Korea Commits to Personal Digital Learning

Technology Review reports that South Korea will replace print texts with digital versions in the next few years:

By 2014, all of South Korea’s elementary-level educational materials will be digitized, and by 2015, the entire school-age curriculum will be delivered on an array of computers, smart phones and tablets. While the country’s education ministry is yet to announce the make or model of the devices it will purchase, it has revealed it will spend $2.4 billion buying the requisite tablets and digitizing material for them.
Some schools on the peninsula are already using textbooks displayed on notebook computers, but when it comes to choice of tablets, how likely is it that the government will choose the iPad or any other tablet other than those manufactured by South Korean electronics giant Samsung, such as the Samsung Galaxy Tab or some larger variant of it?

Tom’s OpEd yesterday suggested that the shift to online assessment was driver of 1:1 computing in the US but that, like Korea, states would need to coordinate a shift to digital content to take full educational and financial advantage of the shift to digital.
[Thanks to Mike Moe’s newsletter for the link to the WSJ summary]