by Martin Sonnleitner, SHZ (Schleswig-Holsteinischer Zeitungsverlag). 29 November 2014 (translation of article by the Editor of this blog from French version.)
Six schools in Hamburg should be entering into the digital age but the city and school board are backing down: Wi-Fi is considered too dangerous to the health of students.
HAMBURG. At the start of the school year, the school board announced a plan to equip three schools in the district of Hamburg and three secondary schools with tablets and laptops ; this has been put on hold. The reason is that proposed access to the Internet is via Wi-Fi and that the health consequences and legal implications have not yet been resolved.
« Six schools will replace blackboards, books, notebooks and pencils with laptops and tablets », declared the representative for instruction in the municipal council, Ties Rabe, in a press release presented in May. This project, which would be implemented over two years, concerns some 1,300 students, that is, around 30% of children and adolescents in these schools. The school board, however, backed down. “The project is currently under study in order to know whether it poses eventual problems of a legal nature or the protection of data”, admitted Peter Albrecht, spokesperson.
Read more »