No more pencils, no more books; pilot project tries new era of teaching

The pencil cases of students in class 5-G at the Torah-science school in Yavneh contain a single pencil and an eraser. "It's for English, because we're not yet studying it on computer," explains one student, Liron Ohayon.

As it turns out, the English teacher just can't get used to the new system. Liron and his 23 classmates study all the rest of their subjects on laptops, one per child. No papers, no textbooks, no notebooks, no copying from the blackboard. Whatever their teacher, Ezri Mehatzri, wants to transmit to the students he does over the network, at the touch of a button. All the students have to do is open the appropriate file.

5-G is one of five classes throughout the country selected by the Davidson Institute of Science Education at the Weizmann Institute of Science to participate in a pilot project, in which they will continue using their laptops through the 12th grade.

On this particular Sunday morning, Mehatzri was teaching Gemara, with the part of the lesson that he wanted to discuss marked in color. "It's a challenge to teach Judaism with a computer. The student's experience is completely different. If the students are having a difficult time with a portion of Gemara, the computer can help clarify things. It makes the lesson much easier," Mehatzri says.

"You can correct everything without erasing or tearing out pages," Liron Ohayon says. "Typing was hard for me at first, and the touchpad wasn't so easy, but I got used to it. You learn better and it's much more fun now to come to school," Liron says, typing quickly to finish an assignment in time for a class discussion about Rabbi Gamaliel.

Ohayon's friend Aviel Haim doesn't miss pencil and paper. "I can type faster than I can write," he says with undisguised pride.

The pilot is also being held in schools in Mazkeret Batya, Rosh Ha'ayin, and Kfar Sava. The classes involved are considered the elite of their schools. "Other kids in our grade are jealous of us," Ohayon says. "Sometimes, to get them off our backs, we let them play with the computer on breaks."

The classes involved received a total of 250 laptops for teachers and students; a printer and projector were installled in every classroom that is part of the pilot. "In five years, this will be the way it is in Israel as in the rest of the Western world," Dr. Zahava Scherz, of the Davidson Institute, says. "Students and teachers will come with their laptops or something similar, like a Palm Pilot or advanced telephone. The once-a-week computer lab of today won't last much longer."

In its quest to make the laptop an integral part of the lives of future students, the Davidson Institute is seeking funding for the coming years. Even now, this is not a "charity" project, Davidson Institute officials say. The parents of the students in 5-G are paying NIS 50 per month over three years to purchase the computers their children are using. "The price is not high considering the parents don't have to buy books," Scherz says.

By the end of the year, Davidson researchers say, they will have preliminary indications regarding the success of this ambitious project. "Students' experience is going to change completely. The syllabus will no longer be sacrosanct, as students get a lot of material from the Internet, and the teacher won't always have all the answers," Scherz explains. "This will change the status of the teacher to that of a guide, and the class will become a learning group."

There were concerns in the school about the project at the outset, including worries that laptops would be stolen. "Thankfully, we have not had one case of a laptop being stolen," school principal Motti Aharon says. He also noted that the level of jealously among other students has dropped to reasonable levels.

No few objections to the Davidson project have cropped up. Among them is the concern that the art of writing will slowly but surely be replaced by typing. The head of the science and technological education center at Tel Aviv University's School of Education, Professor Rafi Nahmias, has praise for the program but wonders if it is merely a matter of exchanging paper for a computer file. If so, he says, it is "a technological step forward and two pedagogic steps backward."

The Torah-Science school in Yavneh is already talking about results. Project participants come gladly to school and the usual discipline problems have disappeared almost completely. New problems, however, have emerged - the problems of the future, the school calls them - of students sending each other emails or surfing to sites not connected to the lesson.

"I have no problem with a student, who has finished his assignment ahead of his friends, playing games on the computer," says the school's principal, Motti Aharon. "It's better than bothering other students."

	Students in Yavneh working with their laptops. The paperless classroom has come to five Israeli schools.
	Photo by: Alon Ron