I still believe looking up the answer in the back of the book is completely fine. It creates a moment of tension. It invites you to justify in your own head that the answer is right before checking. The cognitive dissonance when you see your answer is wrong and really have to challenge yourself, or ask your neighbour, to see why - is all really valuable.

I just don't think "instant feedback" is as important as we think in mathematics education, and might even rob us of moments to practice mathematical behaviours like justifying, communicating and accommodating. Slow feedback does have benefits.

I am a tech enthusiast to put it mildly. I also taught maths in schools from roughly 2010 to 2020 so saw the iPad/app revolution in my classrooms. Anecdotally, I think it made my lessons and my students worse. Books, paper and each other are the best tools (in my very personal opinion).

Tbh the same applies to a lot of subjects if you discuss them with a sufficiently good LLM. (Socratic method)

Is the instant feedback actually beneficial for learning though?

I always found that rumination, doubt, and consideration took time and space.

> With a computer, you can get instant feedback, immidiately see whether you did the math correctly or not. With a textbook, you have to wait for your teacher.

Where is this rush for instant feedback coming from?

There are books with written solutions.

If you aren't sure your answer is correct then you're more likely to redo the problem or try to confirm it with fuzzier calculations. This is difficult and is great exercise.

Learning math isn't just about being correct. It's about doing the motions and learning how to problem solve.

Using the computer the way you suggest will make you lazy as you won't learn to do these hard things.