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Comment by red_admiral | Hacker News Reader

I support this, up to the point where a second-grader has to carry four textbooks and four exercise books around on their walk to school; from the rucksack weight to body weight ratio they might as well be training for the marines.

Ipads are not the solution - that gets you back to screen/computer mode in the classroom.

e-readers/ e-paper tablets might be worth a try. (Just please don't make every child have a mandatory amazon account to link with their school kindle.) It would be interesting to know whether the "books+hand notes > screens + typing" comprehension studies have something to say about e-paper (I don't think this has been done yet).

My own experience, even to this day, is that it's easier for me to learn a new language or technology from a book compared to on a screen, even if the digital version lets me work on actual code: if I can, I first read the book and take notes, then I do the online version.

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> I support this, up to the point where a second-grader has to carry four textbooks and four exercise books around on their walk to school; from the rucksack weight to body weight ratio they might as well be training for the marines.

I went to school a million years ago, but IIRC we kept our textbooks in the classroom until middle school (7th grade for me). Maybe one textbook might go home with math homework or an English project. For my kid, they would usually just send worksheets home; which is ok, but if you wanted to reference not on the sheet, too bad. Post-covid, there's a lot more dependence on google classroom with all that comes with it (but maybe that's also how the upper grades were working anyway)

E-readers with textbooks loaded could work, but hopefully the textbooks are tuned for the medium.

Anyway, isn't a heavy backpack a secret fitness program???

Trapper-Keeper!

Anecdotal, but I do not think e-ink displays are as good for reading or benefiting from handwriting as an actual purely physical medium. They just don't have the affordances of durably occupying physical space. I say this as someone who has done quite a bit of review of the literature and has a kindle and a Supernote.

Yeah, I think eink displays are the happy medium for tech for kids. And even then, you should limit the capabilities to be effectively the same as working with paper.

Like, maybe download wikipedia onto the device but don't give internet access. Let the device sync at school with required books and assignments.

Effectively, you could give kids a pocket library but that's the extent of what they should have.

Or get everyone a nice camping backpack. Still less than the iPad and duel purpose!

Ereaders (Kindle scribe specifically) has been a huge discovery! I cannot make any claims, but my daughter draws on it, writes on it, does homeworks on it and reads so many books on it (she is 7). She liked it as soon as she saw it. I decided to gave her my Scribe,which I deeply miss.

It's essentially a notebook and a book reader.

You can take notes directly on the book if you use pdf (epubs can only have notes on the side).

I think that's the tech I want to see in school, no tablets please.

The books in Swedish primary school are tiny, no worries about that.

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