Educators
from Malaysia, Australia and India foresee a future in which digital books,
hybrid mobile computers and touch-screen writing tablets will replace the text
book, chalk and blackboard.
06/01/2010
By Kelly Ng 
Emeritus
Professor Jonathan Anderson, Flinders University of South Australia, predicts
that knowledge in the form of books and printed matter will rapidly become digitized.
Today, full text of over seven million books can be accessed through Google
Books. This number is growing quickly as Google expands its digitization effort
with international associations, publishers and authors. Companies such as
Amazon.com and Sony are also contributing to this development.
Many libraries in
Asia Pacific are aggressively digitizing content. The National Library in
Kolkata – the largest library in India – is going through a massive
digitization effort. “We have digitized 9140 books and converted close to
180,000 records into machine-readable formats last year,” said Asesh Ghatak,
Library and Information Officer, National Library, Belvedere, Kolkata in India.
New mobile devices
will emerge and take on a great role in the way students learn. “We are likely
to see a convergence of mobile and PC technologies as rival chip manufacturers
enter each other’s territory,” explained Anderson. He predicted that smart
phones will become more like computers and vice versa.
Dr Norrizan Razali,
Senior Manager, Smart School Department, Multimedia Development Corporation in
Malaysia agreed. “One of the key emerging technologies that will transform
schools is mobile devices. Hybrid devices which are a mix of mobile phones and
personal notebooks,” she added. Razali believed that such a mobile device will
make a great impact to students, especially in rural Malaysia. However, it must
first be durable and affordable – below RM 1000 (US$292) each.
The increasing
pervasiveness of cloud computing will support such a device. Cloud enables
operating systems to be trimmed down and applications to rely less on
end-clients for processing power and memory space. Also, touch-screen
technology will become the key method students interact with ICT devices.
“Such a device
will be held in the hand like a mobile phone but it will have a larger surface,
something like a writing tablet. It will be used for all kinds of communicating
– browsing the internet, emailing, reading books and other materials online,
phoning and texting, and social networking with friends and colleagues,”
Anderson elaborated.
Social networking
sites such as Facebook and Twitter will continue to rule students’ time.
According to a recent Australian study, Facebook was the fourth most visited site.
On average, users spend an average of 26.5 hours each week online, and a
quarter of that time – 6.5 hours – is dedicated to Facebook. Visits to Twitter
increased 1000 per cent compared to the year before.
While it is not
easy to spell out the implications for education, Anderson advised that
educators need to keep abreast of the latest ICT developments and echoed the
need for teachers to be brought up to speed on new technology.
Source: http://www.futuregov.asia/articles/how-will-ict-change-the-future-of-education
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