Episode 34: iPad or Paper?

Andy Psarianos

Hi, I'm Andy Psarianos.

Emily Guille-Marrett

Hello. I'm Emily Guille-Marrett.

Adam Gifford

Hi, I'm Adam Gifford.

Introduction

This is the School of School podcast. Welcome to the school of school podcast.

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Adam Gifford

Welcome back to another episode. We've got the question that's on everyone's lips at the moment. iPad or paper. It's as simple as that. It's 21st century. Paper's had its day. Thousands of years old. Why don't we just all progress, right? Why don't we just go straight to tablets and draw on tablets and say, paper, it's been a pleasure. Andy, what are your thoughts?

Andy Psarianos

Sure let's try it. See what happens to those kids.

Adam Gifford

Thanks Andy and moving swiftly on to Emily. No that's great stuff. Short and sweet to the point.

Andy Psarianos

Paper doesn't need batteries. It's okay if you drop it in the bath. There's a lot of advantages to paper still, and there's a tactile experience there. And I think when you're learning to write, trying to teach kids how to write on something where you have to wrestle with what's it called paralyze, is it parallax or whatever. I write on iPads all the time, but the weird thing about writing on iPads is that you're writing on the glass surface that's above what you're actually writing on. So there's a piece of glass between you and what you're actually scribbling on. And it never feels right. It never really feels like it's actually your writing on the thing. There's a thing, brain can adjust.

Just like you put some wonky glasses on someone and their brain will adjust to it. But there's a compensation going on. Do you ever hear about that experiment they did? By the way, this is totally off topic, but it's cool. There's a great book. It's called the Eye and the Brain. I don't remember who the author is, but it was a great book. I love this. One of my favorite books of all time. It's really, really fascinating. And the crazy time when they could do stupid experiments on people and it was all okay. They crafted these glasses that shift everything upside down. You would look at stuff and the whole world was upside down. And people wore these for a period of time as an experiment. It took a couple of days and then everything came right side up. Their brain just totally adjusted to it in a couple of days, which is an experiment. This is like the eye and brain. The eye and brain relationship is way more sophisticated and complex than we believe. And then when they took the glasses off, everything was upside down.

Emily Guille-Marrett

Is this for real?

Andy Psarianos

Yeah, this is for real. They did this in the sixties or seventies. And then it was at a university. It's in the Eye and Brain. That's the name of the book, look it up. Richard Gregory was the author. So there you go. Crazy stuff. Can your brain adjust to writing on something that you're not actually writing on? I think it can. Your brain's a pretty powerful thing. Is that okay? I don't know. I think paper is better, but there are a lot of advantages to using a tablet. That's what I think.

Emily Guille-Marrett

Shall I give you an advantage to something? I bet you've not realized Andy. In the lockdown, and this blew my mind when I was struggling with the kids to do their various worksheets that might have been sent from the school. Because obviously we were doing the blended learning and stuff had to be sent and we were printing it out and all that stuff. Wow. You'd think that it was totally different. But when I put those sheets on my work iPad that has a pen, they were doing no different than if they were just writing with a pen on a piece of paper. But they never made a fuss about doing it because it was novel. So there was something really hilarious about. The kids were really excited to do these. There was no difference and the activity sheet was exactly the same, but they just loved the thing that they had this novel.

So there's a little top tip. The thing that I found weird about that was, I said to my husband, "They're just doing the same thing. They're just writing." And we've just translated what we've always done on paper for hundreds of years. And now they're interested because it's on a different format. But I was like, "I don't know." It's just there was no difference. I guess the difference and when it gets exciting is the fact that you're not having to faff around with scanning or sending off and printing and then you can actually just save it and email it off. And that's the world where you've got the paper, but then how you can send it off and do things with it becomes really helpful. But that made me laugh in lockdown that the kids were... They would do their work quite happily if they had their iPad and pen.

Adam Gifford

Well, do you guys ever find success ? So I use an iPad a lot and I use it daily. And I can spend quite a bit of time on it. So what I do find myself though is whenever I do... So currently you can't see this. It's a podcast but I've got a wee notebook. I've got notebooks all over the place and I tend to use pencil, but I write them all the time or doodle. It helps me listen those sorts of things. And I always choose to do that on the paper. But have you ever had that situation where you've just been working on your iPad or something and you go to enlarge a piece of paper by spreading your fingers apart? Or you've done that with a novel or something? Because I realize my eyes are getting a bit ropey and I go, oh! And it doesn't work.

So that functionality, if we could have paper with that functionality, I'd be all over it. I know it's called a magnifying glass or get stronger glasses. So there's certain little things that I think you could find a perfect hybrid. Not quite sure how that would work, but that would really do it for me. So if anyone's out there listening and they wanted to test drive that, honestly, I'm your person because I use both extensively. I'll tell you the other thing that I found just recently. I've had to send a couple of hard copy letters and you realize that's quite a task that you get quite used to the efficiency of sending things away digitally. And so signing forms of something that... Again, I've got an iPad. I can do that very simply. It's a turnaround time in a matter of seconds. And when I sat down to actually send a hard copy form away, again it felt quite novel. It felt quite novel. But I go back to Andy's point. I think there's something about that tactile relationship with paper.

Andy Psarianos

I got a paper form here sitting on my desk. The bank sent me. And it's been sitting on my desk for over a week and I'm just dreading having to fill it out to be honest. Because I have to go and read and there's all these little boxes I have to write in and stuff. And it just seems like such an archaic tedious thing. But as a whole this is really fascinating what you're saying there, Adam. Totally resonates with me.

Adam Gifford

I'll tell you what freaks me out about paper forms too. And don't do this Andy, which immediately plants the seed for Andy to do this. Which is a shame and I apologize in advance.

Andy Psarianos

I will do it now.

Adam Gifford

Well totally I couldn't help it. And I did make this mistake. Usually its six boxes. The date, the month and the year and usually it's two options. It's either your birth date or the date today. And I had something from the bank. Well I think it was a bank. Doesn't matter. But it was one of those ones that you couldn't make a mistake on. And so I'm going through them all. I'm thinking, make sure it's either your birth date or the date. I can't remember what it was, but let's just say for argument's sake, it was the date. And I wrote down 1974. So don't do that, Andy. With that form just there-

Andy Psarianos

Are you that old Adam?

Adam Gifford

74! It's a classy vintage actually, Andy. Thanks for that. So it's those things as well. You cannot make a mistake. The pressure's on, the heat's on when you get a piece of paper.

Emily Guille-Marrett

So this is a therapy session for me because very recently we had to do an emergency passport for my son. It's one of the few things. So there's now the new digital passport system. But if you've got a kid who's under a certain age, say under 12, you have to do it by hand in black ink, because it's very specific. It has to be black and it has to sit inside the lines and it's pages and pages long. And one of my friends said, "Oh, you need to get at least four of these from the post office." I was like, "What are you talking about?" So I just went home with one. First mistake. So then this time I'm going to sketch it out in pencil first, fill it in pencil. And then I'm going to get the black ink and then I'm going to sign it.

Then you have to get the photo signed by somebody else who's a witness and they have to sign within the box. And then they made a mistake. So we had to do the whole form. I ran, write it again. And I thought, please digitize this system. Please god digitize this system. It went on and on. And I said to my husband, "My God, we just don't do that anymore." We're not used to doing that. There was no delete or overwrite or anything. It was hell. So anyway we got there, but I can't wait for everything to be digitized for things like that. That would be really helpful.

Adam Gifford

It's true. It sounds like paper equals pressure.

Emily Guille-Marrett

Not when you are doodling. When you are doodling, the paper is the best thing for ideas for me. I hear that you love the iPad, Andy. But for me, for ideas, it's big pieces of paper that makes me happy for ideas.

Andy Psarianos

I'm the master scribbler. I scribble on everything and everywhere you look, I got little bits of paper everywhere. And the interesting thing is that I don't read much of the stuff that I write. It's just the process of writing for me is helping me to recognize that something's important and I need to remember it. Have you seen my office for God's sake? It is just covered with whiteboards of scribbles. None of which makes sense to anybody, but me. If you sent a spy from a competing company into my office to figure out what's going on and they go, "We've got his whiteboard." It's so cryptic. It would make no sense to them whatsoever.

Emily Guille-Marrett

I love it. But the process makes sense to me, Andy. In our company, we've got project managers. They'd be freaking out thinking, it's got to be put somewhere. But it's part of the thinking. But it's part of the process that you get to before you put it in the digital.

Andy Psarianos

Yeah. And for me, what I love is the expanse of paper. I love the fact that I can just pull out another sheet and it's really easy and I can cover my whole wall with stuff if I want to. And I do. And I regularly do that and I print stuff out. When making books, I love... There's nothing more exciting for me than to print the pages out. And stick them across the wall, the whole pagination, the entire book. So I can see the whole book in one go and look at it and I love it. I just get so excited. And the iPad is way too restrictive for that, right? It's like going scuba diving. It's really fascinating and fun, but you've got this thing on your head that limits what you can see.

There could be a whale swimming right next to you. And this actually happened to me. So scuba diving in Hawaii, when we go up and the guy says, "Did you see the humpback whale?" I'm like, "What are you talking about?" And he says, "A humpback whale swam right next to all of you." Right there I saw it. The guy's on the boat, captain's on the boat, saw this fricking huge whale, lots of humpback whales in Hawaii. Swam right next to us no more than 20 feet away from us. None of us, 20 people in the water, not one person saw it. But because you had these things in your head, which restrict your vision. It's a little tunnel that you're looking in the mask. So you have no periphery. And the iPad's a little bit like that. Right?

Adam Gifford

I think so. One of the best, and it was just a pure chance, one of the better teaching tools that I came across was a... I was a brand new teacher working in a school that was broke and I really wanted some flip charts, but there just wasn't the money for it. So I went to the local painting and decorating place and just asked for the ends of wallpaper. And then you just have this big, long wallpaper and you've got these ideas going. And so the whole everything that you record on that day could be three, four meters long. And that was awesome because you could display it. Like you're saying, you're totally restricted. You can't see Andy's office listeners, but it does go onto windows.

So he does have a bit of scope to start going onto his windows if he feels the need. But I think there is something about that, that you don't know. It's not a finite thing because the ideas and what you start to write down aren't finite. They'll keep on going. And I guess that's the limitation that digital devices particularly suffer from. You can only view what your screen size lets you, and that's it. Paper gives you that scope of... Scrolls have been used for thousands of years. It's probably a good reason further.

Andy Psarianos

I think in the classroom you can be tactful. I think what Emily was saying was quite important. It's like, "Okay, I'm going to introduce an iPad because they're drifting now and getting a bit bored with this. Maybe let's get them to do it on an iPad." And then all of a sudden it's interesting and exciting. And then to take the iPad away and give them a sheet of paper. And keep it novel, moving it around. There's a time and place for just about any technology in the classroom. And you need to use everything that you can get your hands on. But never ever say we're not using paper anymore because that's just ridiculously stupid. Maybe it's not ridiculously stupid. Sorry if that's what you're doing in your classroom. I apologize. That's a harsh statement.

Adam Gifford

It must be close. There must be something in it.

Andy Psarianos

The appropriateness police is going to come after us. These last couple episodes-

Adam Gifford

I don't know. Anyway, I won't go down that too far, but no.

Emily Guille-Marrett

Well, the environmentalists. We all have to think about, and I do have to say to the kids, don't waste the paper. We have to think about things. It really drives me mad if they go and do a tiny little drawing on a massive piece of paper. I've got this from my mom. You can tell she was a teacher. She then cuts the bit out so that the rest of the paper can be used. It's important that we don't waste the paper. But Chris Riddell, the children's illustrator, he blew my mind because he uses books to draw, obviously notebook, sketch books are drawing, but he'll go into secondhand bookshops, and buy a regular book with text and he'll sketch and cover it. He'll sketch it. And he'll be utilizing all these things and drawing on anything and everything. And I love that.

Andy Psarianos

All right. Thanks everyone.

Closing

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