SEOUL — Five years ago, South Korea mapped out a plan to transform its
education system into the world's most cutting-edge. The country would
turn itself into a "knowledge powerhouse," one government report
declared, breeding students "equipped for the future." These students
would have little use for the bulky textbooks familiar to their
parents. Their textbooks would be digital, accessible on any screen of
their choosing. Their backpacks would be much lighter.
By setting out to swap traditional textbooks for digital ones, the
chief element of its plan for transformation, South Korea tried to
anticipate the future — and its vision has largely taken shape with
the global surge of tablets, smartphones and e-book readers.
But South Korea, among the world's most wired nations, has also seen
its plan to digitize elementary, middle and high school classrooms by
2015 collide with a trend it didn't anticipate: Education leaders here
worry that digital devices are too pervasive and that this young
generation of tablet-carrying, smartphone-obsessed students might
benefit from less exposure to gadgets, not more.
Those concerns have caused South Korea to pin back the ambition of the
project, which is in a trial stage at about 50 schools. Now, the full
rollout won't be a revolution: Classes will use digital textbooks
alongside paper textbooks, not instead of them. First- and
second-graders, government officials say, probably won't use the
gadgets at all.
The newest thinking, in the eyes of some education experts here, calls
into question South Korea's long-held tenet that technology
automatically brings progress. The JoongAng Ilbo, one of Seoul's major
daily newspapers, warned in an editorial about the country's
"exaggerated trust" in digital education and the wrongful assumption
that wireless education means better quality.
Other countries are watching closely, because no other nation,
according to government officials here, has a similarly ambitious
digital plan. The nearest comparison might be in Florida, where
officials last year proposed phasing out traditional textbooks by
2015.
But South Korea's education system has long been known for pushing the
limits. It is among the world's most demanding: Most students meet
with private tutors or attend cram schools. Parents obsess over their
kids' achievement. South Korea has among the world's highest literacy
levels and highest private education spending.
"The concern about the digital textbook," said Kwon Cha-mi, who runs
the digital program at one of the pilot elementary schools in Seoul,
"is that young students won't have as much time to experience real
life and real things. They'll just see the whole world through a
computer screen."
At first glance, some of the trepidation sounds like the typical
concerns of an older generation that doesn't understand the new. But
South Korean students are showing the downside of uber-stimulation.
About one in 12 students between ages 5 and 9, according to a
government survey, is addicted to the Internet, meaning they become
anxious or depressed if they go without access. Some experts suggest a
similar problem in the United States, where between 8 percent and 12
percent of children show signs of Internet addiction, according to the
American Academy of Pediatrics.
Education officials here fear that if tablets and laptops become
mandatory in the classroom, students could become even more
device-dependent. They might also suffer from vision problems. Some
parents, officials say, have expressed the concern that their kids
will struggle to keep their focus on studying when using an
Internet-connected device.
Before making a complete transition to digital books, the government
should study the "health effects" on students, said Jeong Kwang-hoon,
chief of the online learning division at the Korea Education and
Research Information Service, a government-sponsored institute that is
working with private companies to create digital textbooks.
Scaled-down ambitions
South Korea's education ministry never said explicitly that paper
textbooks would disappear. But the 2007 plan spoke in sweeping terms
about "overcoming the limit" of traditional learning, so education
experts here assumed as much.
Only last summer did the government unveil the specifics. South Korea
said it would introduce the first set of e-textbooks nationwide by
2015 at the latest. The content would be accessible on any device — on
tablets or laptops, in classrooms or at home, on Apples or Samsungs,
the homegrown electronics company whose rise corresponds with Korea's
economic emergence. But the plan was scaled back, too, with officials
saying paper textbooks still need a prime place in classrooms.
"There have been some changes in ambition," said Ra Eun-jong, the
deputy director of textbook planning at the education ministry. "In
some way, paper and digital textbooks will be used together. But we
still haven't figured out the best mix. . . . It might just depend on
the teacher's personal style."
Students in classes using digital textbooks — at the beginning, they
might be used only for a few subjects, such as science and social
studies — will be able to retrieve their homework from a "cloud"
computing network, the education ministry says. Conceivably, they will
be able to access their homework in any place with Internet service or
cellphone service; they could even finish up their assignments on
their smartphones while riding Seoul's subway, where the service
network reaches underground.
At least 10 South Korean publishing companies are building digital
textbooks. The crudest versions are much like copied pages of a
traditional textbook; the pages are digital, but you can't play around
with them. The more advanced versions, though, are packed with 3-D
animation and video clips. There's also the possibility that the
textbooks can be updated in real-time — although textbooks here are
government-approved, and any changes would require a bureaucratic
review.
Most of these publishing companies have their background in
traditional textbooks, and for the moment, their developers find
themselves torn between an old model and a new one. Despite higher
upfront development costs, e-textbooks, stripped of the costly
printing process, are typically cheaper than traditional ones. South
Korea's government has always insisted on affordable textbooks, unlike
in the United States, where the market is more lucrative (South
Korea's paperbound textbooks cost about $9). But the fear among
publishers is that the move to e-textbooks will cause the entire
industry to shrink.
For now, one publishing executive says, companies are developing
e-textbooks only because the shift is inevitable.
A changing classroom
From surveys of the pilot schools, government officials here say
digital textbooks help the attitude of students. But there's no
evidence that they help or hurt grades or retention.
Digital textbooks do, though, change the very nature of the classroom.
Teachers who embrace the digital textbooks, education experts say,
become more like "companions" in the education process, not just
lecturing, but also helping students to conduct their own Google
searches and to make sense of simulations featured in the e-textbooks.
At Seoul's Guil Elementary School, where fifth- and sixth-graders
participate in the trial, every student in the digital classrooms has
a Hewlett-Packard laptop. Students toggle between their digital
textbook and the Internet, which they use like an encyclopedia for
fact-checking and research.
On this particular day, students are learning about pinhole cameras —
a simple device that captures images upside-down.
When teacher Lee Yeon-ji asks her 24 students how the device works,
she sends them to the Internet.
"I think I found something that sounds true," one student says.
Minutes later, she asks them to double-click on a video, embedded in
the digital textbook, illustrating the process. Students watch the
video either on their laptops or on a high-definition monitor at the
front of the classroom, in place of a chalkboard.
The Guil principal, observing in the back of the classroom, marvels at
the way the students follow along, speeding between searches and
simulations. "The students are focusing," Yoon Taek-joong, the
principal, says, and that sort of focus requires a digital brain.
"My brains and their brains must be totally different," Yoon says.
==
By Chico Harlan
Sunday, March 25, 2012
Special correspondent Yoonjung Seo contributed to this report.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/in-south-korean-classrooms-digital-textbook-revolution-meets-some-resistance/2012/03/21/gIQAxiNGYS_print.html
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