Japan schools to use digital textbooks for English classes from 2024 academic year – The Mainichi

5 comments

1. Will this be good or bad?

2. That’s surprisingly progressive. Wow.

3. I’m completely making assumptions here, but this is how I see this playing out. Mandate from on high is delivered, “All the textbooks shall be digitized!” not fully understanding that it takes computers, tablets, and a robust wifi network to make this work in practice. I get the feeling that most schools don’t have the kind of IT support that is necessary to implement this successfully, but what do I know?

4. So much to say but I’ll just go with…..

   Well that’s nice a move to ICT in the classroom, I’m all for it! Now there will only be 5 books on the desk instead of 6 plus a device, so no real space saving and 10 kids fighting for 6 free power outlets around the class because their device is out of power.

   My school currently uses 5 supplementary books to go with the textbook, I shit you not. Most classes I’m hopping over books and water bottles placed in the aisle because the kids don’t have enough room on their desks. Maybe next, bigger desks, smaller books, bigger aisles…../s

5. Why is this good? It seems to me that kids don’t need any more time staring at screens, and I think most of us know that it’s easier to concentrate on and annotate a printed page.