The Ministry of Education in South Korea collaborated with the Lotte Scholarship Foundation and Kyobo Bookstore to start the BookDream e-book service two years back. The primary aim with the project has been to ensure students and teachers have enough reading resources at their disposal to allow them to continue with their reading activities unabated.
As it is, the program applies to students and teachers who are part of the Compulsory Education Phase Preschool and Academic Student Learning Support Project. The program is open to students and teachers in the elementary, middle, and high school stages. Also, the eBook quota of each student has been increased from four to ten now, which means each user is now eligible to borrow ten eBook at a time.
No wonder the project assumes greater significance with the start of the pandemic as this allowed the students to continue reading in a contactless manner. For instance, students who have been in the middle of their studies are allowed to participate in the program and reap benefits from the same. They can access the service via the comprehensive school reading education support system already in place and need not be members of the service.
The program also serves those in the pre-school stage or the school drop-outs as well. For the latter category, they can continue having access to the reading material irrespective of whether they continue to remain outside the school at the moment or have enrolled themselves back to school. According to figures made available, a total of 82,863 students have borrowed 85,071 eBooks.
In order to spread the reading culture even further, the authorities plan to organize the ‘Book Dream, Wise Reading Contest’ which is scheduled to be held in September. This, in fact, is turning out to be an annual event given that the contest was also held during the same time last year as well.
With a keen interest in tech, I make it a point to keep myself updated on the latest developments in technology and gadgets. That includes smartphones or tablet devices but stretches to even AI and self-driven automobiles, the latter being my latest fad. Besides writing, I like watching videos, reading, listening to music, or experimenting with different recipes. The motion picture is another aspect that interests me a lot, and I'll likely make a film sometime in the future.
