Some Pinoy Students To Test E-Book Readers

In Laguna, some students are ready to give digital textbooks, through e-book readers, a try. About 1,000 freshman high school students are going to receive tablets loaded with electronic textbooks instead of physical ones. I'm very interested to see how this turns out. An excerpt from the article:

Some 1,000 tablets will be tried next school year among freshman students of LSNHS, University of the Philippines Rural High School and one public high school from each of the four congressional districts in Laguna. Data on the definite number of tablets to be distributed per school were not yet available.

Laguna has about 100,000 students in high school.

Twenty to 30 teachers will also be trained for the test run.

“It will be like a virtual library,” said Neil Nocon, provincial board member and education committee chair.

The Rizal Tablet, which Nocon likened to Apple’s iPad or Amazon Kindle, could be pre-loaded with “hundreds” of electronic textbook copies and reference materials for the high school curriculum.

Nocon said the use of the “tablets” would cut government expenditure on textbooks, since each costs only $100. The provincial government is subsidizing the procurement of the tablets from China for the pilot test.

“If evaluation on the use of the tablet proves that it is cost-effective and equally beneficial, the use of it in place of regular textbooks can be promoted,” said Nocon.