By 2015, South Korea has vowed that their entire school system will be paperless.
Instead of requiring that students use paper textbooks (which break down and, depending on the subject, fast become outdated), South Korea’s education system will supply knowledge through online texts and sources.
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And although South Korea will be the first country to go paperless, the U.S. looks like it’s following close behind. The government is matching the $2 billion investment that South Korea has budgeted for its own curriculum worth of “Open Access” ebooks for post-secondary schools. By creating digital textbooks and then making them Open Access — in other words, available through the cloud — schools can cut down on the long-term costs of paper books. According to Macleans, “Clunky hardcover textbooks, constantly in need of repair or replacement, with built-in obsolescence, are a major expense for schools.”
NewsFeed appreciates that the move to paperless schools is inevitable. However we can’t help feeling a bit of pity for the kids of the future who will never know the joy of defacing readable school property miss out on. Oh, well there’s always lockers, right? (via Macleans)
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