Dr. Polapat Udomphol is a business developer and a partner of ITWorks, the company behind Ookbee, which digitally publishes the vast majority of Thai magazines on your iPad. They also developed the hugely successful AIS bookstore app. We asked him what he thought of Thailand’s IT preparedness and the one tablet per child scheme.

Are textbooks on their way out?
Definitely. This trend has already started happening in the United States. College students normally carry an average of five kgs of textbooks. Now, they only need one tablet. The textbook is also evolving into interactive textbooks: why read about music when you can listen to it?

But does this mean that the whole curriculum has to change?
Well, the curriculum remains the same, but each student will be able to learn at a different pace. Also the interactive textbook can help facilitate learning in many ways.

What sort of products do you develop for public learning institutions?
We’re talking to several Thai and English textbook publishers now. In the beginning, most digital textbooks will be basic [a bit like PDFs] but, gradually, interactive digital versions of textbooks will be developed. The cost of converting a paper textbook isn’t high, but for interactivity, it depends on how interactive you want the book to be. There will be production costs associated with making video, animation, sound and so on. The interactive textbook can make learning easier. It can incorporate video and audio. If the course requires a lot of memorization, it can hide some passages on the tablet, for instance.

As an employer, is it hard or easy to find students from Thai universities that are trained well enough to work in the IT field?
Most Thai students need at least six months training after we hire them. There are more IT people now than 10 years ago, but the quality is still not so good. They don’t have the practical skills, and it’s not because of their IQ; it’s because of the curriculum.

What do you think the curriculum needs to change to better prepare IT students?
IT should teach the ability to work as a team, programming skills for popular platforms, such as mobile platforms, and project management skills.

Do you think that teachers in the primary and secondary level are ready for the shift to digital learning?
The teachers who already use computers to prepare for courses and to teach are ready, but older school teachers will require a lot of training.

What about places where schools are underfunded? Is it possible to give this kind of training to teachers in underfunded areas?
The training can be done, but that’s not the problem. The real problem is the implementation. In some rural areas there’s no internet connectivity and not very much electricity. The tablets are no use for these places. First the government has to work on the infrastructure in these areas. The government can only roll out the tablets to these areas when they are ready.