Teaching ICT must not curb new ideas, reasoning

ALTHOUGH ICT is becoming the buzzword in educational institutions, teachers must not forget to teach students how to formulate ideas and solve problems through intuition and reasoning, said the director and chief editor of the Japan Society of Mathematical Education in Japan yesterday.

Prof Masami Isoda, who is an associate professor at the Centre for Research on International Cooperation in Educational Development at University of Tsukuba, Japan, told The Brunei Times yesterday that the problem with knowledge-based societies was that they focused too much on using technology.

"Instead of creating new ideas in mathematics, they throw away all the ideas because there is no use of intuition and logic to solve problems," he said, adding that solely using ICT to teach and solve mathematics had its limitations.

He stressed that ICT was a useful tool in developing new ideas, but should not be used as an alternative to using logic and intuition. "If you use ICT as an alternative in mathematics, then you will lose important ideas in reasoning," he warned.

Prof Isoda added that important ideas in mathematics were "lost" 50 years ago in Japan and Europe because too much focus was placed on the technology itself, and not on what the technology was being used for.

Prof Isoda explained that during the process of designing a car, computer simulations and models could be applied to assist the process. However, experimentation still needed to be done, such as conducting a crash tests to further develop more ideas to see what could be improved in the design of the car.

Prof Isoda said Brunei was one of the leading countries among Seameo members in including ICT in the national curriculum, compared with countries such as Thailand. "I understand that Brunei has ICT equipment for schools. However, I am not sure how the teachers are using them, but at least they are mostly using Microsoft Word, which countries like Thailand are not using (yet)," he said.

He encouraged teachers in the Sultanate to use ICT as a medium for teaching. "What I do is I scan a textbook into the computer software. That way, I can teach the students with traditional methods (textbook) with the support of ICT. This process helps students visualise and understand better," he said.

The lecture attended by some 25 people from schools reminded teachers to use traditional methods in solving mathematics and in teaching the subject.

Prof Isoda has published books in English, Japanese and Spanish, and has written collaborative works with respected mathematicians in Italy, Chile, Singapore and Australia.

 The Brunei Times