The pre-election dizzying hype surrounding the political promise to give a tablet to every child in primary schools has evaporated. We are now in the action phase and the realities of implementing this project are beginning to challenge our educational policymakers.
Teachers, parents, and policymakers must not consider the use of modern technology in the classroom as necessarily an infallible formula for better educational achievement. It would be naive to believe that the use of tablets in schools will inevitably give us better results than the old technology of books, paper and pens. Some countries have invested heavily in educational technology; some were successful while others regret putting all their trust in this innovation.
It is a wise decision by the Ministry of Education to start gradually implementing the political promise to provide every pupil with a tablet. This makes sense not only from a financial management perspective but more from a cultural change viewpoint. Teachers need to be consulted on how they feel about using this new technology in classrooms.
It would be a shame if heads of school were to force their teachers to implement the new teaching technology simply because they are terrified of seeming out of date. Teachers already feel they are not consulted often and deeply enough when new educational tactics are defined by policymakers.
Top-down, large-scale, pre-packaged educational measures rarely work for the benefit of students, especially if teachers are not prepared to buy into these them.
A report in the Los Angeles Times recently announced that the State’s school superintendent is expected to resign over a controversial and failed plan to bring tablets to every student in Los Angeles. Following this expensive experiment, it resulted that 80 per cent of schools in the city that received the tablets reported that they rarely used them. So the training of teachers to be comfortable with the use of ‘blended teaching’, where new technology supplements traditional teaching methods, is critically essential.
Martin Debattista, the project leader spearheading these technological changes in education, rightly gave importance to addressing the concerns of parents whose children will be exposed to this new way of learning. The internet is a powerful tool that can be used effectively for imparting knowledge. However, it can also cause immense damage to children if they use it for the wrong reasons.
Parents are understandably concerned about their children being tempted to access undesirable websites when they are given a tablet as a tool that they can use to research material which they would need for their projects. The creative minds of most children who are already very experienced in dealing with technology could make ineffective what may appear to be tight controls to curb abuse of the internet.
Another concern of many parents is whether the use of tablets in schools will in fact improve the reading and writing skills of their children – skills that are so essential in today’s knowledge economy. It is reassuring that Mr Debattista insists that “children will still be getting their hands dirty and the Education Directorate will be monitoring what goes on in classes to make sure of this”.
Technology is undoubtedly a formidable tool. Like with so many educational innovations, high-functioning, confident students will flourish when exposed to modern learning methods. But in a community where many children come with low confidence levels and a history of negative experiences with school, modern technology may not be a magic bullet.