Cape Town - As the world embraces the digital age, schools are advised to not scrap hard copy textbooks in favour of digital textbooks.
This comes after a leading school in Sydney, Australia, made the move to swap digital textbooks for the hard copy version. According to the school, the reason for this change was better learner comprehension and reduced distraction.
Australia’s Reddam House primary and junior high school classes have used e-textbooks on iPads. However, feedback from the students was that they preferred pages to screens. The school is set to phase out iPads in favour of laptop learning to supplement with textbooks.
“Where the school went wrong was to abolish the book in favour of digital textbooks, rather than introduce electronic means to complement learning via textbooks,” said Printing SA head, Steve Thobela. “In education it simply doesn’t work to throw out the baby with the bathwater and replace books with digital textbooks.”
Thobela says that this recent Australian example serves as an important lesson for South Africa.
In 2019, President Cyril Ramaphosa announced that plans to digitise the public school education system over the next six years.
“To prepare our children for a future that includes the Fourth Industrial Revolution, we must first get the basics right before introducing technology to the mix, such as making sure that learners can comprehend what they are learning."
“If you are researching only, then any electronic device such as a laptop is an advantage. But to prepare for exams, the textbook, or workbook, is required."
Research found that learners who used paper-based learning felt that they performed better than when reading from a screen. It also found that once the distraction of the Internet was added, learners’ work suffered.