Mahdzir: ICT devices not meant for entire school session
BUKIT KAYU HITAM: Education Minister Datuk Seri Mahdzir Khalid has stressed that the teaching and learning process in the school classroom will go on as usual although students are allowed to bring along devices, such as tablets and netbooks, to school from next year.
Mahdzir said allowing students to bring along these devices would just be a supplementary measure for them to do reference work interactively during the teaching-learning process.
He said the students were not meant to use them all the time.
“I emphasise that it is not the Education Ministry’s intention that students must learn through these devices. The teachinglearning process in school will go on as what it is currently (done). (The devices are) just an additional means of learning for those students who bring the devices to school.
“Its usage is not from 7.45am until 2pm.
“We have yet to finalise this, whether it will be two or three hours, and at which time (these devices can be used),” he said after opening the 5th Kedah Scout Jamboree and International Brotherhood 2017, here, last night.
Mahdzir was recently quoted as saying that the ruling on the use and type of ICT devices that students could bring to school was being drawn by his ministry.
On April 18, Mahdzir announced the proposal to allow students to bring ICT devices to school where they would be used to ease the teaching-learning process in classrooms, according to the time and subjects determined by the ministry.
However, he had said, the ministry would only allow such devices (tablets and netbooks) and not the mobile phones, to be brought to school by students.
Mahdzir said the use of ICT devices had been allowed for some time in high-performing fully residential schools, and international and private schools.
Meanwhile, over 4,000 scouts from several countries, such as Thailand and Indonesia, took part in the four-day jamboree. Bernama