Opportunities and limitations of teaching with laptops

The 21st School Computer Science Day was recently held at TU Dresden. On this day, participating teachers were offered lectures and workshops on current topics in computer science and computer science education. Our university’s Department of Computer Science contributed a workshop on the topic “Laptops to Support Cooperative and Collaborative Learning.” The workshop addressed questions such as “What are the criteria for the effective use of digital media in the classroom? Which learning objectives can be achieved with mobile devices, and which cannot?"

Using a lesson sequence as an example , the possibilities and limitations of using laptops in the classroom were illustrated and made tangible. The teaching approach, based on role-swapping (teacher, student), can be applied to other subjects. Extensive experience with laptop classes stems from the teaching career of the first speaker (Stephan Marschner, Salzmannschule Schnepfenthal) as director of the laptop program at the German School of Singapore from August 2009 to July 2012.

During a work assignment by the second speaker (Prof. Dr. Christian Wagenknecht, Zittau/Görlitz University of Applied Sciences, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science) at the German School of Singapore in March 2011, relevant concepts were evaluated, developed, and compared with current research findings. The results of this collaboration led to this workshop, which inspired some participants to engage in interesting reflections.