Another great advantage of technology is the fact that it creates for more interactive teaching and learning, something that is close to my heart as I am passionate about my working environment.
It makes learning more accessible to the masses, everybody can get the same opportunities , costs are reduced as books doesn't have to be printed in large quantities and the revision of material can happen instantaneous, right?
Well not quite it seems. Parents in South Africa were told to invest in tablets and e-books as it will create better opportunities, they will have the ability to have instant access to information, e-books will be cheaper, better interaction with teachers etc.
To find that this is not the case was quite sobering for me, children (or at least my kids and those of our friends) struggle to learn from tablets, they need some form of printed material that can be marked, annotated and man-handled!
So I phoned the supplier as I couldn't get the pages that the kids needed in order to prepare for their test to print.....and what was the response, sorry due to copy right laws you cannot print the pages, WTF! I bought the book its mine I can do with it what I want, that's what I thought right. Only to be corrected again by our esteemed supplier who informed me that I actually only bought a license to have the book on a tablet for 12 months!....again WTF! and to make things worst nobody, at any stage conveyed this bit of information to me or any other parent that I know of!
So it all boils down to this, my eldest has a set of e-books, which I payed for (and may I add that the price of the e-book is not significantly cheaper only about R20 difference between the hard copy and the e-book), now any person would think it is my book I would hand it to my youngest in a years time, no-no-no, new books!
SO here is the deal:
1. The books you PAY for is not yours, you only have a license and nobody tells you that!
2. You cannot print any pages due to "copy right laws".
3. You have to buy hardcover books because children struggle to learn from the e-books (are you keeping track, because you are paying twice by now!).
4. You must get a tablet (another expense) and data (as the one is useless without the other).
Taking this into consideration, would you have made the investment in a tablet in the first case, I think not! Do you think that education is then truely made accessible to everyone?
Hard copy books can be handed down and children can truely use it to learn.
I am a curriculum developer, I've had enough of this, I think........I should write schools books and make it open source so that no kid in our wonderful country should ever pay for books again! They can have it as e-books, hardcopy or anything they want.
This message needs to get some feet!
Till next time.
Till next time.
