Individual Perspective
Are educational technologies really that beneficial?
More students are wearing glasses!
The average ‘screen time’ of each individual student will increase significantly when they use laptops and tablets every day in class. This can cause Computer Vision Syndromes like eye strain, headaches, blurred vision (Myopia and Astigmatism), colors inaccuracy and photokeratitis due to the UV rays or “blue light” emitted from laptops and smartphone screens. As a result, students may feel discomfort during lessons and fail to focus. Thus, educational technologies may actually lower students' grades, instead of enhancing their academic achievements.
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▲Up to 90% of Asian schoolchildren are near-sighted.
Problem of distracting.Students’ attentiveness in class may decrease and fail to perform their highest standards in coursework and exams. This is because they may game, search for irrelavent information, or get addicted to social networks, like Facebook and Twitter in class. Moreover, excess uses of laptops can also result in a lack of understanding towards the learning objectives. Students may not think before dropping down notes in the laptop, whereas when using paper and pen, notes are mostly revised and considered, according to some psychological researches.
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Local / National Perspective (Hong Kong)
To understand the opportunity cost of e-learning.
▲This is an example of e-learning in local schools. As you can see, due to the lack of capital, students can only use poorly-designed laptops with a small screen and keyboard. This can cause eye and bone problems in the long-term.
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Large opportunity costThe HKSAR Government has to invest minimally two to three hundred million HK dollars to provide basic technical infrastructure for 20% of student in a school to access the Internet at the same time and provide trainings for teachers or educators. In spite of the fact that only 0.06% of Hong Kong’s total expenditure (4335 hundred million) is needed for the improvements, large opportunity costs are still involved as the capital could, otherwise, have been applied for other purposes that are more beneficial to the public. For instance, health care, emergency services and other public services. Moreover, The government have to employ additional capital paid for from tax revenues to monitor and regulate those the e-learning policies. Tax may be increased, leading to taxpayers being forced to give up more of their income to pay the increased tax. Thus, the problem of poverty in some countries may then get worsen in an indirect way.
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Poor infrastructure
The amount of money and capital by the government or schools needed to invest is large, due to the lack of technical infrastructure of most schools in Hong Kong. Thus, large amount of repairs and improvements are needed. For example, approximately 75% of classrooms (17,800 classrooms) in Hong Kong have WIFI that is not capable of supporting e-learning, and the remaining 25% classrooms, despite having sufficient network equipment, over 70% of their wireless networks are not enough to support ten or more computers to retrieve information simultaneously. It is also noteworthy that about 35% of schools’ internet connection speed do not allow more than 2 classes to access the Internet at the same time.
Global Perspective
When we use laptops in classrooms, we're not just using a laptop...
Large energy consumptionThe market supply of technical devices will increase as more schools introduce technical education programs. More energy will also be consumed. In fact, we should never underestimate the energy consumption of laptops used by students. Assume that there are 65% of student or 85 million students around the globe use laptops every day for 6 hours each day, the resultant total amount of energy consumption will be 29070 gigawatts, which is required to burn 14535000 tonnes of coal. As a result, an addition of 4155580 tonnes of carbon dioxide will be emitted to the atmosphere in a year.
"Technotrash" pollution 'Technotrash', which can be defined as broken or unwanted electronic devices, will worsen existing environmental problems. This is because most electronics contain non-biodegradable materials, and heavy metals and toxic materials like cadmium, lead and mercury. Over time, these toxic materials can leak into the ground, where they can contaminate the water we drink, the plants we eat and the animals that live around the area. These toxic materials can cause all kinds of bad effects including nausea, diarrhea, vomiting and even cancer.'
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It's unfair!
Problems of educational inequality or unfairness will be caused due to the high prices of in-school digital devices is high. According to Oxfam, on current trends, the richest 1% would own more than 50% of the world’s wealth by 2016. Thus, due to the wide global economic gap between rich and poor, students from low income backgrounds may be in disadvantage as their families are unable to afford the price of educational technology. Moreover, with globalisation, students are now competing with students from all over the world. As a result, students from low-income countries tend to remain 'trapped' in the cycle of poverty (Michael Witherick and Steve Milner, 169), encouraging intergenerational poverty.