Well. I think it's a good time to open a discussion about the future of the printing press in our lives.

South Korea ditches all paper textbooks and goes digital

If South Korea’s current plans hold, there won’t be a textbook in the country’s schools within four years. But it’s not an extreme cost-cutting measure: rather the plan is to deliver all lessons via electronic devices.

The idea is to go all-digital in elementary schools by 2014, extending it to the entire school system by the following year. Before then, electronic and paper technologies will be used side by side.

The aim is to make content available in a range of electronic formats. Although children will use a tablet device as their main school “textbook”, they’ll also be able to access material on smartphones and internet-enabled televisions. Homework will be completed and stored online, which will no doubt lead to dubious claims that “the dog ate my router.”

The plan is budgeted to cost 2.2 trillion won (US $2.4 billion), which will include the costs of providing devices to children and digitizing the content. There doesn’t seem to be a firm decision yet as to what brand and model tablets will be used, if indeed there is a consistent choice. There’s even speculation the government may design and commission a custom-made tablet, which sounds like a pretty lucrative contract to win.

There’ll be free tablet devices for children from low-income families, which suggests better off children will be expected to use their own devices. That may be a clue that the system will use multiple platforms.

South Korea does have several advantages when it comes to implementing such a scheme. It often tops world charts for both availability and speed of internet access. The government reports its children are rated highest in a survey of “digital literacy” among 34 nations. And it has the world’s lowest birth rate, meaning school children make up a relatively low proportion of the population, thus making public funding of such schemes more sustainable.

http://tech.blorge.com/Structure:%20...-goes-digital/