Publishers of artificial intelligence digital textbooks (AIDT), including Genius Textbook, held a press conference on the Yeouido Irum Center on the thirteenth and announced their positions and response plans regarding the Ministry of Education’s AIDT revision.
The federal government has been cooperating with textbook development firms with the goal of introducing AIDT in 2025. Accordingly, participating firms reported that they’ve been developing AIDT for 2 years. Specifically, the Ministry of Education stated from the start of cooperation that “AIDT will likely be fully introduced” and emphasized that this was documented.
Nevertheless, based on an announcement made last yr, measures to exclude some subjects from AI digital textbooks or to postpone their introduction were considered. Specifically, it’s reported that they’re strongly considering canceling plans to introduce AI textbooks for Korean language and technology-home economics subjects, and postponing the introduction of textbooks for social studies and science subjects. Above all, the bottom line is to introduce it as an ‘educational material’ moderately than a textbook.
Park Chan-yong, CEO of iHate Flying Bugs, said, “AIDT plays a task in reducing the gap in private education through personalized learning.” He added, “Whether it is used as an academic material moderately than a textbook, and only just a few schools use it, an imbalance of opportunities will occur and it would not meet its original purpose. “It can change,” he said.
The amendment has currently passed the plenary session, and the re-approval process is being discussed. They said that if this process is accomplished, they are going to take legal motion, including a constitutional appeal and administrative litigation.
Park Ji-young, head of AIDT content at Genius Textbook, said, “We revised the plan dozens of times in accordance with AIDT guidelines. We were very overworked to fulfill the event period, so it’s a situation that makes us feel ashamed.”
Above all, he emphasized that it has been developed to fulfill strict international and security standards when it comes to student personal information and data management. Nevertheless, he identified that if the introduction of optional educational materials moderately than mandatory textbook introduction is carried out, the evaluation criteria will inevitably grow to be ambiguous.
As well as, it was explained that technically it has a transparent difference from existing digital textbooks. When AI is introduced, personalized learning, comparable to evaluation of causes for problem solving, becomes possible. Specifically, the position is that it would contribute to educational equality by generating answers to questions or suggesting learning methods by monitoring student data.
Meanwhile, there have been 15 firms that originally announced their participation, but only 6 firms ultimately attended the press conference on the day. In response to this, a Cheonjae Textbook official said, “The businesses that didn’t participate even have a typical position that a one-year delay in applying textbooks is completely unacceptable,” adding, “Opinions don’t change depending on attendance.”
Reporter Jang Se-min semim99@aitimes.com
