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Tablet PCs instead of paper textbooks? I have mixed emotions about this concept. On one hand, I think, "Awesome! What a great way for students to be immersed in technology!" On the other hand, I can see many downfalls and dangers to this idea. For one thing, how can we be sure that the content our students are accessing is reliable and accurate? Secondly, how easy will it be to monitor what students are viewing, when they will obviously need to spend a great deal of time online? Also, I know for myself, reading print resources are much less of a strain on my eyes--after a few hours of staring at a computer screen, my eyes are so tired! What are we asking of our children if we expect them to spend that much time reading online resources instead of print resources?
Another point that I found very disturbing in this article was that the South Korean Ministry of Public Administration and Security acknowledges that 12 percent of students in the country are addicted to the internet. To combat this, "the government...plans to increase the number of counselors dealing with Internet addition to 5,500 next year," according to the Associated Press. It's dismaying that their response to this addiction is to handle it after-the-fact via counseling. I certainly hope that the issue is addressed beforehand as well, to prevent new cases as much as possible. It was somewhat reassuring, though, to read the quote by Kwon Jung-eun, saying that, "What is essential in digital learning is to promote as much interaction between teachers and students as possible, rather than just leaving the students to themselves." I hope most schools and teachers can follow through with that expectation.
The complete article, South Korea to Replace All Paper Textbooks With digital Content," posted by the Associated Press on July 25, 2011 can be viewed at :
http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2011/07/25/koreatextbooks_ap.html?intc=mvs
I can understand your reservations about this move from traditional textbooks. I bet the students will have subscriptions to online textbooks that the schools pay for just like a regular textbook. I wonder if any schools in Korea have tried this with a sample of classes before doing it with everyone. I can only imagine the planning that would need to go into a move like this. It would be interesting to see an article about how this is going in a year or so.
ReplyDeleteI find it interesting to learn that internet addiction is that much of problem in Korea. I am sure there are similar problems here in the U.S. I think having PC tablets would be very expensive for any school system to absorb the cost of such an expense, but I think it may be by some school districts. I think that your school may be able to put internet restrictions on the PC tablets, so students are not wandering off. I am glad to here they are trying to promote interaction and I think this holds true for any type of technology to be used in the classroom. I think any (grade) school teacher would need to monitor with using such a technology,and this may be more work than not using the technology.
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