THE SYSTEM OF DIGITAL TEXTBOOKS IMPLEMENTATION: THE EXPERIENCE OF SOUTH KOREA

Abstract

The article deals with the problem of the implementation of digital textbooks into the academic activity. This problem has come into sharp focus in the frame of informational society development. The educational system of South Korea has achieved a significant success in this area. The author analyses some conditions and patterns that foster achieving positive results of using digital textbooks. The author comes to a conclusion that accomplishments and solutions in the educational area of South Korea that were discovered while researching will be useful and helpful for a creative (selective) usage in a problem solving process of similar issues in Ukraine. In the context of reforming school education, the Ministry of education, science and technologies of South Korea (MEST), in order to satisfy the needs of the ХХІ century, to reduce the demand for private education, to provide with an equal access to quality education to all students with no exceptions declared the “Digital textbook” program on the 8 of March 2007. Since the pace of informational load is continually increasing, it is quite common for a textbook content to become obsolete by the time it is published (for instance, textbooks of informational technologies). Besides, none of the books can physically contain a full scope of the information required for the teaching of any subject. Continuous using the alternative materials has led to the point that a textbook is no longer taken as a single source of knowledge. That is why the government of South Korea has set a top-priority to develop and implement digital textbooks which is one of the most important factors of satisfying needs of modern society in a fast growing scope of knowledge and information as well as providing well-timed and adapted to the individual needs and level of development education — the main purpose of the education of ХХІ century. In accordance with the official definition of MEST, a textbook as a basic teaching aid that contains existing learning materials from school textbooks, reference textbooks, different study guides and dictionaries, multimedia materials that can be used at any time and any place and allows to adjust learning considering individual skills of a student and his knowledge without any limitations in time and space [1]. The purpose of implementing digital textbooks is creating an autonomous environment of ubiquitous learning that will enable each student to study and do own research at any time both at school and at home and will help to cut the cost for private education and provide children from distant areas and those who have special educational needs with a proper education. In addition to that, digital textbooks allow teachers and students to use advanced technologies for video, animation, virtual reality as well as provide with active and interactive learning at real-time and access to the latest updated of professional databases [4, p. 78].