THE move to adopt digital textbooks will take into consideration the limited amount of digital device ownership among students as well as Internet connectivity, says Lim Hui Ying.
The Deputy Education Minister told Dewan Rakyat that efforts made by the ministry to change materials within the education system from physical to digital textbooks will be introduced continuously to address the issue of heavy schoolbags.
She revealed that the Education Ministry had uploaded 754 digital textbooks through its Digital Educational Learning Initiative Malaysia (DELIMa) platform.
“Of course, we have plans to digitise text books and boost digital learning, but they are constrained by the availability of digital device ownership and Internet connectivity,” she said in reply to a question from Wan Hassan Mohd Romli (PN-Dungun) during Question Time.
Wan Hassan had asked the Education Ministry to state the actions taken to address the issue of heavy schoolbags.
However, the Deputy Education Minister said she does not have a specific time frame to adopt a fully digital system, and the matter is also subject to the government’s financial capabilities.
“Aside from that, we have provided 3,800 projectors to be used at schools to assist learning in our first phase, 3,500 projectors in the second phase this year and an additional 3,800 projectors next year,” she added.
Aside from that, the ministry also has taken other measures to lighten schoolbags such as providing lockers for Year One and Year Two pupils in schools operating in two sessions, reorganising the timetable to enable teachers to plan their teaching and learning, and limiting the use of exercise books to not more than two books for each subject.
