Learning with Tablet: It will not give in Hamburg so soon. Too big are the concerns about the health of students.

Photo: A. Gebert

 

HAMBURG

The Authority announced by the school after the summer holidays measures to equip the students three Hamburg district schools and three high schools each with tablet and notebook, are for the time being on ice. Reason is that the wireless Internet access terminals to be enabled by the wireless network WLAN. Both potential health consequences are unclear, and legal frameworks.

“Six schools replace board, textbooks, notebooks and pencils Laptop and Tablet in class,” it said in May in a statement presented by Senator school Ties Rabe. During the two-year project should thus up to 1,300 students, which is about 30 percent of children and adolescents participate in these schools.

Now the school board backtracked. “We are currently investigating whether there are data protection or other legal problems,” admitted a spokesman Peter Albrecht.

High waves had the project mainly beaten because of the non-party MPs citizenship Walter Scheuerl with two kids trying to torpedo the project requests in the citizenry and various reports. So would transmit data over the wireless local radio networks by means of radiating and receiving extremely high microwave frequencies.

In fact, some doctors criticized recently, the introduction of tablets, smartphones, and wireless media as teaching in schools as “an uncritical acceptance of progress hype”. In an open letter complain about 20 doctors from “Doctors Working Group Digital Media in Stuttgart”, that the comments made in science and medicine concerns the use of digital media in schools were not being met.

“The correlation of the increase of overwork, headaches, ADHD and mental illness with the growing use of digital media is worrying,” said Ulmer psychiatrist and brain researcher Prof. Manfred Spitzer. According to the state of science whose harmfulness was clear that stress could also lead to impaired concentration, in addition to sperm damage to DNA strand breaks and thus cancer. The manufacturer, as well as the Federal Office for Radiation Protection, would already warning of a body-hugging use the equipment and require minimum distances, so the doctors. Neither school board nor health authority of the Hanseatic city could respond to such warnings.

Dirk Petersen, environmental expert at Consumer Hamburg , relativized: “There is in our view no reliable information, that it is harmful.” For the radiation was simply too small, so the expert. Ellen Kruse, a spokeswoman for the AG electrosmog the BUND Hamburg, however, criticized: “There are a lot of neutral studies showing that Wi-Fi is very harmful.” She called independent experts who educate in schools. Especially the combined use of up to 30 students comprehensive classes is questionable, so Kruse. The World Health Organization warn that mobile phone could possibly be carcinogenic. “We are the precautionary principle,” she said. However, the Bund was not hostile to progress and plead for a wired internet access in schools.

In its requests to the Senate it was Scheuerl also the subject of privacy statements and whether the legal guardian, adult students as well as teachers they would be and what would happen if they would not sign. The school board admitted now, just to check this straight. Scheuerl said: “The Authority had previously not carefully prepared.” However, the use of WLAN is from his point of view in order if they would agree. “The school used for the Internet research is important, but it is also about information literacy,” said Scheuerl. A general education he also called on the educational and learning psychological consequences, liability risks, technical issues, and copyright issues and risks.