Visit of the “Media School Of The Month – Alfred Wegener Schule”
Today we visited a school in Kirchhain which gained the title “Media School Of The Month” which to mind sounded quite funny, when Mr. Schouler (a teacher who showed us around on the premises) mentioned that their equipment concerning the new media is not even very well developed at some points. But hey, at least they got the title and the school has an IT- guy who manages problems that arouse from time to time which is a big work releaf for all the collegues at the school.
Well, we all had to think of two questions we wanted to ask Mr. Schouler. I would like to present mine right here:
In what way do parents react to the use of new media in school? I seriously had some doubts and were thinking that parents – at least partly – would have a rather critical attitude towards the use of new media in school. But Mr. Schouler’s answer disagreed with my thoughts. He said, parents support the contact with internet, computers, whiteboards and whatever more the new media resources offer at this school 100% positive. Due to their opinion it is very important that their children learn to handle these electronic devices in order to have a better preparation for their further education.
Because of the fact that pupils might have a bigger knowledge of new media than teachers of an older generation I had a certain question for Mr. Schuler: Do pupils try to cheat or have there been a lot of cases of plagiarism? Do teachers detect these attempts? A case Mr. Schouler has obviously been confronted with a few times – sure, there had been attempts and there still will be. But usually, you as a teacher will immediately realise when a pupil hands in something he has not written him/herself. Additionally, there exists a software to called “EVE” which is able to find whole sentences in the www. Older collegues who might not be able to handle this special software or else, mostly use thze opportunity to approach younger collegues to ask them for help in case of suspicion of plagiarism.
