Digital Discourse Database

Number of Posts: 8
Posts 1 - 8

No power or running water - but digital books galore

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Newspaper | The Guardian
Date | 2.8.2016
Language | English
Country | UK
Topic Tags | childhood, digitized education, smartphone
Summary | Inside a library in Rwanda, you can see children with e-readers, smartphones, and digital books. John Kanyambo is 12 and likes digital books; children can learn a lot of new words with them. This is what Africa looks like today; parts of it welcome digital innovations, but other parts haven't had an agricultural revolution yet.
Image Description | Photographs of two African boys using a tablet, two people walking somewhere in Africa, and portrait of an African man.
Image Tags | male(s), tablet

Closing the generation app

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Newspaper | Washington Post
Date | 5.3.2016
Language | English
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | digitized education, smartphone, youth
Summary | Diane Howard is 71 and she's taking a new class: an introduction to smartphones for retired people. Christian Magnuson is 16 and he's the teacher. Older people didn't grow up with smartphones, and they would like to know how to use them. For instance, Mary Ellen Saville, 69, would like to know more about the danger zones related to smartphone use. After a 90-minute session, the Christian's students knew more about selfies, text messages, ringtones, and Siri.
Image Description | N/A

Lernen mit Mensch und Maschine

(Learning with human and machine)

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Newspaper | Welt
Date | 13.7.2016
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | digitized education, research/study, smartphone
Summary | The language learning app Duolingo has many happy users. It is free and really effective in teaching a basic knowledge of foreign languages. The app can remember what grammatical formations and words a user struggles with and keeps quizzing them about it. Their statistics say that after 34 hours of using the app, users are on the same level as students who have been learning a language in class for a semester. If one wants to become really competent in a foreign language, it is of course necessary to get a human tutor.
Image Description | N/A

Soll mein Kind mit dem Handy für die Schule lernen?

(Should my child use a smartphone to study for school?)

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Newspaper | Welt
Date | 19.3.2016
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | childhood, digitized education, school, smartphone
Summary | Education is becoming increasingly digitized - even in primary school. There are many learning apps on offer that let students practice lessons from school, for instance from math or a foreign language. Educators agree that digitized education is the future but that learning apps cannot replace a personal tutor if children have perform poorly in school. Parents are worried that by letting children do schoolwork on their smartphones the children will spend too much time using digital devices over all.
Image Description | Illustration of a girl sitting at a school desk holding her arm up. The desk is placed on a huge smartphone.
Image Tags | female(s), smartphone

Smartphones werden zu Sprachlehrern

(Smartphones are becoming language teachers)

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Newspaper | Welt
Date | 9.2.2016
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | digitized education, smartphone
Summary | The new language learning app Babbel is becoming more and more successful. The main reason might be that it it geared towards learning via smartphone which means that users get to learn a few words or phrases while waiting for the bus or filling some other empty ten minutes. No substantial time commitment is needed and yet one slowly learns a language.
Image Description | N/A

Da hilft auch das Internet nicht

(The internet won't help with that)

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Newspaper | Die Zeit
Date | 18.1.2016
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | digitized education, politics, smartphone, threat
Summary | The access to internet has been declared a basic human right because it was thought that the internet is the only way to access unbiased information that may be censored elsewhere. While it is true that the internet opens up a flood of information unavailable outside of it, it does not guarantee that people become less biased or more tolerant. This is exemplified by the clash of cultures which happened on New Year's Eve in Cologne where foreign refugees sexually harrassed German women publicly despite all having had smartphones and thus access to the internet which could have taught them that this is inappropriate behavior in Germany.
Image Description | Portrait of the author.
Image Tags | male(s)

Schulen verbieten Handys – sogar während Pausen

(Schools prohibit mobile phones – even during recess)

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Newspaper | 20 Minuten
Date | 11.9.2016
Language | German
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | digitized education, school, smartphone, technology-free
Summary | Several Swiss schools are prohibiting smartphone use at school, even outside of classes. Apparently, teachers think that students are no longer interacting with one another. This ban clearly clashes with the Swiss German curriculum reform “Lehrplan 21” which plans to occasionally introduce smartphone use in the classroom for school assignments. It does not make sense for a few schools to refuse to acknowledge what is now a reality, namely that people now frequently use their smartphones to communicate rather than talking face-to-face.
Image Description | Series of four photographs: group of teenagers sitting together and using their smartphone, and three portraits of male interviewees.
Image Tags | female(s), male(s), smartphone

C'est la rentrée à l'école numérisée

(It's the start of the digital school year)

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Newspaper | Le Temps
Date | 30.8.2016
Language | French
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | childhood, digitized education, school, smartphone, youth
Summary | A school principal explains how digital devices can help children learn. He wants to progressively digitize 50% of the school material. Smartphones and laptops don't ruin the school system; we just need to know how to use them. At his private school, everyone has a an iPad where they can find their class material. Now, the school provides each child with an iPad, but soon everyone will bring their own device. Our digitized society has the advantage of tightening social relationships between people, which is something not everyone agrees with.
Image Description | Photograph of a child using a tablet.
Image Tags | chart, female(s), male(s), school, tablet

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