That’s what The Chronicle of Higher Education is reporting. In a fascinating article, the Chronicle says:
Many textbooks at Osandaewon Elementary School here are digital, and many classrooms feature a laptop on every desk. The school is part of a major e-textbook experiment run by the South Korean government, and it offers lessons for colleges looking to replace printed class materials with electronic ones. …
Jo Seong Woo, her teacher, said in a presentation after class that the biggest challenge of the project has been finding or producing quality content to put in the e-textbooks or class exercises. Doing so takes time or money to secure it from other sources.
Twenty-five schools in South Korea are participating in the pilot project, which began in 2007 with 14 schools and has grown steadily.
Officials at the school said their research showed that students in mathematics classes who used digital textbooks performed better than those with traditional materials, although no numbers were given.
However, the article points out that all is not rosy and an electronic solution seems to be high maintenance.
Thanks to Michael von Glahn for the link
An interesting article with an unsurprising result imho.
The problems mentioned are mainly to do with a) sourcing or generating content and b) note taking (maths steps).
The first ‘problem’ they claim to have encountered is to be expected in an early test of a new technology. The second ‘problem’ is in my view the result of over enthusiastic implementation of the new technology.
Why is it necessary to go from a 100% paper based environment to a 100% electronic based environment in one go ? I don’t understand this. This is reminds me of the days when the nutters in IT were predicting completely paperless offices.
I see no reason for, or benefit from, removing all paper note taking and in-class paper work. This is supposed to be a test of eBooks, not a test of totally paperless learning and typing skills.
Students should be using eTextBooks in conjunction with standard paper pads to get the best of both worlds and to test the eTextBooks on their own merits.
This study will result in a confused conclusion because it mixes apples and oranges.