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talkpoliticshttp://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.
(no subject)
Date: 13/7/11 21:08 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 13/7/11 21:20 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 14/7/11 02:07 (UTC)