VietNamNet Bridge – While technology experts believe that computers will replace students’ books at school, educators keep doubtful about the prediction.

Hua Ngoc Thuan, Vice Mayor of the HCM City People’s Committee, said at the meeting with the city’s children on February 8, 2014, that the students would study with laptops instead of books.

He said students would not have to go to school with heavy schoolbags on their shoulders, because they would learn with computers at school. They would be able to access the information sources with the passwords to be granted to them. If so, students would have more time for practicing and extracurricular activities, because they don’t have to spend time on writing on textbooks.

However, educators have warned students’ learning with computers may do more harm than good.

Dr. Ngo Minh Oanh, Head of the Education Research Institute, an arm of the HCM City University of Education, while affirming that computers would be very useful to support students’ learning, said this would bring a lot of negative effects.

As students don’t have to write on textbooks, their note-taking capability would decrease, their handwriting would be worse, while their language skills (writing, grammar and dictation) would also be degraded.

Especially, Oanh has warned that if schools cannot manage their students well, the computers would be used by the students to play games and access to “black websites,” which would seriously affect their behaviors and morality.

Doubts have also been raised about the feasibility of the teaching and learning computerization program.

The city and schools would not only have to spend money to buy laptops for students, but would also have to spend time and money to renovate the teaching and learning methods altogether.

Teachers would have to compile e-lesson plans, schools would have to be equipped with Internet-connected computers, while learning documents need to be digitalized.

Experts believe that the initial investment rate would be no less than VND10 million for every student.

Agreeing with Oanh, Ho Sy Anh, MA, has suggested that the city’s plan needs to be implemented in a small scale on a trial basis first, before it is implemented at all the schools in HCM City.

Meanwhile, healthcare experts have pointed out that students may have serious health problems if they have to work with computers for too long.

Dr. Nguyen Thanh Hai from Nhan Dan 115 Hospital said that the most common diseases that the people working with computers everyday may suffer are the ones relating to eyes, backbone, heart and obesity. Especially, the negative impacts would be serious on the children who need to take reasonable physical exercises to grow up.

The possible negative impacts on students’ feelings and lives have also been warned. Dao Le Hoa An, Deputy Director of Y Tuong Viet Center, which provides life skills training courses, said that long time of working with computers would nip people’s communication skills.

“Teachers now communicate with students through their speech and gestures. But in the future, these would be simply the operations on computers’ keyboard,” the psychologist noted.

Tien Phong