District Education Officer, Lomer Rock, is cautioning parents and guardians to closely supervise how their young charges use electronic devices such as tablets.
His comments came as he voiced his agreement that technology can be useful, especially to assist students learning concepts on their own.
“If it is not supervised, then students can get distracted and they can spend lots of time on it doing a lot of things that are not connected to their education, so it has to be supervised.”
He added, “But in terms of students learning on their own and guided discovery, that is where the most important component of it lies, in getting the student to research even before they come to a class and also getting the student to reinforce after the lesson has been taught. You can go on YouTube and you can see the very same thing that the teacher taught you and you say, ‘Oh, that is how it works.’ So the importance is reinforcing and discovery.”
Rock spoke on the sidelines of last Friday’s presentation where 28 Class 3 pupils of Welches Primary School received tablets. These were given through the Tablet Project of the Aron and Christina Foundation.
Rock expressed gratitude to the Foundation on behalf of the Education Ministry. He lauded the work the Foundation does annually, providing students with tablets.
“Thank you from the Ministry of Education and we trust that this will continue and that we will forge greater partnerships, so that the future of our children as they go from school to school, will be indeed brighter because they have an avenue which they can absorb much information.”