Tuesday, May 7, 2024

Vogon Today

Selected News from the Galaxy

StartMag

Not just DJI, are viewers ok in schools with Pnrr money? Facts and comments

2 weeks ago babelfish

Not just DJI, are viewers ok in schools with Pnrr money? Facts and comments

The “School 4.0” plan involves the transformation of classrooms into innovative learning environments. Institutes use Pnrr funds to purchase drones and viewers (including those of the Chinese DJI, criticizes Repubblica) but in schools the experimentation is often positive. Facts, names and opinions

“The truth is that the arrival of technology in schools is closely linked to another increasingly flourishing business: that of refresher courses for us teachers”, explains to Start a professor from a Ligurian technical institute who, for obvious reasons, prefers remain anonymous. “We teachers are continually called upon to attend these kinds of lessons which are interesting, but inapplicable on a practical level.”

It seems like a contradiction: for years the Italian school has been accused of being old and anachronistic, stuck in the post-war period and now that it is finally trying to evolve, thanks to Pnrr funds, there are still those who complain. The usual voices out of the chorus anchored to the status quo ante? Is it perhaps fear of something that teachers still do not handle with due competence that is causing the teachers' subdued groaning? Difficult to understand. What is certain is that teachers and secretarial staff are not always trained not only in the use but also in the purchase of these devices, as Repubblica explains when speaking about the arrival of drones and viewers in some schools in the capital: “They are drones for educational purposes, the Tello model, marketed by the Chinese company DJI. Equipped with a camera, they can record videos and fly autonomously for thirteen minutes at thirty meters above the ground. They cost 159.92 euros each, from the list price”, we read in the newspaper edited by Maurizio Molinari.

“The issue – continues the professor – is that Italian schools continue to have no money: now there is talk of not closing the institutes for the whole summer. Commendable initiative, but with what funds? And those of the Pnrr were bound to timely use: in short, either you spend them immediately or you lose them, and many mistakes were certainly made. Haste is a bad teacher of life."

VISORS IN SCHOOLS: YES OR NO?

Situation similar to the one depicted today in the newspaper founded by Eugenio Scalfari: "out of haste, emulation and lack of knowledge compared to aggressive sellers, school managers have also placed orders for students under 14. Ophthalmologists and neurologists, this is the problem , we strongly advise against viewers, real ski goggles equipped with a monitor, under the age of 13: they can damage the sight of a growing apparatus".

“Some studies explain – we read again in Repubblica – how frequent dizziness and loss of orientation have occurred among adolescents who wear visors. «We were buying six pairs for a new virtual classroom», explains Anna Foggia, head teacher of the Institute in Via Paribeni 10 in Mentana, in the province of Rome, «but our teachers spotted the contraindications in time and we stopped» . Many colleagues, however, are realizing this once they have made purchases."

META ALSO WANTS TO JOIN THE CLASS

All that money on the one hand and the need for institutes to modernize on the other are leading large and small companies, with their respective distributors, to put pressure on schools. Even Mark Zuckerberg 's Meta has made a move,Wired writes: “Meta could surprise us with an educational project reserved for the little ones. Yesterday, in fact, the company announced that during the year it will launch "a new offering of products dedicated to education for Quest devices", with the aim of making its VR headset a useful tool for classroom teaching".

The social media giant, thanks to technology, promises to raise the curtain on previously unimaginable educational scenarios. For example, students will be able to explore prehistoric environments among dinosaurs or participate in science laboratories equipped with advanced and expensive instruments, all in safety. “These experiences, in addition to eliminating the risks associated with certain training activities, enhance learning, making it more engaging and effective”.

Nick Clegg , former British deputy prime minister alongside David Cameron from 2010 to 2015, now president of global affairs at Meta, claims that setting up their headsets in schools "will allow teachers, educators and administrators to access a series of specific applications and features for education and manage multiple Quest devices simultaneously, without the need to individually update and prepare each device in the classroom or any training environment.”

VISITORS IN SCHOOLS, WHO DOES NOT AGREE

With all due respect to those who ask whether these technological gimmicks, forced on the eyes of children and adolescents, can really have educational purposes and those who fear, as we read above, that they risk even having medical contraindications. Not to mention more concrete implications, highlighted by Orizzonte Scuola which reports the principals' doubts: "A single teacher managing 20 children with 3D viewers?"

Modern, highly hi-tech immersive classrooms are already a reality in several Italian institutes as required by the School Plan 4.0 and allow children to immerse themselves in the metaverse on a daily basis. Reading the local news, the experiments so far seem mostly positive. But for some, all this technology is a bit of a surrender to a tool that risks distracting rather than focusing attention, especially of the little ones.

In short, there is a lot of debate on the topic, as demonstrated by the recent essay by Marco Gui (associate professor at the University of Milan-Bicocca, taught Sociology of culture and media) Digital at school. Revolution or blunder? . “The introduction of technology products into schools around the world has had zero effect on students. Several comparative studies say so" another teacher, this time of Italian and Latin, tells Start : "The effect would almost seem to have an impact on learning. Not only that: distractions would increase. Visors in particular risk further increasing the detachment from reality." Then the teacher concludes: “The economic interests behind it are evident, the amounts spent in the last period to equip the schools are enormous”. But what most worries the detractors of visors in schools are undoubtedly several studies that speak about risks such as sleep disorders and obesity. And then there are the known contraindications: nausea, dizziness, headache…

What is certain is that teachers, who until recently fought daily to keep smartphones out of the classroom, are experiencing a Dante-like retaliation. As told by professor influencer Vincenzo Schettini (over one million followers on TikTok), who certainly has no prejudices about new media, using social media on a daily basis to demonstrate that an apparently difficult subject like physics can be within everyone's reach: "Now the children they have too much: viewers, augmented reality, video games, screens, cell phones, they are somehow suffocated. And they have lost the habit of picking up a book. Instead I want to tell him: read everything. Manga is also good."

This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/innovazione/non-solo-dji-tutto-ok-i-visori-nelle-scuole-con-i-soldi-del-pnrr-fatti-e-commenti/ on Fri, 26 Apr 2024 11:01:24 +0000.