According to the new law on education, from 2015, all textbooks intended for Russian schools must be duplicated in electronic form. Thus, students and teachers will choose for themselves which book or device they use to teach.
Naturally, such a significant modernization of the education system has a number of specific advantages and disadvantages. So, many parents and teachers are concerned, first of all, about the impact of e-books on the health (in particular, vision) of students. The fact is that according to sanitary and epidemiological standards, even high school students should not work with the device for more than 25 minutes in a row. It is also worth considering that educational literature has a rather complex specifics and it is possible to develop a sufficient number of textbooks in such a short period of time only with sufficient financial motivation of publishers, which are in no hurry to introduce technologies that are obviously unprofitable for them.
Another obvious obstacle to modernization is teacher training. However, the authors of the law reassure that only within the framework of the Intel program, 1 million domestic teachers received the necessary skills to work with electronic devices, and if we add here various advanced training courses and take into account the ongoing change of generations of teachers, then training a 1.5 million army of teachers does not seem to be a problem at all.
As for the quality of the content, here electronic textbooks are many times superior to the classic paper versions - cross-references, media files and the relevance of the updated material will significantly increase the effectiveness of training. Moreover, Russian teachers already have a successful experience of introducing laptops, tablets, etc. into the educational system.
See also:
- Over 300,000 digital textbooks were downloaded from the iBooks Store in three days.
- Apple wins $ 30 million contract to supply iPads to Los Angeles schools.
- The University of Arkansas is moving to iPad-based learning.
- Amazon is trying to push the iPad out of the education system.
