“Children, scroll to page 3!”

Last week, 2oceansVibe reported on an amazing new effort by Apple to digitise existing school textbook libraries and introduce applications that allow teachers to create multimedia textbooks using their own materials.

Now a private school in Johannesburg, Kingsmead Girls College, is making it mandatory for Grade 6 and up students to bring iPad’s to school, as the college intends to conduct lessons using digital architecture as soon as July this year. Mandatory, as in, don’t expect to get a paper text book instead.

Not that parents who send their little ladies to Kingsmead are going to worry about dropping R5 000 on an iPad for little Chloe or Radclyffe, since tuition fees at that college range up to R78 000 per year for matric. The school IT department reportedly chose Apple because of “the company’s extensive involvement in education”.

Several other larny schools in Gauteng are considering a similar move to tablet-based learning, including Saheti, in Bedfordview, and King David, in Linksfield, while Cape Town-based private schools like Bishops and Reddam also admit the wind is moving in a digital direction when it comes to education.

Educational psychologists are divided on the benefits of a move to digital-based learning in classrooms, but a more fundamental question is posed for the millions of South African learners who are not in private schools and do not have access to digital devices such as iPads and Wifi networks to enhance their learning. Is this move only going to make the South African information gap between the rich and the poor wider?

Says Doram Isaacs of the NGO Equal Education,

According to government statistics, 3600 schools don’t even have electricity. It’s going to take decades to take South African education into the modern world. But we should still be experimenting with tablet computing and technology in poor environments.

For it’s part, the government’s Department of Basic Education has issued a White Paper on electronic education, seeking ways to enhance digital connectivity and access in South African schools, but don’t look for that iPad or Galaxy Tab rollout just yet, as only 23% of South African schools have internet access at all. Sorry poor kids, paper textbooks for you again this year.

[Source: TIMES Live]