In The Age Of Screen Time, Is Paper Dead?..... Long term debate
Paper ... or glass?
Advances
in laptops and technology are pushing screens into schools like never before.
So what does this drive toward digital classrooms mean for that oldest and
simplest of touch screens: a plain old sheet of paper?
It
may seem a wasteful and obsolete technology, ready to follow the slate
chalkboard and the ditto machine into the Smithsonian, or a flat, white invitation
to creativity, just waiting for some learning magic to happen.
And
when it comes to learning and retention, is there any difference between
reading and writing on an electronic "tablet" or a paper one?
Not
surprisingly, the good folks over at the Paper and Packaging Board aren't ready
to give up on paper just yet. They've sent me their
new report about it, called "Paper and Productive Learning." It's
printed on glossy paper and it arrived on my non-digital desktop via non-email,
with a stamp and everything.
"Read
on," it encourages, "to discover the many ways paper remains
essential for productive learning in today's technology-fueled culture."
Here
are just a few of the fun facts and findings:
- 96 percent of parents think that paper is "an essential part of children being able to achieve their educational goals."
- Among junior high and high school students, 70 percent prepare for tests by taking handwritten class notes, and 60 percent make and use flashcards.
- 50 percent of seventh- and eighth-graders agree they "learn information best if they write it down by hand."
- College students like paper, too: 81 percent, for example, say they always or often use paper tools to prepare for exams.
So
there you go — an (admittedly promotional) plug for good old paper. It's also a
reminder of how pervasive paper remains in schools today, and it's not just the
paper industry saying it.
The
strongest argument for paper over digital seems to be in the area of taking
notes. Several studies suggest that college students should write lecture notes
by hand — on paper — rather than typing them on their laptops, according to this
NPR piece from 2016. For one thing, "laptops and tablets have a
tendency to be distracting — it's so easy to click over to Facebook in that
dull lecture."
But
the researchers found there was a larger issue at play.
"When
people type their notes, they have this tendency to try to take verbatim notes
and write down as much of the lecture as they can," researcher Pam A.
Mueller of Princeton University told NPR's Rachel Martin. "The students
who were taking longhand notes in our studies were forced to be more selective
— because you can't write as fast as you can type. And that extra processing of
the material that they were doing benefited them."
Of
course, technology and screens have great potential to improve learning in
areas like math or special education. And pioneers like Sal Khan have
demonstrated how computers can reach
millions of students in ways print never could.
Smartphones,
text
messages and other technologies are changing
schools and learning in profound ways: in areas like student engagement and
financial aid and parental
involvement.
And
yet, as my colleague Anya Kamenetz notes, "the digital classroom has its
own problems." Like cost. You have to buy expensive equipment and maintain
it, and there's training on software and devices. And the constant updates.
"Paper
is reliable," says Kamenetz. "And everyone knows how it works."
What
about reading?
In
terms of memory, or retention or how we process information, is there any
difference between reading on paper and reading on a screen?
It's
a question researchers still haven't — definitively — answered.
Our
friends over at the Hechinger Report weighed in recently with this piece: A Textbook
Dilemma: Digital or Paper, which notes that there's far less certainty —
and large-scale research — on this question than you'd expect.
The
report I got in the mail touches on this, too, with an article by Naomi S.
Baron, a professor of linguistics at American University in Washington, D.C.
Baron
cites her own research showing that college students say they concentrate
better when reading in print. But then she adds this: " ... we probably
remember more of what we read in print. I say 'probably' because researchers
are still figuring out" how to test this memory question.
Beyond
all that, though, looms the fear that author Philip Yancey explored
recently in The
Washington Post. The fear that with so many sources of information
out there, books and long-form reading may be getting pushed aside: "The
Internet and social media have trained my brain," Yancey writes, "to
read a paragraph or two, and then start looking around."
I
feel this, too. I used to carry a book with me just about all the time. Now,
I'm reading mostly on my iPhone.
Regards
Pralhad Jadhav
Senior Manager @ Knowledge
Repository
Khaitan & Co
Upcoming Conference | National Conference
on Transforming Libraries into Knowledge Resource Centres 11th – 12th January
2018, SNDT Mumbai For further details contact Prof Jyoti Bhabal (jyotibhabal@gmail.com
)
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