TODAY.AZ / World news

Computers in Georgia’s classrooms could leave teachers behind

15 April 2011 [11:53] - TODAY.AZ
Officials hope a government program to equip first-graders with netbooks will mark the first step in an education reform in Georgia but critics warn that teachers need to keep abreast of the technology if the computers are to be useful.

The netbooks enable children to learn "twice faster," said Education Minister Dimitri Shashkin, citing unspecified surveys.

"What we have seen that in Georgian, English and mathematics, the children went through the netbook program in two months," Shashkin told EurasiaNet.org. "Other children, who do not have the netbooks, took four months."

As part of the program, which started last year, the government is spending 32 million laris (about $18.9 million) on 50,000 Georgian-made netbooks for first-graders for the start of the 2011-12 academic year, according to EurasiaNet. The netbooks are intended to support, textbooks not replace them.

President Mikhail Saakashvili promoted the program as a way to encourage the rise of a Georgian "Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, or Mark Zuckerberg." On the first day of school last autumn, the president visited a first-grade classroom, smiling broadly among students as they opened their new computers, emblazoned with a blue bird and a Georgian flag.

The netbooks are being distributed free of charge to parents. Currently, Georgian public schools do not distribute textbooks for free, except to children from economically disadvantaged families. Textbooks can cost as much 100 lari (about $59.43) per child per year in a country where monthly salaries average just 550 lari ($325).

Around 30 percent of Georgia’s 624,000 school children were not able to purchase textbooks before the government began subsidizing the cost for underprivileged families, said Bakur Sulakauri, director of the Tbilisi-based textbook manufacturer Bakur Sulakauri Publishing House.

A lack of educational content for netbooks has raised questions about what first-graders can actually learn. The government-run website for the netbook program offers mostly educational games; the only "educational resources”"clearly indicated for first-graders are an English-language course and a lesson about agriculture in the ancient Georgian kingdom of Kolkheti.

Materials based on Georgia’s national curriculum have not been purchased from publishers, said Sulakauri.

"It would be better to first develop content and then introduce netbooks to students," he said.

The computers, manufactured by the Georgian IT company Algorithim, come with an Intel operating system and a Georgian-language education pack designed to introduce children to computers.

How teachers will utilize the new technology is perhaps the key question. The Education Ministry plans to hold workshops and various training sessions this summer for teachers from some 2,400 public schools about how to incorporate the netbooks into their 2011-2012 lesson plans, Shashkin said.

That might seem like a tight time frame, but Algorithim General Director Givi Korakhashvili downplayed any difficulty in getting public school teachers to embrace digital methods.

"It is not very different from other computers," Korakhashvili said. "If a person has had some contact with computers, it is not hard."

But one prominent education specialist said there was little evidence that teachers were ready to use the netbooks.

"The teachers are not prepared, of course; not only are they not prepared for teaching with the netbooks, but they are not prepared psychologically," said Simon Janashia, an assistant professor of education at Ilia State University. Janashia is also the former director of the Education Ministry’s Center of National Curriculum and Assessment.

Training specialist Sophio Giorgadze, the former head of the Education Ministry’s Teachers' Professional Development Center, worries that focusing on "not looking at the big picture" could mean that there is less emphasis on "developing teachers."

Despite years of education reforms in Georgia, accounts continue to circulate about unqualified and unprepared teachers. Without intensive attention to netbook training, "suddenly, it will appear that first-graders are better than their teachers in certain areas," Janashia said.

Despite the logistical challenges, many Georgians are backing the netbook program.

"Whatever our government is doing to benefit our children is good," said Lola Mikiladze, the Tbilisi grandmother of a second-grader. "The reforms are working more actively."


/Hurriyet Daily News/

URL: http://www.today.az/news/regions/84498.html

Print version

Views: 1465

Connect with us. Get latest news and updates.

Recommend news to friend

  • Your name:
  • Your e-mail:
  • Friend's name:
  • Friend's e-mail: