Hacker News

points by 0c3ca83 5 days ago | 0 comments

For responsibile learning, focus on pencil, paper, and books.

I love old school research using books, however the advantages of connected information cannot be understated.

We could do much better with access to online libraries (which don't exist, apart from the very limited sample from these books accessible using Wikipedia).

Current (blogs and articles and forums) online resources provide information at a rate book search just can't provide.

[–] mmooss 4 days ago

> online libraries (which don't exist, apart from the very limited sample from these books accessible using Wikipedia).

There are many, but all short of the potential for knowledge and learning:

Internet Archive Lending Library, Hathi Trust, Libby / Overdrive, U. of Pennsylvania's Online Books Page:

https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/

There are also the shadow libraries, of course.

[–] 0c3ca83 4 days ago

Yes. If you're optimizing for fast answers over learning, it's a good tool.

[–] Shorel 4 days ago

Neither.

I optimize for finding the answer to a given question, without knowing beforehand if it will be found online or in an research article or in a book.

And I mean finding the right answer, before you mention "learning" like it is something that can't be done using computers.

[–] 0c3ca83 4 days ago

Learning can certainly be done using computers. But also not as effectively as stepping away from the answer machine to puzzle it out yourself.

[–] Shorel 4 days ago

You are not the only person familiar with Feynman's strategy to approach a new topic.

[–] 0c3ca83 4 days ago

This isn't coming from Feynman. There's decades of research into how education works.

[–] Shorel 3 days ago

Whatever. It's about the method, not about who used it first.

[–] dimator 4 days ago

Except finding the answer to a question has never been what schooling is about. Otherwise we would hand kids a calculator at age 5 and completely skip teaching arithmetic.

[–] Shorel 3 days ago

By the answers I'm getting here, it seems education is all about how to strawman any argument :D

[–] reaperducer 5 days ago

We put men on the moon with pencil and paper.

Trillions and trillions of dollars of technology later, and the best we can do now is fly by and wave.

[–] mym1990 5 days ago

Jesus, it has absolutely nothing to do with not having the technological capacity to go back and land on the moon, and everything to do with political and social will. We have rockets doing gymnastics in the sky and landing doing back-flips, you really think we've regressed because "we're not doing pen and paper"?

[–] themanualstates 4 days ago

Don’t you think it irresponsible to delete (modern) media literacy education?

[–] mym1990 5 days ago

Very narrow minded approach, why not use the tools available? Experimentation is one of the best ways to learn, breaking stuff is a great way to learn. Doesn’t mean that people won’t fall into some traps along the way, but that’s kind of the case with anything.

This is along the lines of “for responsible parenting, never let your kids out of sight”.

[–] ceejayoz 5 days ago

> Experimentation is one of the best ways to learn, breaking stuff is a great way to learn.

Breaking stuff sometimes is a way to learn "don't break that".

Broken children can be tough to fix.

[–] mym1990 5 days ago

What are we even talking about here? It seems like we are totally different discussions.

[–] ceejayoz 5 days ago

You said "why not use the tools available?"

The answer is "sometimes the new fancy tools are bad, and it can take decades to confirm that".

[–] mym1990 5 days ago

Yes, thank you for extrapolating my comment into a massive over generalization. I guess I'll leave you to your books and pencils while I go actually explore the massive world around me to see what works and what doesn't.

[–] ceejayoz 4 days ago

Schoolkids aren't Drosophila, with ~10 day reproductive cycles and disposable at the end of the experiment. Experiments take years/decades, have loads of confounding variables, and you can wreck a generation or two if you go too far down the wrong route too quickly.

AI in schools may be useful! It may be horribly bad. It'll be a while before we know.

[–] 0c3ca83 5 days ago

Yes, doing things by hand is another thing to prioritize.

A good deal of research shows that most learning happens when you recognize and back off from an incorrect solution on your own, without outside guidance. So, the key to a good learning environment is setting up scenarios where the backround information is present, and answers aren't out of reach, but there's a bit of struggle to find them.

This is also how you learn to learn, and develop grit. Grit is one of the best predictors of success.

Technology that gives answers or guides heavily is harmful to the learning process.

[–] mym1990 5 days ago

Totally agree! I think the risk within the context of the task is important, if you can work within an environment where you can make mistakes but not cause catastrophic consequences, its a good environment. I think its also great to get to a solution and realize it wasn't the right way to do something, and then iterate, there is not always a need to back off, although intuition over time will be great to notify someone that maybe they are on the wrong track.

[–] watwut 5 days ago

Allowing teachers to experiment somewhat more would be great. It would be motivating for teachers and good for students in the long run.

Centrally forcing schools to do what is good for corporation is not experimentation.

[–] 0c3ca83 4 days ago

Are you volunteering your kids for the test group, accepting that if the experiment fails, you can't undo it?

[–] watwut 4 days ago

I am ok with giving my kids teachers more autonomy, yes. I dont think micromanaging them leads to good results.

[–] 0c3ca83 4 days ago

I'm not sure that avoiding malpractice is micromanaging. I'm also pro doctors washing their hands.

[–] walt_grata 5 days ago

Its also an approach backed up by research and studdies. I still cannot believe there are people in education that can maintain that humans under 25 arent done neurologically developing ans have issues managing distractions and that tech in the classroom is a good idea (outside of classes deliberately teaching technology)