
South Korea plans to convert all textbooks to digital - codelion
http://www.engadget.com/2011/07/03/south-korea-plans-to-convert-all-textbooks-to-digital-swap-back/
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jahmed
One nice side effect of having digital textbooks (in college) is it deals with
the pesky second market for used books. One course, one book, one non-
transferable license for the quarter. Sweet no more beer money after finals.

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int3rnaut
While this might be true in some schools, I think Digital Textbooks can be the
double edged swords of beer money on a world stage at least in the early
stages. I actually saved money by not having to buy textbooks because our
school digitized the library--no doubt further down the line publishers and
even Authors (read: professors) will try and monetize that system when they
realize scholastic book sales are down but until then, drink up my friend.

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w1ntermute
Knowing SK, this is probably just the result of giving a special deal to a
chaebol that has cozy relations with the government. Noble goals such as
advancing the state of the art in education are the last things on their
minds.

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int3rnaut
I think I'm in the minority here by saying this because I am not as
technically savvy as most of you, but after reading some of the comments on
the article page, I'm actually happy that the United States and Canada haven't
rushed into this--call me old fashioned, but I think as great as it would be
to have your own little tablet for school--there's a lot to be said about the
typical worldly adventures young students get into by not being absorbed by
the screen of a machine. Don't get me wrong, computers probably do need to be
more incorporated into the school system (I know I would have liked a
programming course in elementary school) but it shouldn't be all encompassing,
which is what I sort of see with the steps South Korea is taking.

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Apocryphon
There's a big difference between children's picture books and college
textbooks, though. College texts are clunky, overpriced behemoths that are
discard year after year for superflous installments. Owning a book in hardcopy
becomes worthless if the student is unable to annotate in it and treat it as
his or her own because they plan on reselling it afterwards to get some money
back.

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roundsquare
It's worse in law school. > Some of the books are enormous A lot of people I
know get their books cut into smaller pieces and rebound because the books are
so heavy. > Annotating the books is a necessity for many people because there
is a lot of difficult reading and you need to find ways to focus on the
important bits.

I, for one, would welcome the digitization of as many law schools books as
possible.

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sandGorgon
I wonder which platform they will use for the tablet (Android, Meego.. Bada?)
and for the content format (epub/mobi). I'm assuming the textbooks would be
mainly in korean.

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antimora
Now the teacher can for sure know if you "opened" the book.

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radq
The two links at the end of the engadget article seem to have better coverage:

<http://www.technologyreview.in/blog/mimssbits/26960/>

[http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2011/06/30/2011...](http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2011/06/30/2011063001176.html)

