en-Students becoming digital

"Without Wi-Fi nothing works anymore. Who needs books then? A seemingly insignificant medium that has lost much of its importance. Too bad, the smell of a new bound copy from the school library, the feeling of flipping through all the pages, the little paper cuts you get. They have become picture book stories or rather e-book anecdotes."
(Angela B. 2024)

What I think about this and what these developments mean for many people is what I want to share in this entry of my tutoring series. I hear it all too often from my students, who are navigating the school system diligently: "We don't have textbooks anymore, only download options."

How should a tutor respond to that? Since I work in e-learning, such practices are not unfamiliar to me. At first glance, it doesn't seem like a problem. The issue arises when it comes to actual learning. As a tutor, I strongly discourage purely digital learning. Of course, it has advantages, but especially when learning vocabulary and verb conjugations, it is crucial to write things down by hand.

With digital learning, students unlearn proper study habits. The flood of information, suggestions and copy-paste functionality disrupts the intuitive and natural learning process. Many people learn through repetition. Especially in language learning, it is important to repeat content and record learning progress in writing.

The introduction of e-material and the disappearance of physical books is, in my view, highly problematic. Flipping back and forth between chapters, looking things up, highlighting and taking notes, these are essential parts of proper learning. PDFs and digital books are inconvenient because they do not clearly define learning units. Students should continue to learn with books. This subconsciously shapes their learning habits. Writing something down is different from typing or copying and pasting. 

The use of AI in schools is a controversial topic. AI can facilitate future work, but it should be used as a supplementary tool to make tasks more efficient. Students lose the ability to work independently and rely on chatbots. The engagement with AI should only begin in higher grades, once students have learned to work independently and understand how to use books. Only then they will use AI effectively and critically. Otherwise, we risk students relying only on AI assistants instead of building knowledge themselves.

Since the pandemic, many people have become trapped in a whirlpool of digital tools, where dozens of AI providers are on the market. These tools entered our lives rapidly and without preparation. Some use them and receive recognition for work that is not even their own. The introduction of AI should have been limited, for example only for research purposes. Instead, it was made widely available and partially misused.

Values have changed. Anyone can call themselves a copywriter or designer. In a society where the only thing that counts is who can input the best commands into the bot, there is little room left for standards. When a bot can perform these tasks, anyone can do it.

This is where I see the problem. We must remain attentive to where this development is headed.