Wi-Fi in schools - health risk question
On the early morning news today the BBC chose to highlight a report, which will be shown on Panorama tonight, about concerns over radiation levels from Wi-Fi networks in schools etc.
The question is, is this scaremongering at an institutional level?
Watch Panorama and/or read the article here ... and then make up your own mind.
There is a short video about this here.
And .... by the 5.00 PM ( the time I looked again) the Guardian Online had an article refuting the scientific methodology of the report !
Read it here
Did you watch the programme? What did you think? Was there bias in the reporting?
What about all of the flashing red lights? What message was being sent out by the questioning?
Did they interview a similar amount of people from both sides of the debate?
So what would you say to a headteacher today? ... and what answer would you give to a parent who refused to send a child to school until the Wi-FI was switched off or removed?
To read what the literature says (thanks Ewan!) here.
Becta made the following statement . Read it here.
Labels: education
posted by Doug @ 06:44
1 Comments
1 Comments:
When I used to teach Year 6 I often used similar stories about mobile phone masts for critical writing / debate. I would encourage the class to go off and research both sides of the story on the internet and, through evidence of enquiry, checking on sites' authenticity etc whether they could come to some sort of conclusion one way or the other. It was a useful exercise for us all in trying to unpick the facts from the spin. Funnily enough the parents in that school objected to having a mobile phone mast put up on the roof depsite the fact that it was under the BT Tower - probably one of the biggest sources of anything to do with possible nasties in the cell phone area. Plus there were several masts on nearby hospital buildings as well.
It pretty much seemed a metaphor for scope on these issues. I wouldn't like to hazard a guess at the number of Wifi 'bubbles' in central London or other densely urban sites now. It's fairly ubiquitous in many areas...
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