In a Digital Age, Students Still Cling to Paper Textbooks
20th October 2010
Apparently it doesn’t help.
“The screen won’t go blank,” said Faton Begolli, a sophomore from Boston. “There can’t be a virus. It wouldn’t be the same without books. They’ve defined ‘academia’ for a thousand years.”
Actually, we’ve only had textbooks for less than half that. The original purpose of a college lecture was so that students could make (from dictation) their own copies of the materials that the teacher was using. (Easily done with Peter Lombard’s Sententiae; differential calculus, not so much.)
So much for the collegiate learning experience.
October 20th, 2010 at 11:36
PChem (physical chemistry) is probably the most difficult undergrad chemistry subject. One of my classmates took great pleasure in sitting by the fireplace, drinking some wine, and tossing his PChem book into the fire one page at a time.
You just can’t do that with a Kindle.