Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Tien Chiu-chin (田秋堇) yesterday urged the Ministry of Education to reconsider its plan to have replace elementary-school students’ schoolbags with laptop computers, citing health concerns.
“New technology usually has side effects that we are unaware of. Without notebook [computers], our children can still learn,” she said, adding that the policy could leave children and parents with no way to avoid the health threat posed by electromagnetic waves from laptops.
Chen Jiau-hua (陳椒華), chairwoman of the Taiwan Electromagnetic Radiation Hazard Protection and Control Association, said children would be exposed to electromagnetic waves of between 3,000 microwatts and 10,000 microwatts when they use laptops or e-schoolbags for wireless study.
The ministry has implemented the e-schoolbag policy at five elementary schools — two in Taipei City, one in Taipei County, one in Kaohsiung and the other in Hualien — on a trial basis since August last year.
The two-year trial is meant to help the ministry understand whether the policy can help reduce the burden of heavy schoolbags and facilitate students’ learning.
Laptops are not the only e-schoolbag option. Tablet PCs, e-book readers and PDAs may also serve as e-schoolbags because of their portability.
Chen said she was concerned about whether e-schoolbags would widen the gap between the rich and the poor as not every family would be able to afford a laptop or similar device.
She said that children might grow used to typing and lose their writing ability because of e-schoolbags.
‘LONE WOLF’: The suspect was difficult to locate, as he did not use a cellphone, did not contact family and often lived in abandoned sites or parks, police said Taipei police on Thursday morning arrested a man accused of numerous burglaries and at least 14 incidents of sexual assault spanning more than 20 years, in what might be the nation’s most notorious crime spree in recent years. Sixty-year-old Tu Ming-lang (涂明朗) — who was yesterday placed in judicial detention, after a judge determined he was a flight risk without a fixed address — faces multiple charges of sexual assault and burglary, police said. A task force comprised of various law enforcement agencies arrested Tu as part of an investigation into an April 28 burglary in Daan District (大安), in which a
Ninth graders were asked to define “trolling” on this year’s standardized exam, reflecting efforts to make the test better reflect real-life situations. Adjustments to this year’s Comprehensive Assessment Program for Junior High School Students were revealed on Sunday, after the last cohort of students completed the test over the weekend. The Ministry of Education solicited feedback about the test from teachers, who approved of the new question in the English portion. Not only was question No. 20 “very much in line with real-life situations,” but it also used a new style in which students were asked to ascertain the correct dictionary definition based
Taiwan is on alert for monkeypox, a rare viral disease that has caused 87 infections in 11 countries over the past three weeks, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Saturday. The WHO on Friday convened an emergency session to discuss a sudden outbreak of monkeypox in North America and Europe. Since the beginning of this month, 87 confirmed cases and 28 possible cases have been identified in 11 countries. The countries with the highest case counts are England with 29 cases, and Portugal and Spain with 23 each. Monkeypox is a viral zoonotic disease occurring primarily in the tropical rainforest areas
Three human skeletons and artifacts believed to be about 400 years old were unearthed by construction workers at National Ilan University in Yilan County, the university said yesterday. The discoveries were made on May 10 as workers were digging to expand the College of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science’s facilities, the university said in a statement. The skeletons were found at three sites, along with glass beads, copper bells and rings, discs and a fish-shaped metal knot, it said. The find is likely connected to the “Old Baili Village” (擺厘舊社, Bai Li Jiu She), an as-yet-undiscovered Kavalan settlement that has been mentioned in
RSS