Swedish schools are ditching tablets

A recent news report says that Swedish schools are ditching tablets and back to books.

"Sweden’s Minister of Schools, Lotta Edholm, said children’s ability to read has deteriorated and their writing skills have weakened, and there are many reasons, the most important of which is their increased reliance on tablets and spending a lot of time in front of screens."

When I read this, I was immediately remminded of my review of Mindstorms.

In Mindstorms, Seymour Papert says that technology is often used to reinforce traditional way of schooling. The book makes the case that this is the wrong way to go about using technology in education, and then proposes an alternative approach. (Read my review to know more about this).

When you are using a tablet as a replacement for a physical textbook, that is the ultimate use of technology as a reinforcement of traditional schooling. Leaving aside financial reasons that a PDF is easier to distribute, what value is the tablet adding over the book?