook on his laptop when he can surf the web, chat to his mates, play some games and so on.
Books provide kids with material to learn, give them a laptop to read a book and the temptation to stray from reading the book is way to great.
Its hard enough getting kids to sit down and read their books now, imagine what’s going to happen when you give it them on their laptop. lol.
But I will keep an open mind to this, their might be method to the madness.
Books provide kids with material to learn, give them a laptop to read a book and the temptation to stray from reading the book is way to great.
Its hard enough getting kids to sit down and read their books now, imagine what’s going to happen when you give it them on their laptop. lol.
But I will keep an open mind to this, their might be method to the madness.
It’s a good scheme. The technology exists. I think there might be copyright problems, however. Once the capital expenditure of the reader is past (probably subsidised anyway), everything is free. Piracy (for non-school stuff) will be rampant. The blue-rinse conservatives will get into an uproar about children reading manga, porn and subversive literature, but they will be precocious, sophisticated and superbly informed. And they will read.
An excellent idea. Good luck to Arnie.
Pretty dumb idea if you ask me Arnold - What school kid is going to want to be reading is textbook on his laptop when he can surf the web, chat to his mates, play some games and so on.
Books provide kids with material to learn, give them a laptop to read a book and the temptation to stray from reading the book is way to great.
Its hard enough getting kids to sit down and read their books now, imagine what’s going to happen when you give it them on their laptop. lol.
But I will keep an open mind to this, their might be method to the madness.
Agree 100%.
I can't read on my laptop or pc. I always want to print whatever I'm reading so that i can highlight, make comment and stuff like that.
We'll have lazy pupils if this goes on.
I can only read on my pc, I find it very hard to sit down (comfortably) and read a book or magazine or even a newspaper. I find it much easier to read news articles on the internet or read up on wikipedia. I think what Arnold is planning to do could work.
It’s not a laptop. It’s a digital reader. Portable (don't drop it in the bath). Like the Sony Ebook readers or Amazon.com’s Kindle. An evolutionary step. Imagine having the Library of Congress in your bedroom? Two hundred+ titles on your reader? The ability to plug into the Internet and download anything that takes your fancy? All the search and other (documentary) functionality of a computer.
For eg. How many times does the word ‘the’ appear in the text? I am short-sighted. Enlarge the text twice. I don’t feel like reading (or I’m blind). Read the text to me. Save that bit of text in a file (paper1) with a comprehensive cite, for a paper I’m doing. Etc.
Jakeson
Member
I wonder if they will use those Kindle stuff you get at amazon ?
I think it's a k@k idea. I would much rather work out of a text book. Much easier to read, does not require batteries, easier to highlight text with a lumo marker or annotate notes on the sides.
Maybe I'm just old fashioned but I find paper based books much more practical to work with.
Maybe I'm just old fashioned but I find paper based books much more practical to work with.
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cookiemonster
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I was assuming Arnie was going on about ereaders like Kindle... The OLPC was meant to provide each child in Africa with a laptop. It's gone completely nowhere. What I do see taking off in Africa is durable ereaders that can provide these kids with all the textbooks they need, possibly even in their own language.
I'm sorry but there's nothing to imagine, we've been enjoying mainstream internet experience basically since the late 90s so I don't see how this is revolutionary OTHER than saving trees and allowing the kids to surf non-school related sites.
You mean you have been enjoying mainstream internet experience basically since the late 90s. There are still millions of kids in the Republic of South Africa that do not know what The Internet is.
The big problem with enjoying the ‘mainstream internet experience’ is that you were chained to a non-portable pretty expensive (for many) PC which was a less than ideal reading medium and needed electricity (and Internet access, of course). That’s why books retained popularity – a take-anywhere medium.
The reader offers a medium similar to books, except far more versatile. Battery life is far longer than a cell phone (doesn’t transmit and the batteries are much bigger) and is as much shlep as a cell phone to recharge when they finally do run flat.