South Korea Will Replace All Paper With Tablets In Schools By 2015
Tue, 05/07/2011 - 5:57pm | by Nur Mohammed
In the most obvious move ever that will never be imitated by anyone, South Korea has announced that it plans to replace textbooks and all paper in its schools by 2015, Engadget reports.
A Korean boy is learning digitally at school
It looks like they're not going to go with a specific tablet like the iPad but have a special tablet made, which seems questionable. But, after all, South Korea is the home of Samsung, a big tablet maker and a very politically powerful conglomerate.
Textbooks would be delivered over the cloud and students could participate in remote classes.
It's obvious why this is a great idea. Yes, computers and tablets are no education panacea, but it's still striking how indistinguishable today's schools are from their 19th century counterpart.
By 2015, the entire school-age curriculum will be delivered on an array of computers, smart phones and tablets, and the government is going to spend $2.4 billion buying them.
And given the choice of Apple’s iPad and the local Samsung tablets, it isn’t hard to see who is favorite to land the deal.
Some schools on the peninsula are already using textbooks displayed on notebook computers, but when it comes to choice of tablets, how likely is it that the government will choose the iPad or any other tablet other than those manufactured by South Korean electronics giant Samsung.
It is a fascinating experiment, and hugely audacious. But Korea regularly ranks highly in international education comparison. Just last month, Korea came top in an OECD survey testing how 15-year olds use computers and the Internet to learn.
