The Ministry of Education on Nov. 25 unveiled a four-year comprehensive project to promote digital learning for elementary and junior-high school students, starting from next year. In the first year, it plans to invest in hardware, aiming to spend NT$20 billion (US$720.18 million) on 610,000 tablet computers, so that every student has one and every classroom has Internet access by September next year.
Is digital learning a panacea for education? Does using tablets make students learn more efficiently? Education policymakers should first take a look at the real digital learning situation in countries that lead in digital technology.
First, look at the US, where digital learning has been widely implemented for more than a year due to COVID-19.
Research has found that for children from kindergarten to grade 12, online learning is far less effective than face-to-face learning in the classroom.
Implementing online education requires teacher training, cost management of online education, a system to ensure fairness and the understanding of what an effective online course is. All these must be reinforced; it is never enough just to have laptops and Internet access.
If the government is to invest such a huge amount, lessons should first be learned from the US.
Second, look at Nordic countries where the governments underscore digital learning and claim to run a system that ensures each student has a tablet to learn on.
Yet how effective is it?
According to frank accounts from two Swedish teachers who visited me about two years ago, the learning outcome of “every student has a tablet” is that “you have no idea at all what students have learned.”
The claim that using tablets will engage students in learning actively and independently is an overestimation of human nature and the appeal of online teaching videos to students.
The Swedish teachers were very impressed with the teaching they saw in Taiwan. They believe that only with professional guidance and focused learning can children truly absorb the lessons being taught, and then go further to learn independently.
Giving out tablets or using digital platforms and then expecting independent learning to happen is superficial and ignores the essence of teaching and learning, putting the cart before the horse.
Finally, having experienced a nationwide suspension of in-person classes from May 18 due to a COVID-19 outbreak, and problems of online teaching, when the students returned to class in September, many teachers found that their students’ academic performance had declined.
The results of the tests organized by counties and cities across Taiwan for junior-high or elementary-school students have consistently confirmed this decline. The statistics are shocking.
There is a Chinese saying that goes: “Technology always comes from human nature.”
Technology supplements face-to-face teaching, it cannot replace it. Instead of spending money to buy a bunch of impractical tablets, which are likely to end up being piled up in a classroom corner, why not ask teachers what kind of teaching support they need?
Lin Han is a junior-high school teacher.
Translated by Lin Lee-kai
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