Continuing+Development+of+South+Korean+E-Learning

 =**Lessons Learned** =

South Korea’s 15 year journey on the seas of e-learning, even with a good map, has not been without its challenges and lessons.


 * First, and potentially the most pressing, is the need for renewed financial commitment to servicing and replacing old infrastructure . One would be safe in assuming that the large numbers of vintage Pentium I-III class computers (25% of the total in Secondary schools) listed on the MEST website are a legacy of the first five year plan, completed over 10 years ago. In addition to old infrastructure, technical personnel are still centralized at the MPOE level. Schools need in-house technical personal to deal with problems in a timely fashion.


 * Second, the dynamic and diverse nature of technologies, that support e-learning, requires comprehensive teacher training that goes beyond operational procedure. Teachers must learn to become flexible and creative in relation to identifying and exploiting new teaching and learning opportunities.

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 * Finally, the creation of e-textbooks is not simply a process of making digital copies of paper pages.Policy makers and developers must understand that e-textbooks are an entirely new media, a media whose educational potential needs to be explored fully . In addition to getting the technology right, the success of the initiative also hinges on the development of successful strategies for the promotion of e-textbooks to principals and teachers.



** The Future is Now: e-Learning Un-Plugged **

MEST is investing heavily in wireless networks and wireless devices, such as tablets and smart phones, as a continuation of its u-learning strategy. In addition to wireless technologies, in 2010 MEST announced an audacious US$100 million initiative to introduce robots into the nation’s classrooms by 2013. The robots will also come with built-in “Skype” like functionality for remote teaching, technology that, incidentally, comes standard on the latest tablets and smart phones. The policy directly supports the National R&D Robotics Project and represents a considerable financial boost to the domestic robotics industry. The primary goal is to replace foreign language teachers and save money, however the anticipated positive educational outcomes for students remain vague.

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