Last time a checked, a textbook never ran out of battery, or crashed, or became disabled due to malware or a virus... or failed to be usable because water got spilled on it, or couldn't connect to the internet, or ran out of hard disk space... and textbooks never distracted kids with video games, instant messaging and webcams.
For 500 years now books have worked pretty well. Not sure why we suddenly think that computers can solve the woes of countries like Libya. They certainly can't solve the woes of our own country. In the US, we've had "home computers" now for about oh, 20 years - and last time I checked, schoolkids here in the US aren't doing as well as kids in countries that typically have never had computers (China, Singapore, etc).
If you want kids in the US to do better in school, I'd say to remove computers entirely. Replace them with typewriters. They can keep their calcuators, although they still need to memorize their "times tables".
ACtually books can become unusable when water is spilled on the book (happened couple fo times to me). Nobody reads the books because well who likes reading a BOOK!!!! All kids will read something on a computer though because it is cool.
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Michael C:
Last time a checked, a textbook never ran out of battery, or crashed, or became disabled due to malware or a virus... or failed to be usable because water got spilled on it, or couldn't connect to the internet, or ran out of hard disk space... and textbooks never distracted kids with video games, instant messaging and webcams.
For 500 years now books have worked pretty well. Not sure why we suddenly think that computers can solve the woes of countries like Libya. They certainly can't solve the woes of our own country. In the US, we've had "home computers" now for about oh, 20 years - and last time I checked, schoolkids here in the US aren't doing as well as kids in countries that typically have never had computers (China, Singapore, etc).
If you want kids in the US to do better in school, I'd say to remove computers entirely. Replace them with typewriters. They can keep their calcuators, although they still need to memorize their "times tables".
-early
-early
ACtually books can become unusable when water is spilled on the book (happened couple fo times to me). Nobody reads the books because well who likes reading a BOOK!!!! All kids will read something on a computer though because it is cool.