EdCircuit Staff 
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In this digital age, when school districts are working very hard on their digital transitions, the question of digital versus printed learning materials might seem moot. After all, in the time of the Coronavirus pandemic and a shift to virtual learning, haven’t education leaders already assumed that instructional materials will be in a digital format? Like the Dodo bird and disco music, haven’t instructional materials milled from dead trees gone extinct?
Students Need a Variety of Materials
Not so fast, say curriculum and instructional experts from Mississippi’s Pascagoula-Gautier School District. According to Belinda Dammen, Assistant Superintendent of Elementary Education, “Kids need a variety of materials. They need to be exposed to lots of things because that’s what they’re going to see in the real world. They need opportunities ─ especially our younger kids ─ to really touch materials. They need to be able to see pictures and, of course, if you’re talking Kindergarten and first grade or even pre-K, they need to see that word on a page. Computers are great, but that should come later.”
“It’s just so important for them to have it in their hands,” Dammen adds. “Our brains work differently when we are looking at a computer compared to when we can touch something and interact with it. As children get older, they may be more comfortable with computers and prefer it that way, but I think you have to start with printed materials.”
Breaking The Text Down on Paper
Christina Tuck, a Curriculum Specialist in the district, agrees: “I think the struggling student needs paper even more. We teach them to ‘break the text down’ by underlining keywords or phrases, jot notes off in the margins, or do little drawings. I know you can do that with a computer, but it’s just something different when you have it right in front of you using materials you have become accustomed to using since preschool. Sometimes learning how to work the computer to make notes, highlight, or even save work can add frustration to the lesson.”
Print materials also have benefits for English Learners (ELs), explains Tuck: “If a student has an EL specialist assisting, the EL specialist can look at the work right away and see the annotations that have been made to get an idea of how well the student is understanding the text and lesson, and the work is all safely stored in the book. If you don’t finish that day, you can return to it and work on it later. There is the ability to look back at the previous lesson and reflect on how you got through that text. What were my questions? What did I underline?”
Digital Formats
Both students and educators have demonstrated a preference for keeping print materials a part of learning. Curriculum Specialist Marla Dunn explains, “In one of our grades, we have an all-digital format ─ this is in special studies. And everything is online. Everybody thought it would be great. I cannot tell you how many teachers print everything out so that kids can take it and highlight it and take notes on it. And that’s fourth grade, so they thought all-digital would be great. They get on a Chromebook and just do it. Everything is there, but they find themselves printing the stuff for the kids to make study guides and things like that.”
Dunn went on to explain that it’s not about “digital versus print,” or one being “better” than the other, but rather that certain students respond best to one or the other medium, so as a district, it’s important to have both options available. Being able to integrate digital and print together makes it even more powerful. One example of this is the district’s use of both Ready and i-Ready simultaneously. These programs, by learning company Curriculum Associates, are like two sides of the curriculum coin.
Parent Packets
“When we started the new school year,” said Dammen, “we predominantly used print materials for K-4 or even K-6. We had a ton of print materials. We gave them the option for digital if they had access to it, but we relied on print materials and parents picking up packets, or we delivered packets to homes. You have different styles of learning. Especially for little ones, they’re much more tactile learners. They need to see it. You need to be able to feel it. You need to be real with them because they just don’t think very abstractly at that age. Your brain just works differently when seeing the stuff move on a screen than words on a page. We have digital Math, and I know that they include a digital resource list with every lesson (Here are the virtual tools you could use for that lesson). It’s just a very different experience, and I think they need both of them.”
Like other districts, Pascagoula-Gautier has struggled during the pandemic to find just the right balance of instruction, learning materials, time, and space. According to Dammen, the Assistant Superintendent, “We did the best we could. Leaving on a Friday and telling our kids they’re not coming back to school was a challenging situation to prepare for.”
Balance of Print and Digital
When the district started school this year, students were given an option to do distance learning or return to the traditional classroom. Around 600 kids in K-6 chose to stay at home and remain virtual learners, and the district assigned teachers specifically to distance learners. Parents came to the school to pick up their learning resources ─ which included both workbooks and Chromebooks ─ giving a balance of both print and digital.
“They had all the print materials at home, but the teacher was directing them through Google Meet or Google Classroom. It’s a different kind of approach, but nothing can compare to a child in a traditional classroom setting because the teacher has so little control over what the child is doing when they’re sitting in their bedroom. Without the print materials being part of the equation, our teachers wouldn’t have been able to succeed as much as they have. Students benefit from seeing the materials right in front of them and following along with the teacher. It’s good to have it in their hands versus only on the screen.”
Equity
Equity of access is another challenge the district is addressing. The district provided Chromebooks for students, but families had to provide Wi-Fi, which isn’t always perfect, especially for long-term remote learning. Some families have broadband access, but run into bandwidth issues with all-day streaming. Others may struggle with access and have to rely on mobile phones rather than laptops. It’s an area where device access is one solution, but print materials can fill gaps that remain.
“Equity is a huge issue,” said Dammen. “A book, workbook, or print materials ─ I can buy for every single kid. They can go in their backpack and travel with them. In some respects, it’s an equity and reliability issue. Kids need hardware that always functions and Internet access with enough bandwidth that works all the time.”
Time marches on, and our schools’ digital transition continues to follow the digital growth in other industries and our daily lives. For many people outside education, it seems like the digital world is simply the natural progression of our society, and having digital learning materials is part of that progress. Frankly, this is true ─ education technology and digital resources are an essential part of schools’ evolution, and have been significant factors in enhancing equitable instruction. However, as the educators on the ground remind us, the availability of new resources doesn’t mean it’s time to toss out everything else. The combination of print and digital ─ “old” and “new” ─ is an effective way to meet a wider variety of needs.
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