Online textbooks are dreadful! They are distracting, bottomless, and render focused learning nearly impossible. Over the years we’ve opted to buy physical textbooks for all of our children’s courses, although they are getting much harder (and more expensive) to find. Sophie Winkleman and David James for The Spectator:

“Textbooks, damned by tech zealots as ‘analogue’, are slandered as boring compared with online resources, which offer video clips, audio, 3D modelling and other seductive 21st-century ‘essentials’. We would beg to differ. For ‘boring’, substitute calming, reputable and blessedly undistracting.”

Textbooks are deliberately condemned by many in the ed tech industry as ‘inert’, ‘primitive’, and ‘outdated’, but the reality is very different. Leaving aside that they are less prone to crashing or running out of battery, they are far easier to navigate than multiple apps, enable longer and calmer periods of focus, help develop essential skills (such as notetaking) and, because pupils read from a physical page, are far more conducive to delivering knowledge that sticks.

…John Jerrim, a UCL-based educational researcher, conducted an experiment where 3,000 pupils took PISA tests in maths, science and reading. Over three months, half the group did all their work on paper and half on a computer. At the end, the paper-based group scored 20 points higher than the one working on screens – the equivalent of half a year’s extra schooling.