Devices can add value to learning

BEGINNING next year, students will be allowed to take their their personal mobile electronic/digital gadgets to school.

These versatile, multifaceted and multifunctional devices promise to make teaching and learning more effective and efficient. There is no denying this.

But, imagine for a moment – with all these gadgets in the classroom, how will a teacher conduct a lesson?

Will a teacher just propose a topic and let the students surf the Internet to find out all they can? Will they then have the class gather and make a summary of the new knowledge learnt. Yes, thumbs-up for the “discovery” approach. But it is time-consuming and it cannot be done for every lesson.

The novelty will eventually fade and reality will set in.

What is the alternative then? For every subject, we have syllabus that details the main concepts or topics that are to be taught each year in primary and secondary schools.

The traditional text books “teach” these concepts. Just replacing them with e-textbooks will not do, albeit it helps to reduce weights of school bags!

To be truly conforming to the digital age, we need to come up with lessons using multimedia tools.

We already have guru cemerlang (excellent teachers) appointed for every subject.

What needs to be done is to have a comprehensive and wholesome plan to enlist the expertise of these subject teachers so that lessons can be can be video-recorded and uploaded into the ministry’s system.

By doing so, even less experienced teachers can download the lessons for the benefit of their students.

This way, every school, whether rural or urban, will have quality lessons delivered in class.

To maximise the benefits of a 40-minute teaching period, I am of the view that some “formal” teaching be done first before students are allowed to explore further with their devices and on their own.

Lest I be accused of stifling the initiative, creativity and innovativeness of classroom teachers, my contention is that having a guru cemerlang to teach and enlighten, would seem like we have activated a good textbook. The basics and essentials are taught through a video clip.

The classroom teacher follows up with remedial, enrichment, enforcement and enhancement activities. Digital gadgets and technology in general must enhance the teaching and learning process to be meaningful.

With experts and real-time classroom teachers guiding their students in harnessing the benefits of electronic gadgets in their search for new knowledge, our aspiration to be world-class in school education is achievable.

LIONG KAM CHONG Seremban