Return to the blackboard...!
The
Austrian "guru" of psychiatry and head of the Psychiatric Clinic of
the University of Ulm Dr. Manfred Spitser was in Greece on the occasion of his
lecture at the event "Developing skills in reading," organized by the
Eugenides Institution in Greece.
In
2004 he
founded the Transfer Center for Neurosciences and
Learning.
Dr. Spitser is
opposed to the introduction of new technologies in schools; he also knows that
his views are unpopular. Avid supporter
of the blackboard, good education and rich libraries, he believes that behind the
push for the students to use new technologies, there are no learning benefits but
only an increase of the profits of technology giants.
"The new
technologies in schools I do not think that help, even in the form of
interactive activities" he says. "I
have visited several schools that host such systems and I have concluded that
at the end of the day children learn something but not through new technologies, but because they link the new data
with the real - not virtual - world. The
same is true for social networks: real friends are better than virtual avatars.
And
I am not referring to the difficulty of separating the real from the virtual
world, because that is distinct from the eighth year of our age. The
problem is that if you "feed" the brain only with shadows of the real
through the virtual world, the reality is shallow. "he
says.
The ability the
students to be concentrated receives "electronic" war. "Video
games teach children how to be concentrated in different parts of the screen. This was foisted
by companies to enhance attention. But attention in school is translated into
the ability of being able to concentrate on one thing at a time. This ability is just "lost" from children
when they learn to concentrate on everything. A
recent study showed us that if we give a student a game, then within four
months his school performance will be decreased” he says.
These are some
interesting thoughts from a person that doesn’t support the introduction of new
technologies in education.
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