When I told my students to take part in our own class-blog for learning, some of them showed their doubts about their ability to find suitable material on-line, and it is true if you surf in the web without help.Things are changing in teaching and some educational authorities are taking into account new technologies to help students improve their general knowledge in specific subjects. An example is this BBC article about educacion in Italy.
Children at a school in Italy have today begun an experiment to replace all their books with personal computers. The pupils involved will each be given a special laptop that contains their entire curriculum. From Rome BBC correspondent Duncan Kennedy reports:
Listen to the story.
Until today, the Don Milani di Rivoli elementary school in central Turin was like any other. Children turned up, got out their books and pens and began the process of learning. But now, in what's being described as a unique experiment, 60 fifth-grade pupils and a number of third-graders, will start using computers only.
The mini-laptops, which run Windows software, all have a full curriculum programmed into them. The pupils will use the computers to do all their reading and writing. Security systems within the laptops mean the children's access to the internet is strictly controlled. The machines weigh less than a kilogram, can be dropped from a height of 1.5 metres and are waterproof.
Instead of spending the equivalent of 700 dollars a year on books, the laptops, built by the Italian company Olidata, cost less than 400 dollars. One of the teachers involved in the scheme says that, for the first time, schools will be able to verify in a scientific way how a computer alone can improve the learning process. The experiment, which has the backing of parents, is due to last a year.
1 comment:
We live in the Information Age. No one can deny that. Information has become one of the basic elements of our lives. News can travel around the world in a matter of seconds.
Computers have been crucial in this development. And many goverments try to fuse them with the learning process of new generations. However, I think that substituting books, pencil and paper with a PC is not good. Humans learn by experience: seeing, hearing, touching... Now imagine that this class is supposed to do an essay. They will of course have some offimatic program with a spell checker in it. There goes spelling abilities, grammar and many other things. Futhermore, writing skills (like every skill a person can learn) are based on practise. What will happen when these children have to write a letter by hand? We can imagine it: bad handwritting, spell mistakes, many repeated words, ...
Next, let's step into maths. Of course, every PC will come with his mathematical program, so they will only have to input the numbers and the machine will do the rest.
In the end, people will depend too much on PCs, and they will depend less on their minds. After some generations we will be subjugated to machines, this Deus ex Machina, which will think for us.
However, not all can be bad. Pcs can be useful, but only when they are considered tools complementing the learning process, but not substituting the work of children. They must still do their exercises by hand, work hard to adquired the required knowledge which will allow them to become independent adults with based criteria.
Laso
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