Can iPad find "modern classroom"

Since the beginning of the school year, schools across the country have emerged "innovative actions" from time to time. A school in Pingyin County, Shandong Province, requires students to write homework assignments in electronic format and send them to teachers via e-mail. In some cities, primary schools plan to pilot "electronic classrooms" in math classes so that students can take iPads in any corner of the school. Mobile learning even replaced textbooks as teaching materials.

The teacher will publish daily homework on the school website, blog, or class QQ group. This is not what "innovation" is in some developed areas. Instead, the iPad will be introduced into the primary and secondary classrooms. This trend is obviously very tight. However, one problem worth thinking about for all primary and secondary educators is that is it “modern” to adopt “electronic” teaching and homework?

The author was invited to participate in the Harvard China Forum. In the e-mail addressed to me, the organizers of the meeting explicitly requested that they do not use PPT during the speech because using PPT is not conducive to on-site discussion. In China, there are many professors who are carrying a PPT text and have been on various reporting occasions. Fortunately, I hardly use PPT.

In many schools, the use of PPT by teachers is an indicator of whether or not the classroom is “modern,” which is understandable from the perspective of promoting the use of modern technology to assist teaching. However, if it is considered that this represents the modernization of the classroom, it is a serious misunderstanding of the modern education and teaching. If the teacher’s teaching philosophy does not change, the classroom teaching method does not change, and the use of modern technology in the classroom is likely to affect the teaching effect. reaction.

To "practise classes" against PPT is a big problem in some current classrooms. The problem with this move is that some teachers may not prepare lessons at all, but borrow (or download) courseware from others. So in the course of lectures, there was no process of guiding students to participate in thinking, and the entire reasoning was directly presented on the PPT. This has indeed changed the traditional mode of "a chalk lesson" and it made the teacher not even use chalk. Similarly, problems may arise in electronic homework and electronic classrooms. From the perspective of e-jobs, the casual attachment of teachers is likely to inadvertently increase the workload of students, while e-classrooms will allow students to be surrounded by the “sea of ​​questions” at all times.

In fact, any modern technology is a tool that serves education and teaching. Overemphasizing the importance of tools without changing educational concepts and education evaluation systems may change the original intention of innovation. In different educational concepts, the use of modern technology is very different. The use of PPT in classrooms in some foreign schools is to provide students with more information in an open and interactive teaching mode for more in-depth discussion. In general, the indoctrination mode has been implemented in domestic teaching, so electronic tools have become publishing operations. The new carrier for doing exercises. In Harvard's library, the author saw a free scanner. Students could spend a few hours scanning a whole book into a USB flash drive and read it back. In the library of the domestic university, the scanning service was It is to pay. This is the different role played by the same tool in different places.

In addition, there are still other problems in electronic homework, electronic teaching materials, and electronic classrooms in domestic schools. Students and parents are "electronicized." The teacher publishes electronic homework and asks students to submit electronic texts. This requires each home to be equipped with a computer, Internet access, and some to purchase printers; but introducing the iPad into the classroom does not require every student to hold an iPad? Perhaps from the school's point of view, there are computers with Internet access and iPads, which are not difficult for every family, but this is obviously not realistic. Some poor families may not have computers and Internet access, let alone the iPad. The "electronic" requirements imposed on students are most likely to become a new burden on student families.

Whether the various types of schools in our country have modern educational technology is not the most critical thing right now. The most serious problem now is that our educational philosophy, education content, and education model are too old. These changes do not change. The introduction of new technologies is just a form of modernization. Apart from increasing the burden on students and making superficial articles, we have to improve education. Teaching quality is not very effective.