Technology in schools? It is inevitable and opens new avenues – Daily News – Lisbon

There are projects that stand out for leaving the side of technology, but the trend is for its widespread use in the classroom

should mobile phones, tablets and computers part of the day-to-day lives of students at school. Or rather, this should be a free space technologies and provide a more forward to learning nature. Which theory is better? The answer is not linear, but according to the researcher José Antonio Osorio is “impossible to take the technology of children’s lives.” So the best “is to help them to live with them, to know how to use them and to reflect on its use.”

At the national level, the government seems keen to promote more and more “digital skills” in the use and information search, as defended on Tuesday the Secretary of State for Education, João Costa. Even the ruler remembered in a symposium on curriculum and school practices in Portugal and Finland that “before only the teacher was holding the knowledge and now the knowledge walks in the pocket of all and with just one click.”

João Costa believes that technology can help in the fight against school failure. And the professor at the University of Minho, an expert on emerging educational environments, Antonio Jose Osorio, praises the resources that it brings to the classroom. “We can approach within the children of the great centers and vice versa, and provide different experiences. We can show the engravings of Foz Coa students Lisbon and show the Lisbon Zoo students of Foz Coa,” he explains. Given the global world, the expert believes that “the concern with the use of technology makes sense, but schools that ignore them will be always punctual experiences”.

Where the devices do not enter

the English school Acorn and Portuguese boarding school the Eaves are two examples of projects that keep mobile phones, computers and the internet at the door. In the Portuguese case students are covered by the 4th year and privileged outdoor activities. According to his online page the child is taken “to experience and know the reality, delight yourself by your findings and recreate, in its way, the world that surrounds it.” All this without screens. Nothing that students say to miss, as told SIC.

In London, Acorn goes a little further and asked parents to keep their children without access to phones, tablets or computers up to 12 years also at home. He explained the charge to El Mundo this philosophy in tech (not technology) enables young people to study more and be happier. They calligraphy class, they build their own wooden toys and explore nature.

Teach deal with the progress

In addition to these experiences arise general trends. And in this field, forecasts, for example, the Horizon Report Europe of the European Commission pointed out that the use of tablets and online applications such as Google, Skype and Dropbox are common.

“How that a person can choose whether a cafe with wi-fi or just take tea away from the internet? “asks José Antonio Osorio. “I have to have it organized in my head is our responsibility. – Parents and teachers – to teach children to handle it.” Hence the researcher believes that it is impossible for the school to pass alongside the technology.