Yongfook is a web producer and usability consultant based in Tokyo

Well I have taken it on myself to do another JET presentation, this time at the Kumamoto Mid-Year conference. Although my willingness to do these sorts of things is borne out of a combination of boredom, challenge and the grossly expanding self-belief that I am the best person in the world ever, I’m sure that for the readers of the site it is also exposing me for the preppy little git everyone loves to hate, that I truly am.

So the topic of the next workshop, in early December, is going to be “Computers and the Internet, as Teaching Tools”.

Now, I have done a fair amount of lessons where computers were involved in some way. Usually, a computer can be used for creating content, enhancing lessons (video/powerpoint/games etc) and getting ideas from the Internet, but it is also possible to have classes in the computer room at school.

Often this is difficult to arrange because frankly, the whole Japanese education system/mentality right down to the local level is a bit of a rigid little beast. Suggesting that you take the English class OUT of the classroom and into say, the gym to play some kind of activity where you need lots of space, into the cooking room to do an instructive cooking class (for listening practice) or indeed, into the computer room is a request that is often met with splutters of absolute incomprehension at why you would want to do such a ludicrously insane thing. It’s the same kind of frustratingly inflexible adherence to the rules that makes people patiently wait at “don’t walk” traffic lights even if there are no cars on the road for miles in each direction, and makes the owners of onsens get all hoighty toighty when I barge into the women’s section screaming “WHITE WILLY!” and do a jumping belly flop into the water.

However, I have had the opportunity to do some full-on computer & Internet based classes, which proved to be quite fun even if they were mostly comprised of trying to prevent the lesson degenerating into a career-jeopardising mess of Junior High students stumbling upon mountains of hardcore pornography that the Internet is mostly made up of, which for the Internet, is like walking into a Starbucks and trying not to see a turtleneck, or trying to wander through Brixton whilst not getting mugged by children with knives.

In the computer room, even the most structured lesson teeters on the brink of utter catastrophe. Like lessons such as a “fact scavenger hunt” lesson of going to ask Jeeves (www.ask.com) questions like “what is the tallest mountain in the world” and having it come back with a reply along the lines of “why, the tallest mountain in the world is animal sex thrusting Jesus fisting free penis enlargement! Click here!”

So in general terms, putting students in front of a computer during class can sometimes make about as much sense as strapping a time-bomb made of cheese to an orang-utan and firing it from a cannon straight into a nursery school. Having said that though, there is much to be gained, not just in terms of the obvious points such as expanding cultural boundaries, but in much more grassroots ways (in an educational sense), such as letting the kids learn to evaluate information for themselves and since many are not completely computer-literate, it helps them with their autonomous learning skills - ‘learning to learn’, if you will.

Goddamn it sounds as if I actually enjoy my job.

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 15th, 2003 at 6:30 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.