TIDBIT: ALRIGHT, RANT OVER, NOW DO SOMETHING
Here's an idea I wholeheartedly support: since pouring our tax dollars down the latest government-sponsored edubabble fad hasn't been working too well for the past 130 years, other than to provide cushy salaries to your local edubabble administrator and fat profits to the billionaire busybodies cramming standardized "tests" and "ebooks" down our throats, why not crowdfund a teacher trying to fill her classroom with actual real made-with-paper-and-ink books for students to read? (And I'll bet one benefit is thus that her students are learning how to footnote, and hence, what a shabby claptrap job modern "scholarship" and "journalismis doing); support the revolt against edubabble and help buy some books:
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It has to be said that texts in pdf format are valuable as they increase the availability of information. Im thinking of the links in another conversation where we were told that Ringmakers of Saturn was a hard-to-get-a-hold-of book, then biff baff boom.. Link to the pdf appears.. So we shouldnt spit on the FORMAT of the books like the luddites we are. However we should insist that a child pipck up a real book and flick through the pages as often as posssible rather than goggling a computer screen..
I have printed off many PDFs and have them stored in bounded covers, with the titles and author’s name on the side, just like a book. They’re in the library with all the other books. I don’t like to read from a computer screen – something is lost in the translation when I can’t physically handle the media.
I would advise anyone with a manual bent to start experimenting with etching and engraving copper plates to make REALLY durable texts. The techniques are much easier than you might think!
I really feel that for the same reason that we haven’t designed a delicious steak dinner into a pill for a meal, that we should not move away from the physical act of ‘page-flipping’ whilst reading a gripping novel.
If an author all of the sudden makes a sour move with your favored character, well, the book will survive a throw across the room or a smack on the cover as it hits the coffee table rather abruptly.
But if you go ahead and let that Kindle fly, well, you know…
In conclusion: Deleting a book file off of a Kindle is absolutely no substitute for throwing some ass hat authors trash read in a bucket and setting it on fire because you simply will never keep that junk in the house.
So we should keep books so we can burn them??
Never burn books, no matter how badly written they are. Books are testimonies to the wonderful mish-mash that is humanity.
Physical books rule and ebooks fool! I sent them enough for a small set of books. These kids are our future and must be well equipped!
I can honestly say over the last twenty years of reading non fiction books, that I have learnt more than I ever would in high school OR university. You could also say that what main stream quackademia teaches is a load of crap, and the number of university professors who have packed up and left is a indication of how the quackademia works to protect it’s line of BS.
Same here DownunderET. Even though the subject matter is often a little too dark for me personally, I find that my knowledge about history and science has increased considerably. I may not know how to do the mathematics of physics, but I get the basic concepts thanks to the way Dr Farrell weaves the information in and out of each book, combining it with so many other disciplines. This is how education should be, deep, whole, and broad.
Even though it seems like 50years ago at this point, I was an eighth grade science teacher in Mariemont, Ohio, one of the first “planned communities” in the US (like Columbia, MD). The situation was open classroom where we had approximately 90 students at a time (the math teacher didn’t join in, he had his 24-30 students with him in a room) all learning English, History and Science in one room. I usually taught out of a shoebox and students ran experiments and worked on a group table. Advanced students were allowed to move ahead and do extra projects but were also required to help students at their table who didn’t get the “concept”. I roved the room answering questions, quietly. That was when we were working independently.
At least once a month, the three teachers got together and developed a project that explained the history and science and the students had to write a paper which was graded for English (and historical/scientific accuracy). In many ways, this was the best of all teaching techniques but, since it required creativity and cooperation between staff members, soon fell by the wayside.
I still think it was a grand idea… but simply “not the way we have always done it”.
Interesting, but too socialistic for me. I’m far more the traditional type and believe that teachers should teach and and students should work on their own progress. Equalising the classrooms is the teaching faculty’s responsibility, not the student’s.
Real books have been around for millennia and you can always go back and reread what you missed the first time you read the book. Or read out of sequence going back to your favorite passages even with comicbooks and graphic novels. And they used to be cheap and they were in every little store that had a magazine, newspaper, comicbook racks.
Amen.
Bravo!
Real books that can’t be digitally changed on the fly.
It’s digital and easily hacked OR ERASED.
That’s not a bad ideal!