School textbooks for English in Japan to go digital from 2024

Aug 26 (Nationthailand) - Japan’s Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Ministry is planning to use both digital and printed textbooks in elementary and junior high schools from the 2024 school year.

The ministry originally planned to fully introduce digital textbooks from 2024, but now intends to distribute printed textbooks for each subject, and limit the use of digital textbooks to English alone. Acknowledging the view that paper textbooks provide a strong foundation in traditional learning, the ministry has decided to initially introduce digital textbooks for the English language, including features such as text-to-speech.

The plan will be presented next week at a meeting of the Central Council for Education’s working group on digital textbooks, with the expectation that all elementary and junior high schools will be able to use digital English textbooks from 2024.

The ministry has made these digital textbooks available to some schools as part of a pilot project and learned that there is a great demand for the text-to-speech function. ...continue reading

Source: 日テレNEWS

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