Computerization of School Education

I went to New Education Expo 2012 last Saturday and that was a very impressive experience for me. One conference was about the problems and present states of teacher training of digital education materials in Korea and Singapore.

Dr.Cho said that Korea is planning that all schools need to use digital textbooks in classrooms by 2014. But the problem is whether teachers can use digital textbooks efficiently.

The Government of Korea started computerization of school education in 1996, fourteen years earlier than Japan. The Government of Japan has planned that all schools need to introduce digital textbooks by 2020, so the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communication and the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports and Technology have trials for computerization of education in some schools.

Korea is progressing the field of computerization of education in school earlier than Japan so I think Japan will have the same problems as Korea: The way that teachers use digital materials efficiently in the classroom.

In Korea, the government policy is that economic disparity should not affect educational disparities, so the government has prepared an education platform which connects school education and work at home and every student can use education materials through the internet. But in reality, Dr.Cho said, students in urban areas are very busy with cram schools. Even a law that prohibits cram schools from being open after midnight was enacted recently so it is impossible for them to do homework within their busy schedule.

Anyway, the situation is different between Korea and Japan but I think the problem will be same so we need to prepare computerization of school education and a support service for teachers who have to use digital education material in their classrooms.