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Thursday, July 21, 2011

Keeping Up With Korea: All Textbooks To Be Digital by 2014 | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Keeping Up With Korea: All Textbooks To Be Digital by 2014 | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Keeping Up With Korea: All Textbooks To Be Digital by 2014

If you are already ahead of the pack, do you look over your shoulder to see how close your competitors are or do you look straight ahead and push harder to stay in the lead? For Korea, you push harder. On the 2009 PISA test, Korea was first in the Digital Reading Assessment scoring 568 (OECD nations came in at 499, China at 515, with the U.S. at 500).

A governmental strategy for decades to keep Korea economically competitive with Japan, China, the U.S., and western European nations has been to improve schools through greater classroom use of technologies (smart phones, tablets, whiteboards, television, etc.), online courses, and access to higher education. Consistent with