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| "Book of Life" By David Karcov |
We all know how useful and ubiquitous our digital devices are. Paper is said often said to be too expensive, clunky, and limited. We don't return to the typewriter; why keep paper around now that we can replace it? I'd like to consider whether or not paper-based reading and writing are worth encouraging, and, if-so, why?
A Short History of iPads and Paper at Our School
- Laptops, possible Kindles, iPads
- Library to ARC
- Expectations from Apple
- Class sets to 1 to 1
- Student Responses (roughly 300, summarized)
- Two Specific Examples
- In Sir Ken Robinson's Q and A time after his ECW13 lecture, he noted that "constraints are not the problem"; removing supposed constraints is not the act that shows creativity. Generally, it's working within the form that shows creativity, from household space to sonnets.
- Boundaries often encourage curiosity, resourcefulness, and excellence. Sometimes the limitations of a medium in learning can be a chief strength.
- What is soccer or football with no lines...would we encourage creativity without the rules and boundaries? Thinking inside the box, actually, is where most creativity flourishes.
Limitations are often the prerequisite to satisfaction in success.
- Consider mountain climbing and airplanes.
- Is flying over a mountain the same as hiking up it?
Second, studies generally support paper over screens as an educational medium for many reasons.
The April 11, 2013 article from Scientific American by Ferris Jabr summarizes decades of research comparing paper and digital media and the mind: "The Reading Brain in the Digital Age: The Science of Paper Versus Screens." Here are some points from the article
- Reading on paper provides an experience that sinks in deeper, cognitively, than a screen.
- Space and sense play a big role in our cognitive powers.
- We make a more "coherent mental map of the text" when we have tangible ways of feeling the place we are in the book with weight and number of pages before and after our page.
- Example: Google Map, street by street, but never out to neighborhood or city.
- "There is physicality in reading," says developmental psychologist and cognitive scientist Maryanne Wolf of Tufts University, "maybe even more than we want to think about as we lurch into digital reading—as we move forward perhaps with too little reflection. I would like to preserve the absolute best of older forms, but know when to use the new."
- "The implicit feel of where you are in a physical book turns out to be more important than we realized," says Abigail Sellen of Microsoft Research Cambridge in England and co-author of The Myth of the Paperless Office. "Only when you get an e-book do you start to miss it. I don't think e-book manufacturers have thought enough about how you might visualize where you are in a book."
- Students who read on paper generally perform better than those who read from a .pdf when tested on the material.
- In short, timed environments, the scores are about the same.
- Longer texts, and self-paced work show stronger advantages for paper reading
- "Getting away from screens improves concentration"
- Most students at MVC struggle with games and messages
- Many are also derailed by pornography
- Consider the Duke study or, perhaps, Winona State University's study
- Students prefer paper:
- Most students, 80% in a study cited here, prefer paper to screens when their aim is to "understand [the text] with clarity."
- Other studies support this.
- Here is a good paragraph from Cheryl Lowe's article from the summer 2013 edition of The Classical Teacher: "Learning is thrilling. Being entertained gets boring. In Henry V, Shakespeare said, 'If all the year were playing holidays, To sport would be as tedious as to work.' Why are our students bored today? They struggle to learn from materials designed to entertain. As Neil Postman says, we are 'amusing ourselves to death.' "
- Something deep within us understands the necessity of focused, intense, absorbed concentration for real learning, for real creation. Robert Frost talked of the pleasure of taking pains. Nan Fairbrother in Men and Gardens reminds us that the struggle in art (in this case, poetry) is "not so much a search as an intense effort of concentration...to feel the scene as a direct contact with something outside ourselves" (127, emphasis added). The incredible expanses of digital information available on our devices is their very undoing. Every student deserves the opportunity to focus, to concentrate, to be absorbed in the clean lines of a page, breathing life into them by nothing less than their imaginations, and reflecting back onto a page a few thoughts with as few distractions as are reasonable to a human being. With students so saturated with distractions, we may find them more and more eager to rest on shores of clarity and peace to grow in a slower wisdom.
- Knowledge versus Memory
- Paper produces the stronger recall of what is here defined as "knowledge" (remembering without having to remember where one learned the information).
- Electronic screens wear out the reader faster: the light that shines in the eyes from a screen produces eyestrain, headaches, and blurred vision. The American Optometric Association now officially recognizes "computer vision syndrome."
- People who take tests on the computer show higher levels of stress than those that take them on paper.
- People show diminished cognitive abilities after reading from a screen than from reading from paper
- "The Decade Google Made You Stupid": "Most of the news about how our brains have been affected by Internet use has been covered in the optimistic shades of Google. As Dr. Gary Small, a neurobiologist at UCLA's Semel Institute for Neuroscience & Human Behavior discovered, an MRI of the brain of a person doing Web searches lights up in more regions than that of a person just reading a book. The interpretation that made it to the headlines: Google Makes Your Smarter. But when I recently challenged Dr. Small on this conclusion, he was quick to disassociate himself from it: "Well, you know, on a brain scan, big is not necessarily better." Quite the contrary, it turns out. The reading brain may be less lit up simply because it is working more efficiently. "I mean, just because their brain is more efficient doesn’t mean it’s behaving poorly."
- Reading a paper book is centering and can be so....relaxing. Some hotels now offer digital detox packages. Some need it more than others: Portlandia.
- Cultural Attitude
- Since we are so accustomed to using screens for distracted wandering (Facebook, Instagram, shopping, etc.) where we employ skimming, key-word focus, and quickly changing pages, we do better with paper when sitting down to deeper, focused thought.
- Human beings connect differently to paper.
- Social media isn't even really social. We are lonelier than ever...this may increase heart disease. Some restaurants give discounts to those who forgo the pseudo socializing. This is serious, considering that the CDC and WHO expect depression to rise to the second greatest cause of disability in the world by 2020.
- The online environment can become a very dangerous place for young people.
- Article from M.I.T.
- The Death of Books Has Been Greatly Exaggerated: The Guardian
- Go Outside Magazine and others respond to the digital jailhouse.
Third, iPads may arrive with messianic hints, but they remain with their own limitations.
- It appears that educational history was a sad bywater until the iPad arrived.
- But, perhaps, the oft deemed "magical" and "revolutionary" device must, too, bow before the hype cycle:
- Exaggerated claims may overshadow places we may really find benefits. Robert Frost once wrote, "Anything more than the truth would have seemed too weak." I think we hurt the good use of some technologies by overstating their use or benefit.
- Battery, flash, USB, breaking screens, cash
Fourth, it's more than simply reading; those positive qualities paper affords only increase as we move from imaginative reading to creative writing.
Time: "Why Digital Literacy Will Never Replace the Traditional Kind."
Even some digital pioneers are skeptical about a digitally-rich learning environment:
18 And it shall be, when he sitteth upon the throne of his kingdom, that he shall write him a copy of this law in a book out of that which is before the priests the Levites:
19 And it shall be with him, and he shall read therein all the days of his life: that he may learn to fear the Lord his God, to keep all the words of this law and these statutes, to do them:
20 That his heart be not lifted up above his brethren, and that he turn not aside from the commandment, to the right hand, or to the left: to the end that he may prolong his days in his kingdom, he, and his children, in the midst of Israel.
The idea was to keep the king from being proud, changing the boundaries to suit his whim.
Obviously, a king could have someone copy something out for him. God made mankind and knew that the king would remember the law much better if he wrote it out himself. Writing things out is a very human thing to do.
Teaching Like the Good Teacher
My story of Dr. Bobo (it was his physical demonstration that won the theological lesson).
People do like to know and feel they are a part of something sacred, trustworthy, established, ancient, good. Christians, especially, are a people of the book. It has its inconveniences, but the glory and heritage is well worth it.
Students need real people, not their virtual ghosts, teaching. We love to have people share their lives, their stories, personally with us...community...communion.
Most of our students already have a great deal of screen time away from school.
Consider that each student is a different creature to some degree. Some students just won't do well with the available distraction on digital devices. School should be a good place to focus. Many students learn better with fewer potential rabbit trails at their fingers...especially boys and students on the margins. We should not stumble the weak...there's a verse about millstones that comes to mind.
One of the iPad's key strengths is its limitation/weaknesses. iPads have great potential...but not as our savior.
Limitations are a prerequisite for creativity. The point of this research and thought is not to discourage a good use of the iPad but to discourage the thought that paperless is always the ideal learning environment. Sometimes it's great; sometimes it's better to work from paper. iPads have great uses, and so does paper.
We should not view the iPad as the wonder drug that will work wonders or the narcotic that will make us all brain-dead junkies. We should enjoy the technologies we have and not envy those we don't. We should work wisely, loving our students, guarding them well, and employing the tools we have to delight and teach them best. Christ said, "Be anxious for nothing." Aim first to love the kids. Aim next to keep the teaching from tangling. May we not be the rails the railroad rides on (Thoreau) or the wires a wireless thrives on.
Let the children rest. Let the children focus. Let the children play and pray safely. Let the children come unto you. Create beautifully within the limitations. The limitations are beautiful.
* Any questions?
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| By Kinko-White |
