Public schools will soon ride the ‘digital wave’
PUBLIC schools may soon hardly use blackboards, cartolina and Manila paper. And students will no longer have to carry heavy books and notebooks.
As future classrooms are expected to be fully digitized, students will be using laptops or tablets as text and workbooks.
Tests have been conducted in some public elementary schools, with a full rollout of digital schoolbooks scheduled in the next school year.
Beta copies of digitized books published by Vibal Publishing House Inc. (VPHI) have been given to Oranbo Elementary School in Pasig City for test runs using 900 tablets donated by Procter & Gamble (P&G) under its eStudyante program, which aims to donate one million digital devices until its centennial in 2035, reported Gaspar Vibal, VPHI executive director.
P&G and Vibal Publishing, content integrator, have partnered with Samsung, device provider, to assist government in carrying out its vision of employing digital technology in the public education system, especially in far-flung areas.
Vibal will provide the digital textbook and workbook, as well as the learning cart that will carry 45 tablets per classroom, complete with outlets for charging, a fan to keep the units cooled and a projector.
The learning cart will also be rolled out at Philippine Normal University in the third week of May so it can be tested before its launch at the public schools in 2013-14.
Using the Vibe reader, a Filipino technology developed by VPHI’s programmers, students and teachers will be able to access books in the curriculum and those by foreign authors via an interactive format.
Students will take quizzes using the book. Teachers will grade the answers immediately and send students their test scores.
This will allow students and teachers to determine if the lesson has been absorbed, Vibal explained.
Digital books may be accessed using either the Android or Windows 7 or 8 operating system, even without an Internet connection, he added. There will also be no need to look for the meaning of a word in the glossary. The meanings would be displayed by clicking on the words, Vibal said. He added readers could highlight and write on top of the digital book.
Vibal said some 8,000 children in public and private schools were now using the digital book. La Salle Greenhills began using it in its honors class in 2007. Other children had since been supplied with tablets, he said.
But Vibal said a study should be conducted to determine if the devices and the software would make students more intelligent. He said, while he did not not know if it made children smarter, he knew that it made them more active in searching for knowledge.