South Korea will introduce tablets in school

[nairiporter.livejournal.com]

http://www.csmonitor.com/Books/chapter-and-verse/2011/0706/In-South-Korea-all-textbooks-will-be-e-books-by-2015

A step into the real 21st century or a slick move to promote the production of domestic electro gadget companies? You make the judgement. I will give you the facts.

The Ministry of Education in South Korea has announced that it's planning to spend 2+ billion dollars to furnish all Korean students with digital schoolbooks. The goal is to substitute all paper schoolbooks and other materials with digital ones by 2015 so everything the pupil needs could be contained in a small bag. A laptop bag maybe or even smaller. Or why not in the coat.

They will use the cloud computing technology which is becoming very popular these days, and will compress all the needed information into this notebook. The pen and paper could become part of history. The new education system will use many various multimedia sources instead, including video, audio, interactive systems, etc...

The Korean experts in pedagogy believe that this innovation will make life easier for the kids, especially having in mind that the concerns about their eyes being exposed to prolonged screen radiation is now moot, thanks to the new technologies we see nowadays in things like Kindle. Also there's no way they would "forget how to write" as some comments have alleged around the forums. Just on the contrary. When high quality technology is used properly things become more optimised and start to look much better. Moreover, this innovation will make things particularly easier for kids who for some reason cannot attend classes in person (because they are sick, disabled, live far away, their parent's car is broken, etc etc). And so they will not lag behind the class in studying the school material.

Even from an economic standpoint such a reform is beneficial, because the expenses for re-publishing and re-distribution of various schoolbooks, notebooks, materials and drawing tools by far exceed the one-time supply of such a digital tablet (mind you, these will come free for the pupils). In most cases the student will be using just one such gadget for their entire school "career", so you can see how much money will be spared.

Apart from being financially great, the idea is also ecologically orientated. By digitalising this sphere, South Korea is turning into one of the "greenest" countries regarding the use of paper. As a whole this reform looks like pulled from a sci-fi movie. But this is no surprise in the case of South Korea. Such are most other things which this super-modern country does.

Comments

[peamasii.livejournal.com]

I would think it a positive development and the cost seems reasonable. Kids are often overburdened with books, this will make their life easier, and they are already often more familiar with computers and mobile phones than with traditional text-reading and text-writing. Not that those aren't useful, but there are better ways to learn and communicate than 15th century media supports, and also many more knowledge/real-world skills that can be learned on an intelligent device.

[airiefairie.livejournal.com]

I am often stunned by the computer skills of my semi-adopted sons (8, 8, 7 years old) and their school-mates... At times I suspect they could teach me things rather than the opposite!

[peamasii.livejournal.com]

They're already good at browsing and gameplaying by the time they're in first grade, LOL. My son loves to play online mutiplayer games at 9 y.o. I see a lot of kids (between 9-12 yo and older) using Blackberries a lot. And yet they can all still read and write just fine!

[airiefairie.livejournal.com]

One of them, Phomeni is really into all sorts of gadgets, techs and such things. As soon as he saw my Nokia phone he instantly disassembled it to see what is inside... And then with some help he was able to get it back together. My jaw dropped. There must be something genetic about these new generations... Nano-bots, perhaps? =)

[peamasii.livejournal.com]

Oh, you don't remember about the microchip implants to speed up learning and activate dormant neural pathways? ;-)

[airiefairie.livejournal.com]

If you mean the drug from the Limitless (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limitless) movie, I suspect they already use that one! =)

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

One of the forgotten advantages is that kids don't have to carry around 20Kg worth of books anymore. That's going to save some backs.