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.
Kenting National Park service technician Yang Jien-fon (楊政峰) won a silver award in World Grand Prix Photography Awards Spring Season for his photograph of two male rat snakes intertwined in combat. Yang’s colleagues at Kenting National Park said he is a master of nature photography who has been held back by his job in civil service. The awards accept entries in all four seasons across six categories: architectural and urban photography, black-and-white and fine art photography, commercial and fashion photography, documentary and people photography, nature and experimental photography, and mobile photography. Awards are ranked according to scores and divided into platinum, gold and
More than half of the bamboo vipers captured in Tainan in the past few years were found in the city’s Sinhua District (新化), while other districts had smaller catches or none at all. Every year, Tainan captures about 6,000 snakes which have made their way into people’s homes. Of the six major venomous snakes in Taiwan, the cobra, the many-banded krait, the brown-spotted pit viper and the bamboo viper are the most frequently captured. The high concentration of bamboo vipers captured in Sinhua District is puzzling. Tainan Agriculture Bureau Forestry and Nature Conservation Division head Chu Chien-ming (朱健明) earlier this week said that the
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