Pop into a
German secondary school and you'll find a couple of computer suites just as you might in
any UK school. Pop into a primary school and after you've seen the office computer, you'll
not see a sausage.
Since 1985, all the German states, meaning regions such as Bavaria,
Hamburg and Westphalia, have run special projects to put computers into schools. Yet while
such a federated system generates many diverse projects, their primary schools remain
virgin soil. News that our DfE bought millions-worth of CD-Rom systems for primaries last
year and double millions this year would certainly surprise the Germans.
Money for computers comes to the secondary school with two different
aims, as Reinhard Donath, a languages teacher and computer expert in Stuttgart, describes,
"One aim is to enable the teaching of Informatics (computer studies), the other is to
find out what sorts of subject software are effective."
"Several states concentrate just on Informatics but the cross
curricular approach you have in England is much less developed, but we are trying to
introduce generic programs into other subjects. For example, talking about the press and
writing a newspaper article is part of our curriculum. This is much easier to learn by
using desktop publishing software and assembling a paper yourself, rather than just trying
to analyse one."
A growth area in Germany has been in the use of electronic
communication. With learning English as a core school activity, some 200 schools have
connected up to the UK's Campus 2000 service and used this link to communicate with
students learning German over here.
Reinhard Donath sees this as a very 'real' kind of dialogue, "When
I say to my class, 'Good morning boys and girls' it's slightly false. We pretend that we
HAVE to speak English. When students talk to their peers about things of mutual interest
they are much more motivated to use THEIR language. And they talk TO each other rather
than ABOUT each other."
Sadly, there are some serious costs involved, largely because German
schools have to use commercial networks to access the Campus 2000 service. And not
surprisingly, schools have been attracted elsewhere, to the Internet which they can use
cheaply via their local university. Already some 1000 schools are 'farhting' on the
InfoBahn (Information Highway) and the number is set to rise to 3000 by the end of the
year.
Things are made better still by German Telecom's low prices for high
speed digital phone lines. Schools connect to the Internet via ISDN-2 which allows
browsing on the Internet at very acceptable speeds - normally it is horrendously slow.
This system doesn't use a modem and runs at several times modem speeds. Starker contrasts
appear when comparing prices here and there: in Germany ISDN-2 costs £50 to install
compared to BT's £400 fee.
But never mind the hi tech, low tech government cut backs aren't
helping and recent cuts are starting to show: some say that you are more likely to find a
'hard disc' or a 486 computer in the former East Germany than in the former West.
That this will continue is cause for despondency. Reinhard Donath adds,
"Currently, there is no will to invest in computers in schools, and especially
software and training. It's just not prioritised." |