from the everybody-learns-their-own-way dept.
E-books are increasingly being used in classrooms by children as young as three - and they are making a big difference to the reading habits of boys. But there are concerns the expansion of electronic devices in schools may undermine the position of traditional paper books.
E-books, where stories are loaded onto a tablet or laptop, are used in about two-thirds of schools across America, says the School Library Journal.
But their use in English schools is sporadic.
The National Literacy Trust has been conducting research over the past year to understand their impact.
At 40 schools across the country, 800 children were encouraged to use e-books and share their feelings.
...
The average project ran for four months. But over that period on average boys made 8.4 months of reading progress using them, compared to just 7.2 months of progress among girls.Reluctant readers also made good progress, with a 25% increase in boys reading daily.
Why do boys respond better to E-books than girls?
(Score: 0, Redundant) by Francis on Sunday February 07 2016, @03:32PM
Seriously, do we need another non-troversy here? Apart from luddites, is there anybody that really prefers the obviously inferior format of traditional books? They take up a ton of space, are ergonomically problematic and are expensive to print and distribute. Not to mention that they wear out.
As for girls, who cares, they already massively overachieve at boys' expense, so why is it an issue that they're less interested in reading ebooks?
(Score: 4, Informative) by Gravis on Sunday February 07 2016, @04:00PM
is there anybody that really prefers the obviously inferior format of traditional books? They take up a ton of space, are ergonomically problematic and are expensive to print and distribute. Not to mention that they wear out.
the only problem I have with E-books is when DRM is applied. however, there are significant issues with E-book readers. they are slow, have shitty contrast and crap screen or they are blinding, low resolution and need charging. aside from that, they only show one page and bookmarking is significantly more complex. if someone sold an inexpensive E-book reader worth having then this really would be a non-issue.
(Score: 2) by danomac on Sunday February 07 2016, @08:29PM
(Score: 5, Informative) by tonyPick on Sunday February 07 2016, @04:04PM
For fiction books, certainly I do...
Agreed
Disagree - I've yet to find an e-reader that's close to the usability of a real book - handling a physical book is simple, and tactile, and I don't have to worry about dropping it, stepping on it, piling stuff on it, leaving it at the bottom of my bag, using it as a coaster, reading it in the bath or charging it. Plus I can just hand it to someone else to read, borrow a book from someone else, etc etc..
Except e-books aren't significantly cheaper, particularly when real books have a resale value (especially newer hardbacks) and the second hand market has a ton of books on it at even lower prices, so this really isn't a factor.
You could argue that this is the publishers fault and they could be a _lot_ cheaper, but practically they're not.
So does everything, but faster than e-readers? Strong Disagree - Without really trying I have a ton of books that are 30+ years old, and a few that are quite a bit older (a bunch from the 1960's, a few from the early 20th century) - pretty much all of those books will survive longer than me.
OTOH What do you lose when this weeks blingy iToy comes up with "error 53"? How long do you expect Amazon to keep that e-reader going for? I'm much less optimistic about the survivability of modern electronic gadgets and services, and how transferable are those DRM-ed books to a backup medium (legally speaking)?
Now, for technical books - searchability is such a big win, and they tend to not be end-to-end re-reads, so that it's worth going e-book for that, but for fiction then dead tree is much better for me...
(Score: 1, Informative) by Francis on Sunday February 07 2016, @05:00PM
I can't believe people are still arguing that books are more ergonomic than ereaders. Books are horrible, you have to hold them as the books people typically read will close shut if you don't. The size of the text isn't necessarily correct for the individual reader and you wind up having to hold the book way up high for extended periods of time or look down, neither of which is good for the health of your spine. Considering that doctors recommend using a straw with a can of soda to reduce strain on the neck, I can only imagine what those books are doing where people are curled up in strange positions to avoid the strain.
As far as wearing out goes, an ebook reader lasts a lot longer than a book does. I'm on my second ereader and only because the first one got smashed. Compare that to books where the first read through and they're no longer pristine. There's just no comparison to be made. And further more, I can read those books on multiple devices, and I have them at my finger tips without having to consciously bring them with me. OK, that's not durability, but I have them no matter what happens to the device.
As for survivability, that's why you buy DRM-free books or crack them. I always crack my ebooks so that doesn't happen. Mostly I do it because Amazon uses illegal DRM to break anti-trust laws, but I also do it because I'm not interested in waiting for the files to go bad before pirating. Better to just break it now and then not have to worry later.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 07 2016, @05:32PM
> buy DRM-free books or crack them.
Cracking DRM is illegal. Why should I worry about having to do something illegal just to read and keep a book? Never had to worry about the legality of any paper book.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Francis on Sunday February 07 2016, @06:18PM
Cracking DRM is of questionable legality. It's never gone to trial and I couldn't find any references to anybody even being charged with it over home use. Even companies being sued for it have been few and far between. Bottom line is that the files are listed as "sold" to the user, so they are yours to do with as you please, as long as you're not distributing them. Otherwise, the actual shop selling them would be on the hook for fraud as first sale doctrine applies.
TL:DR, don't sell the tools in the US and you're not going to be prosecuted. For home use, there's no way that they'll even know you're doing it. And the likelihood of them even wasting expenses of a court case over that is pretty much nil.
(Score: 3, Informative) by ticho on Sunday February 07 2016, @06:31PM
Compare that to books where the first read through and they're no longer pristine.
Dude, I think you're reading wrong. A good book can last for decades, if not centuries, just like grandparent post described above.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 08 2016, @01:46AM
Compare that to books where the first read through and they're no longer pristine.
And do you only fuck virgins too?
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Monday February 08 2016, @02:27AM
As far as wearing out goes, an ebook reader lasts a lot longer than a book does. I'm on my second ereader and only because the first one got smashed. Compare that to books where the first read through and they're no longer pristine. There's just no comparison to be made.
You're already on a second e-reader? I have books that I've owned from the seventies, and books that I've purchased from considerably before that (just bought an excellent condition book printed in 1960 and I'm sure a slew of readers here will scoff and say that is nothing, they have older). I've never had to junk a book. You can't even trust that the technology will be available to read or especially power any particular e-book format a few years from now, let alone 50 years from now.
(Score: 1) by Francis on Monday February 08 2016, @01:25PM
One got smashed in my bag. Otherwise it would still be working. And how many of your books from that era do you still have? Unless you're rich, you probably don't have room for all of them.
I also lost at least a dozen books to an aquarium leak. And how about you talk to the folks down the block that had a fire. I'm sure that they lost a ton of books like that. Not to mention that some of us like to actually travel or have to move from place to place.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 07 2016, @07:56PM
You forgot one key Pro:
The smell.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Sunday February 07 2016, @04:09PM
Yeah, because e-book readers don't wear out in the hands of 8 year olds...
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by SomeGuy on Sunday February 07 2016, @05:21PM
Inferior? Books wear out? So that new e-reader or iPhad will still work and let someone read the content 100 years from now?
So what is the cost/benefit really like after many, many years of repeatedly replacing tablets vs storing a shelf full of books?
I forget the exact details, but there was recently a news story where some school was forcing kids to buy their own Apple iPads (TM), and I'm just assuming they weren't mixing up the name with some Android tablet. Honestly, WTF. Nobody needs that kind of proprietary crap. The school should be buying and handing out some cheap generic limited monochome e-reader if they really think they are too good for paper books.
And there is nothing like doodling in the margins of a paper book :P
(Score: 1) by Francis on Sunday February 07 2016, @06:02PM
Strawman much? An ebook is forever, they don't die just because your device dies. Or are you the sort of person that buys all your videogames a second time because your computer broke?
The point is that ebooks that we buy now are going to work in 200 years or at least we'll be able to convert them into a format that works at that time. Whereas books wear out, they degrade over time, they get wet and they're incredibly expensive to back up. Then you have to find someplace to actually store them and protect them if you want them to be readable in the future.
As far as formats go, just crack them and be done with it. Or better yet, don't buy things that are encumbered like that. As far as the books in question go, most of those only have to be readable for a few weeks before they need to get returned anyways. But, those files are good indefinitely whereas children tend to destroy books.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Pino P on Sunday February 07 2016, @08:31PM
Or better yet, don't buy things that are encumbered like that.
That doesn't help if the required books "are encumbered like that." A publisher might make being "encumbered like that" a condition of customizing a textbook to meet a particular state's curriculum standards. This is also true of language arts textbooks, which tend to incorporate post-1922 literature into all units (with the exception of "British Tragic Theatre of 1591-1611", which some high schools overdo). Long term, the way to move away from "things that are encumbered like that" is to commission a full K-12 curriculum on wikibooks.org.
But, those files are good indefinitely whereas children tend to destroy books.
And publishers "tend to destroy" redownload servers for DRM books.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 07 2016, @08:51PM
So what? Crack the DRM put the files in multiple locations, as how you would backup your pictures. Problem solved.
It's like arguing with a child with you isn't it?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Pino P on Monday February 08 2016, @04:00AM
So what? Crack the DRM
A state board of education encouraging parents or school districts to do this would get in federal trouble with copyright owners.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Monday February 08 2016, @03:20AM
I had a chaace a while ago to devise means to put DRM on tetbooks. I flat out refused the job.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Monday February 08 2016, @02:02AM
It needs to be demonstrated in real life that an ebook is still readable in a hundred years. DRM encumbrances stand in the way, for one thing. Look at Microsoft Office - there are complaints that documents written in one version of Office are unusable after a couple of versions.
The English language hasn't changed a whole lot in the past few hundred years. Shakespeare's books are still around, and legible. No ebook has yet stood the test of time.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 08 2016, @04:30AM
Damm! Never thought of it that way.
I hated all that old English literature I had to read in High School.
Had that DRM been in place in Shakespeare's time, chances are no one today would know who he was, much less make us read his works.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 08 2016, @09:33AM
> Or are you the sort of person that buys all your videogames a second time because your computer broke?
Well, I'm the kind of person who has to buy a video game a second, third, or fourth time because the old game is not compatible with the new OS, new hardware, and/or new environment, and all the old OSes or hardware are essentially locked out from from being useful for similar reasons.
Are you saying tablets are magically immune from this?
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Monday February 08 2016, @03:57PM
Perhaps the insinuation is that Apple and Google took the new operating systems of tablets as a chance to do API versioning right, to minimize incompatibility of new hardware with old applications.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 07 2016, @11:14PM
While that's possible, there are more that simply self-destruct.
Many years back, I saw a documentary called Slow Fires. [google.com]
The subject is how publishers had been buying|were still buying paper made with an acid-based process.[1]
Over time, the paper first turns yellow then turns to dust.
These cheaply-made books can be treated with an alkaline solution but librarians have to know about that and funds have to be made available.
...and the difference between paper that is crap and the good stuff is less than 3 percent.
[1] The acid-process mills are also environmentally more nasty.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 07 2016, @06:43PM
You know why codices (books bound on one side) became more popular than scrolls, and why they stayed more popular? Random-access speed. Scrolls were sequential-only access, but you can thumb to a page nearly instantly in a codex. Now try that on your e-book. Jump from your current page to 161, then to 54, then to 89. Scan through quickly looking for the beginning of chapter 3. You can do that nearly instantly with your thumb in a book: just let the pages slide by until you see the third page that looks different. Scanning pages and jumping to pages were fundamental skills of using codices, and they work perfectly for people. As a university researcher, I always prefer the paper copy from the library to the PDF scan for that reason: it's simply easier to find what I need in a book than in a PDF. And, no, ctrl-F searching doesn't help when you're looking for a subject rather than a single word.
On a very practical level, books also don't offer Facebook and other dopamine-inducing distractions. My undergrads can't read five straight pages without checking Facebook, Twitter, or their phone messages.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 07 2016, @08:55PM
Buy an e-ink reader only then. They cost around $90
No Facebook or messenger, and I don't see how searching for a subject rather than key words would be any faster with physical books.
(Score: 2) by cykros on Monday February 08 2016, @05:00AM
$90 for an e-ink reader? Christ, are they going back up in price? I got mine (Nook SimpleTouch) a few years back for $60. But yea, you seem to be correct; it's retailing on Amazon right now for $79.95. From what I recall in the interim they were down as low as $40. I suppose that's how things go with scale and production lines.
Not that it's not worth $80. I get ~2 weeks of battery life on a charge, and that's AFTER rooting it so as to give it basic Android functionality (the occasional board game, email, ssh, etc). I use the phone/tablet more often than it these days, but for any kind of trip where charging my batteries isn't a constantly accessible option, it still is my go to for occupying spare time in transit.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by mendax on Sunday February 07 2016, @07:42PM
As one of the resident Luddites here, I respectfully disagree. Paper books are vastly superior to e-books. Oh, sure, e-books take up less space and are searchable, but that is only an advantage when you have problems with space and/or weight. If you're reading a book from cover to cover, as these kids probably are, a paper book is a much more pleasant experience.
As many of us know, the writers and producers of the Star Trek franchise have "invented" all sorts of devices that seem to make information easier to retrieve and manage, devices that ended up being developed in the modern world. Witness the communicator (which is today a mobile phone) and the PADD (which is today a tablet computer). (I'm still waiting for warp drive.) Yet, it seems that the producers knew something we didn't realize then about the value of books. You may notice that the characters may use the gizmos for work-related issues, but when it comes time to read for leisure, they reach for paper books.
There is a classic discussion of this issue in a scene the original series episode "Court Martial", where Kirk walks into his quarters on the starbase to find the man who is about to become his attorney has moved in and has scattered law books everywhere. Kirk remarks that a computer takes up less space, and then his attorney goes into a sermon about the superiority of books. While I suspect a modern lawyer would probably prefer to use Westlaw online to do their legal research, I know for a fact that there are many lawyers who prefer the books. There is just something about reading information from a computer screen that rubs them the wrong way.
As for myself, I could cram the contents of my entire library of books--computer books, novels, histories, biographies, reference books--all onto a book reader, and have room for many more libraries, yet my walls of my office would be quite barren without them.
Incidentally, I meet with a friend of mine every Sunday at a local bookstore (I'm about to leave now in fact) and I see lots of BOYS sitting around in the cafe with books. If book readers get the boys to read more often, God bless the technology, but let them fall in love with real books as I did decades ago.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Sunday February 07 2016, @08:02PM
Yes. I far prefer books over e-books.
But, you know, that isn't the basic point...these are schools. So the basic question is which is better for learning from. Unfortunately all the research that I've found says that e-books are substantially inferior to books in the amount of learning retained after reading. (Admittedly, none of the studies I've encountered have determined why.)
So for schools e-books are a terrible idea until this problem is resolved.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by GungnirSniper on Sunday February 07 2016, @08:26PM
Could this be due to the inability to highlight and then copy down that info as notes?
Tips for better submissions to help our site grow. [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Monday February 08 2016, @07:03PM
AFAIK, nobody knows the reason, only the fact.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 08 2016, @08:16AM
Easy. Paper books don't have Angry Birds.
(Score: 2) by davester666 on Sunday February 07 2016, @10:46PM
Alternately, ebooks are:
-easy to kill via DRM
-looking at computer displays for long periods of time, particularly when young and your eyes are developing, is not considered a good thing
-easy to censor, super fast to search for specific words and oh, this book can't be viewed by children anymore [think of past couple of years, we found bad word X or topic Y in this book , pull it, hey, lets run a search on all our books for these words and get rid of them all]
-are the boys actually reading the books, or using the tablets for something else while getting the system to think they are reading the books.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by darkfeline on Sunday February 07 2016, @11:39PM
Adding on another opinion.
I think e-books are fundamentally superior, but I prefer physical for personal reasons. Both media have lots of flaws, but e-book's flaws stem mainly from implementation and can be easily fixed without regard to pesky things like physical limits (e.g., weight).
Take DRM for example. DRM is not a fundamental design of digital books, just crap added on by publishers. You can have e-books without DRM.
E-readers, too. The currently available e-readers are not by any means the best e-readers possible. They can be improved. Inconvenient bookmarking? That can be changed. Too fragile? That can be changed. Battery life not long enough? That can be changed, hell, given how little electricity e-ink uses you can just stick a little solar panel on it like calculators have.
My ideal would be to have an open source e-reader at my side containing literally every book in existence, and a huge private library filled with hard bound classics. For practicality digital wins, but it can't beat the feeling of stepping into a room filled to the brim with books, walking up to a shelf, pulling off a book, and cracking it open.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Sunday February 07 2016, @11:58PM
As for girls, who cares../quote?
Shows how much you know about modern society. If that inequality isn't solved somehow, the fact both groups improved over the control won't matter, the program will be eliminated. Protecting equality (defined as it is now, where girls outperform boys in school) will be deemed more important than elevating everyone.
The God King Himself said it back in 2008, that he would raise a tax (capital gains specifically) even if those who argue that it would reduce revenue to the government convinced him that they were correct, because equality and 'fairness' were more important values.
As to the bigger issues, I'm neutral on this one. They are talking about replacing paperbacks, not hardcover. I'm in the library world so I happen to know that paperbacks in general have problems surviving many circulations and YA and Juvi titles suffer even worse in library service. Most hardcovers get weeded for becoming out of date and ceasing to circulate, most paperbacks go out of the collection due to poor physical condition. If the school is already issuing the e-reader device for textbooks it would be a no brainer for the school librarians to push for electronic editions on budget grounds. If the cost of the readers is coming out of the library budget that would of course throw the calculation back the other way because a ereader in the hands of a typical kid would be short, less than a school year. They break their own cell phones at a shocking rate, a device they aren't responsible for would be toast really quick.
Now on the paper vs e on books in general, I am growing to like ebooks for fiction since the problems do not impact serial reading as much. For tech books the both option is where I'm probably trending since search in electronic form is faster when you want to search by keyword but even on ebooks with good formatting (spotty) jumping to the table of contents page paging through it and linking back out is slower than grabbing paper and flipping once you have used a book for a few weeks and just 'know' where the table you are looking for is at. Sticking post-it notes into the edge of a paper book also beats the markup capability of most e-readers.
Also, walled garden e-readers are too subject to 'Living History'. Too many real books have new editions that are later considered inferior to an earlier one, ebooks are trending toward simply eliminating the past through silent updates.
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Monday February 08 2016, @12:00AM
crap.
Should have previewed.
As for girls, who cares..
And so on..... outside the quote tags.
(Score: 1) by tftp on Monday February 08 2016, @04:06AM
I see that your comment caused quite a stir. Let me add to it: I fully agree with you. I had a couple dozen paper books in a box. I never reached for them because I had copies as e-books (in an open format, such as FB2.) When I moved a few months ago I discarded the books. They were quite aged by then; they were not expensive to begin with, and after about 20 years the leftover acid in the paper, and variuos externalities like humidity, made them nasty to even touch, let alone read. Some say that they never discarded a book. Perhaps that's true for them; but libraries routinely do so because paper books become damaged, unless they are sitting on a shelf and never read. Books as decoration are useful, I will admit that :-)
Quite a few posters here refuse to separate the concept of book as a collection of words and the concept of book as the media. The media is cheaply (for free) replaceable in case of an e-book; however a paper book merges the information and the carrier. If your paper book goes bad, you have to buy another. Quite often people borrow paper books and fail to return them. That's another way for a paper book to become lost. An e-book that is unencumbered cannot be lost that way. I make backups, and other people make backups - what is the chance that all copies of an open e-book suddenly disappear from this planet? An e-reader is not more than a stand for a paper book; it can be repaired or replaced. There are tens of reading devices, from GG and phones to desktops, eInk, transmissive, reflective, with backlight and without; one of them will certainly work for you. However a paper book is a "one size fits all," and if you'd rather have a different font, or higher contrast, or - oh horror - you'd like the reader to read the book to you - no, you cannot have that.
It is completely laughable to pretend that books printed on dead trees can be just as economical as arrangements of magnetic domains or electrons. Distribution of an e-book is instant and free. Compare to a paper book that will be hand-carried to you by tens of people and on tens of vehicles, using up irrecoverable resources (people's time and oil.) A paper book is certainly an object of art in itself, and I understand that many love such books and want them on their shelves, as a trophy or as a tool. But it would be wrong to claim that the approach of book collectors works for a kid who cannot possibly care less about a bound stack of paper. You'd want to give him an expensive, colorful e-text on a disposable reader. He'll read it and move on. If you give him a $100 paper book, it will be ready for garbage when he is through with it. But an e-text cannot be damaged even if you play football with it, or get into a serious rain. Kids do not need expensive volumes that draw respect; leave those to book shops and book lovers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 08 2016, @08:22AM
Let us know what the acid in the battery does to your ebook reader in 20 years. Not to mention humidity.
My parents have an entire wall of book shelves, and most of those books have been on the shelves for as long as I can remember (that's at least 30 years). How you store them makes a difference.
(Score: 2) by cykros on Monday February 08 2016, @03:38PM
You're conflating the e- book (a digital file) with the e-book reader ( a physical device). While the device can't simply be backed up at a negligible cost, the file certainly can. Doing so with an analogue book is similarly not possible (at least within analogue form), and backing it up digitally, while possible, is at the very least time consuming, and requires extra hardware.
And then throw in that e-book readers generally retail for less than the cost of a single college textbook...
(Score: 1) by tftp on Tuesday February 09 2016, @01:21AM
My parents have an entire wall of book shelves, and most of those books have been on the shelves for as long as I can remember (that's at least 30 years). How you store them makes a difference.
We as a civilization certainly have books that are older than 30 years :-) Some people become older and wiser; they have a permanent house that they are happy with, and they can have a dedicated library there, with temperature and humidity controls. There they can look at all those nice books and leisurely read them in peace and quiet. When done, they carefully put the book back onto the shelf.
That is NOT the life of most people on this planet. It never was common, actually. This lifestyle was available only to learned people - scientists, top priests - and only in last three or four centuries. It is not inherent to the humanity. Today people live busy lives, and for that reason most of the books that they read are throwaway paperbacks, intended to be discarded after that airplane trip. I most certainly cannot afford ideal storage conditions for my books - I do not even have much of bookshelves. Books are also too heavy, and they'd kill me if I move them between apartments too often. E-books are truly forever, compared to paper. All my ebooks fit onto a small drive, and I can take them with me anywhere. I do not need to worry if I have the right book with me - I have them all. I cannot lose them because it's just a copy of a copy.
Other people already pointed out that the book and the e-reader are two different things. It's like a book and a chair that you sit in to read. You do not need the chair to last 30 years, or 300 years! It can be even a plastic folding chair that lasts a year and then gets recycled! There is no information in the e-reader; at best it is a paintbrush, one out of many and entirely disposable, that an artist paints his masterpiece with. You don't worship the paintbrushes, but you love the painting. I can give you yet another reason to ignore e-readers: they come free with every smartphone and other similar device. As you naturally rotate those devices after they become worn out and not worth repairing, you keep accessing your e-book library on a new device. The reader costs nothing in terms of money and information. But the library is priceless, as it is the accumulated knowledge and imagination of the human race.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 08 2016, @08:09AM
Yes, anyone who doesn't actually want to read the crap the teacher wants them to read.
Paper books do have Angry Birds.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Monday February 08 2016, @02:08PM
The main advantage of paper books is that you can be absolutely sure they don't spy on you. Oh, and they take an amount of abuse that no ebook reader in existence would survive.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Sunday February 07 2016, @03:35PM
First, I don't give a flip for "the position of books" in the classroom. Publishers overcharge for everything, and if we, as taxpayers, can save a hundred dollars per student per year, I'm all for that.
From a conservation perspective, I see firsthand how the manufacture of paper devours forests. I'd love to see my home state given back to more natural forests that aren't cut down every twenty years or so. Bring back the hardwoods and diversity. Fruit and nut trees, instead of endless tracts of genetically modified pine forests.
As for actually learning, I really don't see that e-books are going to have any major impact on kid's reading skills. One study may say they are good, another study may say it's bad, I don't know. In the long run, if kids want to learn, and if adults spend the time helping them to learn, they will learn. The media isn't going to make that much difference.
But, since fewer and fewer businesses, as well as government, are doing away with paper, it's probably best that students get used to the media they'll be expected to use when they enter the work force.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday February 07 2016, @04:16PM
GM pine is a row crop, like cotton, but with a 15-30 year harvest schedule. Much of the US and Europe has been "reforested" with this crop: source of pulp and building material.
I agree - it would be nice to bring back the diversity and ecological value of natural forests - I wonder if we can't do that and still use them as crops - just extend the harvest cycle to 100 years from 30 and plant a more natural mix of trees... oh, but, profits. Sorry, forgive me for thinking of the planet instead of the banks.
All in all, I wonder if an "e-book reader" does more or less damage to the environment than the number of books actually read on it would. I know, this is a slanted argument - so many books (and advertising pamphlets) are printed and never read, but if you printed all the e-books actually read on an e-reader, then stacked up that environmental impact against the impact of producing, using, and disposing of the e-reader, which method actually destroys more of the ecology?
Paper is working its way towards being an ecologically friendly renewable resource, I can't see the same in aluminum, gorilla glass, lithium, silicon, fiberglass and plastic - yet.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 07 2016, @10:32PM
Sure, but do you want to pay three times as much for the books? three times as much for anything made of wood?
Profit is not just about banks making money, it's about survival. using less energy to do more. it's evolution at work.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday February 08 2016, @10:11PM
Sure, but do you want to pay three times as much for the books? three times as much for anything made of wood?
If it means having wood products and a functioning ecosystem at the same time, then yes. I would rather not save 66% off the cost of paper if that savings comes with an externalized cost of turning our forest ecosystems into monoculture crops subject to rampant disease and pesticide dependency while being non-supportive of diverse populations of other plants and animals.
it's about survival.
Yes, it is.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by cykros on Monday February 08 2016, @03:42PM
Or perhaps we could make the paper out of hemp, which is what the plan was. You know, before the paper baron Henry Anslinger decided to manipulate congress into passing the Marihuana Tax Act so as to protect his investment.
Recreational/Medical marijuana entirely aside, the fact that industrial hemp has been left untapped as a resource for this long in a country where it was widely used by the founding fathers is a travesty, if not ecological disaster. More diverse forests would be nice; actually leaving intact old growth forests better.
(Score: 3, Informative) by VLM on Sunday February 07 2016, @03:37PM
The average project ran for four months. But over that period on average boys made 8.4 months of reading progress using them, compared to just 7.2 months of progress among girls.
Anyone else notice 4 is a lot less than 8? Maybe they're implying the legacy book people only made four month's progress while the ebook people averaged eight?
This is an interesting way to spike a story. Report it, but ignore the really interesting story and instead social signal endlessly about gender issues and feminism or whatever.
Also they carefully omitted the error bars. Quite possibly they overlap.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 07 2016, @03:45PM
I'm left asking: How was this study done? Did they control for all variables? Is the sample size large enough?
(Score: 2) by Hawkwind on Sunday February 07 2016, @04:11PM
Agree, great catch on the error bars. I'd also like to know how these 40 schools have done in the recent past.
(Score: 5, Informative) by NotSanguine on Sunday February 07 2016, @04:31PM
I read that as "the duration of the study was four months." "The level of improvement was 7.2 months for girls and 8.4 months for boys." That's just my guess, which may or may not account for much.
Fortunately, you can read the actual paper [literacytrust.org.uk].
In addition to the skill measures, the paper also provides detail about reading frequency, level of enjoyment and a host of other measures.
Error bars for the results appear to be in footnotes in the paper.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 1) by Francis on Sunday February 07 2016, @04:55PM
I can understand the confusion, reading is assessed in a really strange way. I'd have to dig into the article, but they're probably comparing the students level to the level of other students. 8.4 months is almost 1 grade level of reading. I'm not really sure why they didn't state that in terms of grade levels as that's the more typical way of comparing students.
But, 8.4 months is hardly unreasonable, especially if you're taking students that weren't reading and coaxing them into doing a lot of reading. You can pick up quite a bit just by reading. In fact, it remains the best way to pick up new vocabulary and grammar as you have the option of looking at it very closely if you don't understand without missing the rest of what's being communicated.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 07 2016, @04:17PM
"Why do boys respond better to E-books than girls?"
because all the pretty girls are using tablets?
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Francis on Sunday February 07 2016, @05:03PM
Most likely it's because the boys were already behind. The school system going back for decades has catered to the needs of girls at the expense of boys. I don't recall a single class where the boys were ahead of the girls. We've cut back on things that benefit boys in order to hit targets designed for girls. The teachers at the primary and secondary levels are virtually all women that are teaching in a way that works better for them, and by connection girls.
I suspect that part of what's going on here is that technology is just more interesting to boys, so they get hooked on that before they get hooked on the actual reading. Whereas girls don't seem to respond as much to the technology. Or at least not enough of them to make it a noticeable effect.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 07 2016, @04:28PM
to every intermediate and up students. So now they carry around a few lbs of igear instead of 50lbs of books. They also do most of their homework on it instead of using the home PC. It's pretty much locked down, and everything is logged.
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Sunday February 07 2016, @08:36PM
How well is a locked-down iPad going to work when the federal education standards come down and mandate basic computer science for all high school students?
(Score: 2) by kurenai.tsubasa on Sunday February 07 2016, @05:08PM
Why do boys respond better to E-books than girls?
Oh, I don't know. I mean, we know boys are all irresponsible, so maybe there was a retarded policy in place that limited boys to checking out one book per month from the school library while girls had unlimited. Perhaps the e-book platform got around a stupid sexist policy? Maybe boys are no longer discouraged from reading by sexist librarians?
(Score: 3, Informative) by GungnirSniper on Sunday February 07 2016, @08:28PM
As someone who had a long commute to and from HS, I would have loved to save the pounds of books lugged home each night.
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(Score: 2) by pixeldyne on Sunday February 07 2016, @10:21PM
This. Absolutely. I see all the kids carrying huge backpacks on the bus/train, I assume some of it is PE stuff, but the rest are books. My school didn't have lockers for some reason so I also had to carry really heavy backpacks. I carry a laptop to work along with a tablet and about 1kg of other stuff, and my current backpack is much lighter than my school bag. They take up a lot of space on the train, and maybe aren't too healthy to be carried. So less paper (hard cover) books is better. Just keep the MacBooks, and let kids leave phys-ed gear at school if possible.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Covalent on Monday February 08 2016, @11:35AM
Recently my school district decided to save money by purchasing a classroom set of dead tree books and electronic copies for students. I thought it would be fine.
Sigh.
The DRM on the e-version prevents it from being opening on iPhones, iPad, Linux, and Newer versions of Acrobat. So, pretty much all of my students don't have a desktop / laptop. This means the electronic version is useless. After spending several hours trying to circumvent this, I gave up.
Haven't tried using it since. That was 2 years ago. I hear from other teachers that no one can open it now because they've all updated acrobat.
My district spent thousands of dollars on nothing.
You can't rationally argue somebody out of a position they didn't rationally get into.
(Score: 2) by cykros on Monday February 08 2016, @03:47PM
It's a real shame you can't instruct these kids about how to strip the DRM with software like Calibre (or rather, that doing so would put you in a legally precarious if not thoroughly tested situation). This should be a clear cut fair use situation for someone who has already bought the material...but oh hell, I'm preaching to the choir here. Support your local Pirate Party, or help get one started.