Artificial Intelligence textbooks are going to be integrated into South Korea schools from March 2025, making it a pioneer country to use AI textbook into schools. This is one of the grand visions in the overall plan of $276M for school digitization to change the experience of learners in the classrooms across the country. The first two phases of implementation shall involve, third and fourth graders in many of the sampled elementary schools and first year students in many of the middle and high schools selected for this study.
The South Korean government has allocated $70 million for Digital Education and AIBooks to provide individualised learning environment and to make the country aHEAd in AI education. The programme has been named the “classroom revolution” and its implementation has been greeted with both optimism and apprehension by teachers, parents and specialists.
The author of the story comes with a word of precaution from Neil Selwyn, a professor at Monash University in Melbourne who researches on digital technology in education. Back in a recent interview with The Korea Herald, Selwyn stressed that the current love affair with ‘artificial intelligence’ in education might be actually symptomatic to a hype bubble which, once bursts, will still leave behind a myriad of unsolved issues.
Despite the existence of the AI solutions like chatbots and tutoring systems in educations for years, South Korea’s vision is much broader and aims much higher. The learners goals also go beyond the revision of the learning resource; they aim at revolutionizing learning in an effort to gain better results through genuine analysis.
Even so, there have been some social opposition to the initiative. An online petition posted in the National Assembly in May prompted for the government to scrap its AI digital textbook implementation plan based on the notion that the possession of smart devices have a detrimental impact on students’ development. It was signed by more than 56,000 people in a month, which shows the community’s concern about technology disruption in education.
To this effect, Ko Min-jung a member of house of representatives pursued a bill for change of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. The amendment proposed seeks to change the definition of textbook and allow the classification of AI digital textbooks as ‘educational material’ not standard textbooks. This would have to go through School management Committees before implementation could commence thus slowing down the implementation process.
The Education Ministry has said that there will still be the liberty for the teachers to decide whether to adopt physical anthology or the textual system. Nevertheless, national level introduction of digital textbooks is viewed by some as an attempt to close the gaps between students and offer equal educational opportunities.
He added: The world looks at South Korea with interest as it prepares itself to be the first country to use AI textbooks at the national level. The outcomes of this experiment hold the possibility of determining the future of education globally, as well as the edtech market.
Although increasing digitization of education system can benefit the targeted learner groups and learning audience as visualized by the government of the country, a lot concerns like the one explained above have to be addressed, as the government has to maintain a balance between innovation and an effective and sustainable approach to the issues and ideas in response to the major groups of stakeholders such as parents, teachers and educational experts. The next several months are to decide whether one of the Eastern Asian countries can effectively incorporate AI textbooks into its educational system and maybe even become an example for other countries globally.
