This week’s blog entry was very difficult for me to write. Unfortunately, I could not find a lot of information on the homepage of my old school. I went to Stiftsschule St. Johann in Amöneburg. As the school’s program and the homepage do not say much about the use of new media in school, I need to refer to the things I know from people who still go to this school or from my Orientierungspraktikum. Therefore, not everything written here has to be true or appropriate for every teacher at Stiftsschule.

On the homepage I could find information about a project with the topic media, but as far as I understood it, this project was only based on the negative effects media can have. After working through these the pupils made their own films as the project had its focus on TV. But there is not anything said about new media like the internet.

Friends told me that there has not changed a lot since I have left my school. There is still only one computer lab for a school with about 1500 pupils. For the students in the Oberstufe the school has another room with computers but they only use it in their Freistunden to check e-mails or to meet people on StudiVZ. I found out that there is one thing that changed: more and more classrooms for the Oberstufe have a beamer now, but they are rarely used.

Pupils still do not learn a lot about internet and computers in their lessons. The school offers so-called computer AGs, in which the children learn how to use Word and Excel, but as these AGs mostly take place between three and five o’clock in the afternoon, most of the students refuse to go there. I refused as well when I was at school. Now, I regret it, because I do not know anything about using Excel (Shame on me!) and always have to ask my father for help when I need it. I remember some homework in maths and physics in which we had to use this program, but my teachers did not explain to us how it works. In the end, my father or my ex-boyfriend did it for me (Again, shame on me!).

We sometimes went to the computer lab, in order to play educational games in Latin and some teachers at Stiftsschule still do that. We had a lot of fun and learned grammar and vocabulary – that’s what the virtual session called edutainment. Other teachers at Stiftsschule use the computer lab, in order to help their students with finding information for presentations. We did not often do that as the teachers regard it as time consuming and senseless (sometimes we didn’t search for information, we were surfing in the internet for other purposes instead (oh no, again shame on me!)). In my opinion, this kind of misuse is the reason why teachers do not often use new media in school (or why MY teachers didn’t use it a lot). Of course, that is a shame, but I can understand it.

Concluding, I can say that my old school, Stiftsschule St. Johann in Amöneburg, still does not use new media quite often. Teachers only use them sometimes for educational games or as help for presentations. But why is it like this? Is it only because of the pupils who might misuse it? Or is it because there is only one computer lab for a lot of classes which is always reserved by other teachers? Or is it because of the teachers who do not know more about new media than their students? There might be a lot of other fine excuses…