No more will trees have to be culled to create textbooks – at least in South Korea, that is. According to the country’s Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, it will invest ₩2 trillion ($2 billion) in order to develop digital textbooks for all subjects and all schools by 2015.
The new digital textbooks will not only contain the contents of ordinary textbooks, but also utilise other reference resources such as multimedia in order to help children learn better. The government also wants to build a cloud computing system in all schools, so that pupils can access the library of digital textbooks at any moment from their tablets.
Kids from low-income families will also receive free tablets so that they can take advantage of the Korea Education and Research Information Service. According to a ministry official: “It will be up to schools to decide which digital textbooks to choose for students in what year in what subject. We don’t expect the shift to digital textbooks to be difficult as students today are very accustomed to the digital environment.” Online classes will also be encouraged so that students can catch up on any material that they miss. Any online lessons will count as attendance.
Geez, first schools allow calculators in maths exams and now this? Let’s just hope kids won’t be able to access the internet during exams…
