Sorry if I come of a bit rantish here...
There is the simple fact that the eye does not relax when concentrating on something that is so up close. I don't think it's controversial to claim that most people who sit in front of a screen at some time have felt a bit weary.
I'm not talking about permanent eye damage at all here, since headache and red, bleary eyes can be bad enough.
Of course, the same can be true when reading a dead tree book for longer periods of time. It's just that I believe that nowadays the average user is sitting longer in front of a screen than he/she did reading small print on paper before the home computer took off. Fewer breaks etc.
Also, regardless of what some research might or might not say, lowering the brightness absolutely helps *me* and *my* eyes if I have to sit for long periods of time in front a screen. It's not pleasant to look directly into bright light (to use an extreme case: I don't think any optician would say that looking directly into the sun is a good idea), why should a screen that's often mostly white be any different?
For example, when I write in latex I use a text editor with a negative color theme to ensure that the largest area of the screen isn't also the brightest. Not even the body text is white (was too much contrast) but a slightly duller color that still creates good contrast to the darker background. For *my* eyes it makes a huge difference.
Learning to me is about absorbing information. One READS information and processes it. This is a tough thing to do since it requires a lot of brain activity, which is why learning is always hard. Thats the point! However, once you have learned something it's satisfying and it stays with you. With this method its more like watching a documentary or television! It's not really learning at all. Its more like watching videos with some small captions. [...]
That's a bit obnoxious. Some concepts are more easily *understood* via imagery, some are easier to *convey* via text. There is no absolute truth when it comes to *how* to teach and learn in the best possible way.
Also, people are very, very different when it comes to what method helps them learn efficiently. The written word, as in 'printed text', simply happens to be the most universally understood concept with the least amount of friction in order to produce learning material that can easily be reproduced and at the same time be understood by as many as possible. I.e. it makes passing on information relatively painless.
Whether the children will actually learn what they take in will be up to the school (in this case) to ensure. This has always been problematic. Here in Sweden the grades went literally haywire, since the current grading system at first wasn't explained in enough detail, together with too few grading levels. Schools more or less competed over grades, in that students achieving similar results recieved vastly different grades depending on which school they went to.
There is no critical thinking involved since it is a passive experience. Its almost like a person cannot read a book anymore without some sort of stimulation. To me it will only worsen a kids lack of concentration and make them more unable to sit and read a proper book with focus.
The critical thinking point is one I whole-heartedly agree with. Only not the way you describe it. The method of input (into one's brain) has nothing to do with critical thinking. I could give you example upon example of students who did nothing but to memorize a text word for word and could recite it all from memory. The result was good grades but little grasp of what they had actually read.
Critical thinking instead, is what is often lacking in the information age in general. The classic example of using Wikipedia as a scientific source is but one example, together with our more and more personalized internet bubble where word of mouth becomes fact in a never ending flow of information.
Also it seems much less passive than a text-only book so I don't understand what you're getting at.
Next, I'm not sure what constitutes a 'proper book' in your opinion. If text only, I covered that above; we simply haven't had the means until now to pick different media for different purposes in a form factor that is similar enough to a book that also has visuals that are good enough, e.g. a tablet computer.
It comes off a bit as the movie fear mongering when cinema became popularized (i.e. "They'll watch movies over reading books!"). And still people seem to read text-only literature more than ever nowadays. In fact, technology has helped in this area.
If this is only about learning, you should prioritize what actually help students to learn, rather than sniffing at the idea of new media in the learning sector. If it were the case - and it might be, I honestly don't know - that children are worse readers and writers nowadays then it might of course be a good idea to include more of that in school as losing those abilities can have very dire consequences later in life.
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There have been a lot of opinions in the last few days on Apple's new text book incentive. Anything from 'poor districts might be left out due to the "entrance fee"', to this kind of thread and everything in between (not to mention the aggrevation over iBook Author and the 30% publish fee an MS rep completely failed to understand and went on mocking Apple by comparing a free publishing tool with Word, a writing tool - also, what publisher doesn't take a publishing fee?).
What I don't get is (and this is partly an honest question, partly a rhetoric dito): would we really have been better off if Apple tried nothing - regardless of the business part of it all?
Personally I've had it with the weighty backpack (two or three dictionaries, several text books and often I needed the computer for some project as well) and technology helped immensely, especially shifting from paper dictionaries to dedicated electronic ones.
Which brings up the point of searching for key words in digital texts. My old supervisor usually had his dead tree books at hand but used Google Books to find the exact page to find what he was looking for. This is how I work as well. For example there is this tome called 'A reference grammar of Japanese' that noone has bothered to typeset anew (reprinted as-is, basically). Reading and finding anything in there can be a daunting task. 1200 leaf thin pages in horrible print, 1.5 kg (3.4 pounds) - hardcover. Having it in a digital version, much less so and yet so much more in every other way.
So since the reading experience on a tablet can be at least sufficient, in return we can process the text as we please, which is absolutely fantastic.
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I should add that I'm an absolute typography nut. I love well-printed material and take pleasure in reading a book that is thoughtfully typeset and well designed. I am also a huge music lover who went from vinyl, to CD, to digital purchases, so I understand the 'de-personalization' (including an empty shelf) that comes with only having a book in digital form. Yet I can only embrace the concept of the digital personal library, including text books.
We still need many more publishers for me to be interested for real (actually, I have to confess I hadn't heard of any of the publisher currently on board - I want/need Oxford, Cambridge, Blackwell etc) but I'd say Apple's current vision is where we are, at least in some manner, heading.
For the better.
