The Future ?

[Gordon Cooper]

https://www.stuff.co.nz/technology/digi ... -textbooks

[duane]

Personally I think digital textbooks are a ripoff.
Especially for college.
Give them a textbook that they can choose to keep for future reference.

[Richard]

Considering the prices of textbooks these days, and remembering how many of my textbooks I kept, I would have preferred digital.

On the other hand, I do love the feel of books and love being able to read without electricity.

[richb]

Easily searchable is an advantage of digital and with the Net almost nay subject can be researched forever.

[KBD]

Kids are no longer able to write cursive writing. Soon they will not be able to navigate a print book to do research.

Search engines are so important, and will continue to be so as kids look to what turns up in an Internet search to define their beliefs and answers to serious questions.

Tech can be great, or it can be poison, depending upon both how its used and who controls it.

[Stevo]

Small kids were also being forced to carry large loads of books, almost too much to carry in some cases. You can fit thousands of books onto a tablet.

I did find some kid's school-issued Acer Chromebook left out overnight again on the coyote walk through the high school last night; that's the third one in a couple years. I turned it in like the others.

[JeffA]

On the other hand, I do love the feel of books and love being able to read without electricity.

I do too, but it still takes a little for my eyes to adjust to the kerosene lamp.

[Richard]

@JeffA,
just have to read during daylight hours or by candlelight.
I used to have a kerosene lamp. :)

But books are available even when batteries are discharged.
(is probably what I should have said. :)

[Artim]

I can't spend too much time in front of a screen anyway. In about 4th grade they found that I could read just fine under natural light, but in the classroom, under those really noisy (and I mean freaking LOUD - yet I was the only kid in school who found it deafeningly loud) fluorescent lights I couldn't. Printing my lessons on colored paper helped out a little. Now, though not nearly as maddeningly loud as fluorescent lights, I find similar distracting "neural noise" from even the best screens. I need books, not screens, and natural light. The more things go on screens instead of paper, the harder it is for me. By law, though, my school must accommodate "special needs," so even when everyone else gets the digital textbooks, I get the old-fashioned, backpack-ripping hard copy.

[cyrilus31]

Considering the prices of textbooks these days, and remembering how many of my textbooks I kept, I would have preferred digital.

On the other hand, I do love the feel of books and love being able to read without electricity.

I did not remember if you live in Colombia or Venezuela. Now I understand more clearly. Hope you're safe wherever you are and have enough kerosene for the days to come.