I joined teachers at my school for a meeting to evaluate the results of using mobile learning in Nantou County, and I am glad I did. It allowed me to see the willingness of teachers from 17 elementary and junior-high schools in the county to try to teach using tablet devices to give students a more diversified learning experience.
Nevertheless, no teaching method and no teaching aid offers a magical solution to every problem; they are all restricted in various ways when it comes to outcomes or suitability.
At the meeting, each school gave a short 10-minute presentation of their experience, and the evaluation committee was given 10 minutes for questions. The focus was on whether students’ results and learning abilities had improved, and whether their interaction with fellow students had increased. It was almost all positive.
Is this in line with reality? The Chinese-language CommonWealth Magazine recently reported on educational changes in Sydney, Australia.
According to the article, teachers there have noticed that when tablets are used in the classroom, students are easily distracted and have problems concentrating, and it is affecting their reading comprehension. As a result, many schools are now returning to printed text books and making students take written notes.
Educational reform in Taiwan generally follows in the footsteps of Europe and the US, and when the Ministry of Education makes big budget allocations for schools to buy electronic devices, it is following the same general attitude and way of thinking.
Electronic devices should not be used in education for their own sake, they should be used because they are needed. In addition, an effort should be made to understand whether these electronic devices help or hurt teaching, and if they affect the well-being of students.
For example, the experience in Sydney schools is something that is likely to be encountered here in Taiwan as well. As so many schools have received the ministry’s subsidies and so many academics and experts have participated in evaluation committees to review these subsidies, they do not only consider the practical benefits, they also feel obliged to say something nice and help defend the ministry’s policy.
As a result, not a single school at the meeting evaluating the use of mobile devices as a teaching aid had discovered that tablets in the classroom could have a negative affect on students’ learning, nor did they suggest any practical teaching restrictions.
The result of this policy is that the autonomy that teachers should enjoy is circumscribed by a wave of technological teaching aids. Teachers who do not use tablets as a teaching aid are seen as a group that do not understand the need to develop teaching methodology.
As it has now become almost taken for granted that schools should obtain funds to buy electronic devices for use as teaching aids, doing so has also become a benchmark defining conscientious teaching, while no one says anything about the restrictions of electronic devices as a teaching aid or the potential negative effect on student learning.
This is not a good thing, and it is something that the ministry and teachers and students at all levels should discuss further.
Chen Chi-nung is principal of Shuili Junior High School in Nantou County.
Translated by Perry Svensson
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