Hee-lim Ryu, YTN Science Executive Director, recently visited UNESCO’s Regional Bureau for Education in Asia and Pacific in Bangkok and met Director Gwang-Jo Kim to discuss possibilities to offer local public Education TVs in developing countries in South East Asia to use its Science programmes at no cost. 

“[Republic of] Korea has benefited a lot from the international community, especially at times when the country struggled financially. And this is the time to return,” said Mr. Ryu. 

The publicly funded YTN Science broadcasts a wide variety of Science programmes for kindergarten children to adults from situation comedies, documentary to quiz shows covering daily life activities, food, endangered species, to martial arts and forensic science. It is the first 24-hour science channel operated by YTN and the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology with an aim to improve science and technology in the Republic of Korea.   

On this first meeting, UNESCO Bangkok office and YTN Science agreed to establish partnerships and cooperation to distribute scientific contents for free to local public Education broadcasters in South East Asian countries to enhance science knowledge and experiences and science education.  

“This will be very useful for our member states,” said Mr. Kim of UNESCO.  

UNESCO Bangkok also assisted and coordinated a visit for YTN Science TV crew to Thailand’s Education TV under the Ministry of Education’s Office of Non-Formal and Informal Education to have initial discussions on this future project. A sample of the YTN Science documentary programme ‘Why a diamond is shining’ was also shown to the Education TV management.  

“Thailand and Thai people are not keen on science and we lack of science TV programmes. And we’re very interested in the scientific contents sharing by the Koran Broadcaster,” said Rakkana Tantawutho, Director of Thailand’s Education TV. 

UNESCO Bangkok is writing a concept note to propose to the Korean YTN Science and a Memorandum of Understanding/Agreement is being prepared for the launch of the project in June 2012.

These are just some examples UNESCO is highlighting in a new online publication series on mobile learning. 

The number of mobile phone accounts worldwide is approaching six billion. For every individual who goes online from a computer, two more do so from a mobile device.  Even where schools and computers are scarce, people still have mobile phones. Africa alone will account for some 735 million subscriptions by late 2012. A majority of Africans have individual access to an interactive information and communication technology for the first time in history. 

Because mobile phones are everywhere and have potentials for education, UNESCO is committed to better understanding how they can support learners, teachers, and entire education systems, particularly where educational opportunities are scarce. Around the world, the evidence for mobile learning is mounting, as described in a new UNESCO Working Paper Series on Mobile Learning. 

The papers, published online, provide concrete examples of the way mobile technologies are providing professional development opportunities for teachers in rural Mozambique; extending the reach of learning management systems in Mongolia; helping young people read and comment on short stories in South Africa; and enabling high school students in North America to better understand the ecosystems surrounding lakes. 

Along with providing concrete examples, the series shows how mobile technologies can respond to educational challenges in different contexts; supplement and enrich formal schooling; and make learning more accessible, equitable, and personalized.

During a high-level dialogue hosted by the UN International Telecommunication Union (ITU), leading figures in gender empowerment and technology debated and defined a roadmap for more successful approaches to attract school-age girls to the technology field, and agreed to work together to change attitudes that make this area of study unpopular among young women.

Participants in the debate included the Deputy Executive Director of UN Women, Lakshmi Puri, the Vice President of the European Commission and Commissioner for the Digital Agenda, Neelie Kroes, and the Manager of Global Public Policy for Facebook, Sarah Wynn-Williams, among others.

“Over the coming decade, there are expected to be two million more information and communications technology (ICT) jobs than there are professionals to fill them. This is an extraordinary opportunity for girls and young women – in a world where there are over 70 million unemployed young people,” said the ITU Secretary-General, Hamadoun Touré.

Mr. Touré emphasized the need to cast aside outdated attitudes that are keeping young girls from considering technology as a career option. 

“ICT careers are not ‘too hard’ for girls. ICT careers are not unfeminine. And ICT careers are certainly not boring,” he added. “Encouraging girls into the technology industry will create a positive feedback look – in turn creating inspiring new role models for the next generation.”

The debate was one of many events organized in more than 70 countries around the world to mark Girls in ICT Day, which is celebrated every year on the fourth Thursday in April. 

Many events extended invitations to teenage girls and university students to spend the day at the offices of ICT companies, government agencies or academic institutions and to meet with female role models working in the technology field, so they could obtain a better appreciation of what it is like to work in the ICT sector.

Participants at the high-level dialogue, which was held at New York’s Institute of International Education, also had the opportunity to hear the story of Joanne O’Riordan, who is one of only seven people in the world with Total Amelia, a congenital birth condition causing the absence of all four limbs.

Ms. O’Riordan, 16, told the audience how she had used technology from an early age to express herself. 

“I use technology in all aspects of my life… I was just one year old when I first began to explore the use of technology with our old computer. I figured out how to use it by simply moving my ‘hand’ and chin at a faster speed,” she said. “Today I can type 36 words a minute and for someone with no limbs, I think that’s an incredible achievement.”

On the first day, a number of representatives at European and national level, including Xavier Prats Monné Deputy Director for Education, Culture, Multilingualism and Youth welcomed all the participants stressing that“ eTwinning offers the possibility for teachers, beside their formal training course […] that teachers learn from each other, they learn new methods of teaching, they are confronted to different experiences to different realities[…] this is the merit of eTwinning”.

The keynote speaker for the conference, Anne Looney, is an inspirational educational expert well known in Ireland and beyond for her contribution and thinking on curriculum reform. Her speech on “Convictions and connections” was very engaging for teachers as she defined how teachers networks are changing the way we change "In e Twinning, teachers connect with teachers so that students can connect. Already, eTwinning leaders are thinking about how students might be innovators here… to explore ways in which they might be innovators, and might learn to connect with each other and propose their own projects in student led, teacher supported work."
  
Another highlight of the first day was the prize-giving ceremony for the winners of the eTwinning Prizes 2012 competition. From over 300 project submissions, the winners of the three age categories and three special categories were awarded. This year for the first time a new prize was instituted: the best eTwinning project. The winner of this award was chosen by a vote of all the National Support Services and the winner was the project ATOM.

On the second day, participants broke up into thirty six workshops that ranged from a view of Teachers’ profession in 2025 to ways of building Effective School Teams.

Many other activities happened to make the Conference a great opportunity for a fruitful exchange between teachers such as the exhibition area which featured stands showing eTwinning activities in a range of themes as well as displays and demonstrations of eTwinning tools and activities.
 
The last day opened with a keynote speech from Marc Durando, Director of the European Schoolnet on the topic of eTwinning a model for future schooling. “In the classroom of the future learning will take place in a media rich environment where teachers will guide their pupils to develop, exchange, and create their ideas by interaction and collaboration with flexible learning spaces and innovative learning scenarios comprising inside and outside school learning processes” .

This was followed by an interactive discussion that took place between a panel composed of teachers, experts in the educational field and Adam Pokorny from the European Commission. Have a look on the results !

What is eTwinning?
eTwinning uses ICT-based support, tools and services to make it easier for schools to form partnerships in any subject area. 

The scheme is part of the EU's Comenius programme and receives around €10 million in funding each year. It does not finance individual projects but offers tools and support to teachers and pupils such as the eTwinning portal and seminars for teachers.

Each year, a jury composed of leading experts from the education world selects six innovative projects for their concrete and positive impact on communities and societies. These winning projects gain global visibility and receive a prize of 20,000 US$.

Join the 2012 Competition 
WISE invites holders of outstanding projects from all sectors and levels of education to apply for the 2012 WISE Awards.

In addition to benefiting from the recognition of leading experts, the Finalists and Winners are given a voice through:

• The WISE communications and media platform, which include the WISE website, social media, the Awards blog, global media coverage, year-round press relations activities and the Euronews TV magazine Learning World 
  
  
• Multimedia productions: such as video interviews, web documentaries
  
  
• WISE publications: for example the first WISE Book, written by Charles Leadbeater, Innovation in Education, Lessons from Pioneers around the World, featuring a number of projects from the Awards community
  
  
• Participation in the annual WISE Summit and in other events organized in collaboration with WISE

Find Inspiration and Support Recognized Best Practices 
Since the creation of the Awards in 2009, over 1,300 applications from 116 countries have been received, resulting in 98 Finalists and 18 winning projects. These selected Winners and Finalists set new standards for the international community and in mid-September this year the Community will welcome six additional Winners. The great diversity of projects recognized so far constitutes a pool of best practices that WISE intends to make accessible to all, in order to grow, adapt and replicate innovative educational solutions.

The Award Ceremony will take place on November 14 at the World Innovation Summit for Education (WISE) in Doha, Qatar.

The OERAsia study (http://www.oerasia.org/oerasiasurvey) was conducted to explore the use of Open Educational Resources (OERs) in the Asian region especially with the view to encourage the development of an OER community that would share learning resources across institutions and nations. Several regions representative of South, South East and East Asia, which show sparks of enthusiasm in OER, were selected as subjects for study. 

However, as the study was conducted both online and offline, the respondents weren't necessarily limited to these few regions. The scope of the survey was clearly defined to include the broad topics covering learning content, tools and implementation resources. The topics were then sub divided into smaller areas resulting in a comprehensive survey instrument consisting of seventy plus independent items aimed specifically at individuals and institutions.  There were several objectives which the study aimed to achieve by the end of its 27 month lifespan. All of these objectives fall under the broader categories of awareness, use, re-use, policy and legal environment in the regions.

Out of 576 responses received from academics who have been exposed to OER, 420 responses from individual OER users and 98 responses from institutional representatives were identified as valid (Figure 1). The analysis of the data mainly concentrated on the key regions, namely Malaysia, Vietnam, Indonesia, India, Philippines, Japan, China, Hong Kong China and South Korea, which were identified at the outset. However it also took note of the responses from other countries such as Bangladesh, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka as well. The respondent profile showed a good mix of senior, mid-career and junior academics from public, private not-for-profit as well as private for-profit institutions. The responses also captured both undergraduate as well as post graduate academics in a ratio representative of typical Higher Education institutions.  

Figure 1 Participant Profile

Before probing the practice with respect to OER, the survey tried to identify the extent of the practice with respect to digital resources which forms the superset of OER. A clear definition of Digital Resources was provided to the respondents to ensure that a broad canvas is covered pertaining to a set frame. 

Looking at the use of digital resources, it was found that text based resources were the more widely used types in the region. It was also encouraging to see that digital film and video were used by half of the respondents. This trend will possibly pickup more in the future due to video sharing portals such as YouTube and Vimeo offering large volumes of quality video material. News and other media sources have also become important suggesting that students are exposed to the latest trends in the world. 

Among the digital resources which weren’t that widely used, simulations and animations are worth noting as there are large volumes of rich resources of this type available especially for science education. One possible reason for this low use could be the lack of technical skills required to use and re-use them. Audio materials were also not widely preferred. This could be due to the substitution of audio material with audio/video material. Another interesting trend identified was that OER repositories and course packs were not very widely used in Asia even though generous amounts of funding have been spent on the creation of these resources. When looking at how users locate digital resources, generic search engines such as Google and Yahoo! take precedence. Although these search engines are quite apt at locating digital resources, it is somewhat doubtful whether the average user would have the capacity to conduct advanced searches to locate openly licensed content. 

The study further suggests that one of the more important areas to focus on with respect to policy would be to provide more support for the use of digital resources. Among the areas which show a lack of support; locating resources, accessing the quality of the resources and copyright concerns play a major role. However, it seems that the practice of using or creating digital resources is not seen as a career move but a social responsibility of an educator to share knowledge. This in turn creates a sense of community among the academics and students. As far as barriers are concerned, three key points stand out in the responses indicating that a lack of access to software tools and a lack of technological infrastructure at the students’ end still inhibit the wider use of digital resources. These barriers should be of special interest to policy makers at a national level as public infrastructure would need to be upgraded to facilitate the wider use of digital resources.   

OER were defined as “educational materials and resources offered freely and openly for anyone to use and under some licenses to re-mix, improve and redistribute” in the survey. The data suggests that the use of OER is widespread in Asia contrary to the general understanding among advocates. This then begs the questions whether advocates are preaching to the converted or whether there is still a sense of confusion with respect to what OER really are. The research team believes that there is some truth to the first question as many of the respondents were exposed to the Open University community which is somewhat knowledgeable about OER. They also believe that there is a considerable amount of confusion among academics with respect to the difference between digital resources and OER. However, comparing the publication with use, it seems that a majority haven’t published OER in their careers. Nevertheless it is promising to see that about 60% of the respondents are willing to publish their work as OER in the future.

Resources freely downloaded from the internet seem to be the favoured choice for academic use (Figure 2). OER produced by self are also widely used in teaching. It is also worth noting that the use of OER repositories such as Connexions is only popular in countries such as Vietnam where there is a strong national OER presence. 74% of the respondents indicated that they have produced OER in one form or the other at some point in their career. This again could be a result of the Open University influence on the respondents and the confusion regarding the concept of OER.

Figure 2 Sources of OER

Relating to the models discussed in literature for sustaining OER efforts, it is apparent that institutions need to collaborate with each other to harness the full potential of OER through partnerships and exchanges. However, the data suggests that institutions are not collaborating in the production or exchange of OER. This again is a wakeup call to the policymakers at institutional level to include collaboration as a significant component in their OER policies. 

Lack of awareness, skills and time still impedes the OER movement among academics suggesting a need for more capacity building. It is however encouraging to see that technological infrastructure is no longer a barrier at least at the institutional level. This is especially true in the case of open universities as many of them have established robust technological infrastructure. The data suggests that there are still concerns with respect to copyright and the legal use of OER. Awareness of repositories is also mentioned as a major concern. This is affirmed by the lack of use of repositories to locate OER. These concerns again hold true with respect to the publication of OER. However, it is apparent that a large majority of the individuals and institutions are aware of current copyright laws. As such it can be concluded that the concerns regarding copyright and legalities in the use and publication of OER are not due to a lack of awareness but a possible confusion in the understanding of what is permitted and what is not in the realm of OER. This point is further confirmed as a majority of the individuals and institutions are yet to use a licensing scheme such as the Creative Commons to express and exercise the 4R’s of OER. Therefore, the data suggests that policy makers should pay special attention to furthering awareness regarding copyright and the adoption of widely used licenses such as Creative Commons when setting policies at institutional and national level. The respondents agree that the use of open educational resources will have great impact with respect to the reduction of costs for both students and institutions promoting a win-win situation. It is also encouraging to see that OER are seen as a movement which can potentially improve the standards of living for many developing countries in Asia. 

In conclusion, the study suggests four points for action: (i) further support and capacity building in the use of digital resources and OER; (ii) fostering a culture of collaboration among institutions; (iii) raising awareness and capacity building in open content licensing; and (iv) the establishment of institutional policies to facilitate the wider use of OER. These four points need to be taken into consideration when contemplating the future of the whole OER movement in Asia.

The trends identified from the overall data were compared and verified against the trends in the individual regions during the third OERAsia workshop held in Hong Kong (April 2012). Further statistical analysis of the data will be conducted in the future. For more details on the survey instrument, methodology, list of collaborating researchers and institutions; results and data visit (http://www.oerasia.org/oerasiasurvey). This research project is funded through the Grant (# 102791) generously made by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) of Canada through an umbrella study on Openness and Quality in Asian Distance Education and is anchored at Wawasan Open University, Penang, Malaysia.

Adapted from Abeywardena, I. S., & Dhanarajan, G. (2012). OER in Asia Pacific: Trends and Issues. Presented at the Policy Forum for Asia and the Pacific: Open Education Resources organised by UNESCO Bangkok and Commonwealth of Learning (COL), Thailand.

Dialog Axiata PLC, a telecommunications company from Sri Lanka, has developed a programme to enable access to high quality teaching for rural students through the provision of satellite-linked televisions. The Nenasa programme has the potential to solve urban-rural divides as well as raise the overall quality of education, thus achieving better learning outcomes throughout Sri Lanka.

Nenasa’s History
The project began in April of 2005 with a pilot project using broadband technology in five schools. As the evaluation results indicated that broadband technology would not be ideal for scaling, Dialog introduced Satellite DTH technology as an alternate content delivery mechanism in May of 2007. In January of 2008, a Memorandum of Understanding between the Ministry of Education, the National Institute of Education (NIE) and Dialog Axiata PLC was signed. Dialog declared the Nenasa channel to be an outright gift to the Government of Sri Lanka and the Ministry of Education.

Nenasa was formally launched on July 20^th, 2009, and currently extends to more than six hundred schools through-out Sri Lanka. Currently, the Nenasa channel broadcasts video-based lectures to its schools between 6.00am and 6.00pm. The programme is operated by the Ministry of Education, while a high quality telecast edition of the national education curriculum is developed by the National Institute of Education.

Lessons will be recorded at the television recording studio at NIE, and broadcast via a dedicated channel Dialog Nenasa on Dialog Satellite TV to schools connected to the network. The channel will be supplemented by a Learning Management System (LMS) through which the interactive element will be facilitated. Schools are selected by the Ministry with consideration for dispersion, language, available facilities, and other factors. 

Currently, the primary focus of the lessons is Advanced Level and Ordinary Level subjects in Sinhala and Tamil. Summary lessons will also be available for other grades. The programmes are produced by in-house technicians at NIE, with experienced teachers conducting the lessons. Apart from the lessons on syllabus content, documentary-type programmes will also be produced with on-location filming. Additional programmes may be sourced as Nenasa evolves.

The Dialog-University of Moratuwa Laboratory created a Learning Management System to facilitate the interactive element of the channel. It will carry timetables, lesson outlines, quizzes, etc. as well as pre-recorded lessons in audio-visual format. Voice and text chatting facility will enable teachers and students to interact. 

Goals and Future Initiatives
A supervisory committee comprising senior officials from Dialog, NIE and MOE provides high-level guidance for the Nenasa programme. Dialog has also engaged Educate Lanka Foundation, a 501-c-3 non-profit organization addressing educational issues in Sri Lanka and other developing countries.

Nenasa aims to achieve the following:

• Provide quality learning outcomes for students in resource deficient areas of Sri Lanka
• Enable equal access to high quality teaching material, including non-formal skills, particularly for rural students
• Introduce rural students to modern technology and its possibilities
• Provide the MoE and the NIE an effective outreach methodology to enhance the skills of teachers
• Overcome legacy development challenges and resource deficiencies prevalent in the education sector related to teaching, and thereby leapfrog critical government initiatives

Future initiatives include video production training sessions that will raise the capacity of NIE to produce high-quality content, the development of a comprehensive monitoring and evaluation system to better guide the evolution of the Nenasa project, scaling of videos with both formal and informal curriculum to provide a broad range of content for the Sri Lankan population, and the expansion of Nenasa to 2000 schools by 2013.

The Nenasa programme is an important step in harnessing the potential of technology to bridge geographic and socioeconomic divides within Sri Lanka. As additional internal and external stakeholders are engaged, the benefits are expected to spread throughout the region.

Contact: Seth Leighton, Educate Lanka Foundation, sleighton@educatelanka.org

This article written by Clayton R. Wright (Canada) and Sunday A. Reju (Namibia) builds on existing information and communication technology (ICT) implementation plans in Africa and on the experiences of organizations and initiatives such as the African Virtual University (AVU), OER Africa, the South African Institute of Distance Education (SAIDE), and the Teacher Education in Sub-Saharan Africa (TESSA) Project, to present one view of the benefits, challenges, and steps that could be taken to realize the potential of OERs in sub-Saharan Africa. 

Thus, the article focuses on the factors necessary for creating and sustaining a vision for OER development and deployment; developing and distributing resources with an open license; improving technology infrastructure and reducing the cost of Internet access; establishing communities of educational collaborators; sustaining involvement in the OER initiative; producing resources in interoperable and open formats; establishing and maintaining the quality of OERs; providing local context to address national and regional needs and conditions; informing the public about OERs; and taking the initiative to build on the knowledge, skills, and experiences of others.

In order to assist educators and decision makers, links to a variety of resources are provided.

Besides strengthening capacities to adopt Open Access (OA) and to serve as a clearing-house on global OA debate, the 187th session of the Executive Board identified provision of upstream policy advice as the core priority while approving the Open Access Strategy on UNESCO’s contribution to promotion of Open Access to scientific information and research. 

Building capacities in Member States for Open Access is a necessary but not sufficient condition for promotion of OA. Creating an enabling policy environment in Member States for OA is therefore a priority. The new publication will serve the needs of OA policy development at the government, institutional and funding agency level.

The overall objective of the Policy Guidelines is to promote Open Access in Member States by facilitating understanding of all relevant issues related to Open Access. Specifically, it is expected that the document shall:

• enable Member State institutions to review their position on access to scientific information in the light of the Policy Guidelines;
• assist in the choice of appropriate OA policy in the specific contexts of Member States; and
• facilitate adoption of OA policy in research funding bodies and institutions by integrating relevant issues in the national research systems.

Thus the guidelines are not prescriptive in nature, but are suggestive to facilitate knowledge-based decision-making to adopt OA policies and strengthen national research systems.

The content of the publication is organized in to nine sections:

• The Development of Open Access to Scientific Information and Research,
• Approaches to Open Access,
• The Importance of Open Access,
• The Benefits of Open Access,
• Business Models,
• Copyright and Licensing,
• Strategies to Promote Open Access,
• Policy Framework for Open Access, and
• Summary Policy Guidelines.

The Policy Guidelines can be used by individuals as a basic text on Open Access and related policies. The publication will be useful to both the beginners as well as experienced in the world of Open Access, and will assist the decision-makers, administrators and research managers to focus on OA policy development.

Open Access is at the heart of UNESCO’s mandate to provide universal access to information and knowledge, and the UNESCO Open Access programme shall continue to facilitate policy dialogue in Member States, share knowledge and best practices in the field of Open Access, and build and share local capacities through North-South and South-South co-operation to create knowledge societies for sustainable development.

It is based on the review of relevant academic research and concepts related to the open educational content as applied to the Chinese context.  The study contains analysis of the technological prerequisites for the use of ICT in the higher education of China, governmental and institutional support to the promotion of OER that ensured successful implementation of major OER projects in China, legal and copyright perspectives with regard to OER as well as the summary of solutions proposed by the Creative Commons China Mainland.

The authors have analyzed the importance of OER to meet the challenges faced by the educational system; educators’ attitude towards OER;  obstacles to a wider development and use of OER as well as the measures to be taken in the areas of financing, technology and infrastructure, quality assurance and sustainability, public awareness and promotion, pedagogy, etc.

Each course includes a full set of class lectures produced in high-quality video accompanied by other course materials as syllabus, suggested readings, and problem sets. The lectures are available as transcripts, downloadable videos, and audio-only version. Anyone interested in the lecture can view the materials and videos online, without needing to register for the course.

Open Yale courses is in line with other similar open courseware providers, such as the lectures offered by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) or Stanford School of Engineering.

The website, curated by a reputable group led by Dan Colman (editor), organizes the resources in categories.  A menu bar in the home page classifies the resources into five broad groups; a side menu lists down the collected resources in further detail. 

To date, there are 450 online courses, 475 movies, 40 language lessons, 300 eBooks and hundreds of free audio books collected by Open Culture.  Listen to a podcast of a Shakespeare play, take an online course on general biology, watch free Charlie Chaplin movies, or even learn how to speak Hindi – all these you can do with the help of the media resources at Open Culture. 

The “Cultural Icons” section is also a delight, as it features rarely seen and heard interviews and talks of scientific and cultural luminaries.  Website updates can also be accessed through RSS feed, email and social networks. 

Expect Open Culture to be more educationally relevant, as it just started a crowdsourcing initiative of free educational resources for kids.

The results indicate that the program increased the ratio of computers per student from 0.12 to 1.18 in treatment schools. 

This expansion in access translated into substantial increases in use both at school and at home. 

No evidence is found of effects on enrolment and test scores in Math and Language. 

Some positive effects are found, however, in general cognitive skills as measured by Raven’s Progressive Matrices, a verbal fluency test and a Coding test.

In 1995, the Presidential Education Commission drafted an agenda which, for Korean policymakers still serves as the cornerstone for ICT in education development. Globalization and its effects on the future development of education have brought lifelong learning and open education to the forefront of the ongoing discourse taking place in national education planning. 

The Korean Ministry of Education, Science and Technology established in 2007 the “Digital Textbooks Generalization Plan” which launched a pilot project aimed at developing digital textbook prototypes for six subjects in thirteen elementary pilot schools. 

In the context of the Korean education system, digital textbooks can be defined as, “Textbooks that integrate the contents of the existing textbooks, supplementary books, work books and glossaries with multimedia and materialize them with various interactive functions for students to study according to their characteristics and academic levels” (MEST 2010 Adapting Education to the Information Age: 24). 

The Digital Textbook initiatives in Korea pursue the ongoing policy goal of individualized learning based on the interests and aptitudes of learners. It aims to break away from limited knowledge in paper textbooks and to provide students with extended environments where they can have access to diversified and creative knowledge. 

In 2011 the Korean government set the goal of building a powerful country with talented people and decided to pursue SMART education policies for the 21st century. SMART (Self-directed, Motivated, Adaptive, Resource free and Technology embedded) education is an, “Intelligent and customized teaching and learning system” (MEST 2011 Presidential Report). As the initials of SMART indicate, students are expected to learn with fun, motivated, and self-directed ways based on their level and aptitude in a resource-enriched environment.

The major five pillars of SMART education policy consists of incorporating digital textbooks into the school system by 2015; promoting online classes and assessment; improving the legal framework and copyright laws; developing the capacity of teachers; and constructing a cloud computing-based infrastructure. Thanks to a cloud-based computing environment, digital textbook content can be readily downloaded so that students can access up-to-date information anytime and anywhere.

The overall strategy of developing digital textbooks has been formulated through stakeholder participation, advisory meetings, and pilot school field studies. Research on standard authoring tools and viewer development will be conducted for private sector reference. 

Korea’s first SMART school opened on March 2 (2012) in Sejong Special Autonomous City, a special administrative district in Chungcheongnam-do (South Chungcheong Province).  

Each student in the SMART school will be equipped with his or her own “smart pad” and can participate in classroom activities through the e-blackboard and smart pad. A total of 150 schools including 66 kindergartens, 41 primary schools, 21 lower secondary schools, 20 upper secondary schools, and two special schools will be open by 2030 in Sejong Special Autonomous City.

Hye-Kyung Yang, hky@keris.or.kr