A Washington Post story suggests South Korea may scale back plans to migrate to digital textbooks, a chief element of its plan to transform its education system into the world’s most cutting-edge.

The article cites an editorial from Korea JoongAng Daily from last summer:

The problem we face now, however, is an exaggerated trust in digital education. Some people wrongfully assume that the quality of academic activity will improve with the use of multimedia digital material instead of conventional textbooks. However, without a teacher’s guidance, the impact of digital textbooks may fall short of expectations.

…

A digital textbook is merely a vehicle for instruction and cannot be the goal of education by itself. What matters is the content of the book and the way it is taught. Therefore it is up to the teacher to provide students with smart instruction that makes use of, but does not depend solely on, technology.

At the end of the day, it is the teacher, not the technology, that will make the difference for our kids.

Late this week, new budgets will be introduced by the federal government and in Ontario. Both governments were elected last year with barely a mention of digital issues in their campaigns. The budgets provide insights into the government plans for the coming year.

Will increased digital literacy be a part of those plans?

Canada’s national digital strategy will be discussed in a number of sessions at The 2012 Canadian Telecom Summit in June. Have you registered yet?

A number of seemingly unrelated news items seem to point to a common theme: increased complexity for managing corporate mobile devices.

• Item 1: Apple overtakes Blackberry as Canada’s hottest smartphone
• Item 2: Canada leads in information leaking from mobile devices
• Item 3: Continued growth in employees’ bringing their own devices (BYOD: Bring it on)

Tie that into an otherwise innocuous press release last week from TELUS and Vox Mobile and I gain a much better appreciation for the appeal of Managed Mobility solutions.

A good friend of mine is the Canadian CFO of a global multi-national. Their central IT policies emanate from Europe and had been strictly administered, until the Canadian CEO decided that her iPhone would be the only device that she would carry. The CIO was told to “Make it so.” Like many organizations, that was the tipping point for BYOD.

It starts with mobile handsets and quickly can move to computing platforms.

So how does an organization manage information security, operating costs, application and operating consistency, business continuity without centralized and standardized control of devices? Corporations could grow their IT organizations to deal with the increased complexity. Or they can outsource.

TELUS’ Managed Mobility Services is the first example of a carrier based offering to solve this challenge. “Your increasingly tech-savvy employees want the freedom to use any mobile device of their choice on the corporate network. And you want to give it to them.” TELUS’ service is powered by Vox Mobile.

It will be interesting to monitor the level of adoption of this approach. Will it succeed by increasing mobile penetration in corporate accounts, driving higher ARPU, reducing churn?

Enterprise mobility will be also be explored as part of the Mobile Commerce panel on Monday June 4 at The 2012 Canadian Telecom Summit. Have you registered yet?

I was at a municipal telecommunications meeting last night.

The meeting was looking at developing a protocol for the placement of telecom infrastructure within the community. I was struck that community groups who are engaged by the subject appear to be uniformly opposed to new towers. Some of the opposition is based on aesthetics; some is based on generally discredited health concerns.

But most importantly, it strikes me that there must be a constituency who really want improved wireless coverage, but aren’t showing up to advocate for better service.

Four years ago, I wrote a post that summarized my views: Cell phones save lives. As I wrote then, we want our doctors, our police, our families, our friends to be available when we call. We want to be able to place calls, connect our devices.

The vast majority of Canadians now have mobile devices. They presumably want a strong, reliable signal from their service provider.

City councillors typically hear from community groups complaining about new antennae being located in their neighbourhoods. It is time for the other side to come forward. If more people are like me and want 5 bars, why aren’t they writing their city officials.

I still remember when most of the world had phone service provided by the government post office and telegraph department. It was a very sorry state of affairs. Service was predictably awful; in some countries, new installations could take years.

You would have difficulty finding people who recall that era fondly, other than those beautiful old  British phone booths.

Governments have a short memory, I guess. As a result, we have seen a number of places where governments have decided to build their own local communications infrastructure, stepping in where they believe the private sector would not. There may be an argument for such intervention in rural markets, but you would think that urban markets should be able to support the business case for private sector leadership in advanced infrastructure.

Apparently, not so in the UK. In its 2012 Budget, the government announced £100 million to roll-out super-fast broadband in the 10 largest cities of the country.

Perhaps the UK’s functional separation regulatory framework isn’t delivering the kind of incentives for investment that have been touted by some as a model for Canada?

Industry Minister Christian Paradis will get the final word at The 2012 Canadian Telecom Summit, delivering an address to close the conference on June 6.

Minister Paradis spoke at last year’s event less than 2 weeks after being named Industry Minister. With a year on the job, we will be looking to hear from him on a range of digital economy issues. Last week’s announcement of spectrum auction policy for the 700 MHz and 2.5GHz bands, while liberalizing foreign ownership restrictions sets the stage for this year’s appearance at the Canada’s foremost gathering of the information and communications industries.

Join more than 500 colleagues, suppliers, analysts, regulators, policy makers, clients and competitors at The 2012 Canadian Telecom Summit, which takes place June 4-6 at the Toronto Congress Centre near the airport.

No other event matches it.

This year, in addition to addresses from 18 industry leaders, we are featuring sessions devoted to exploring a range of topical issues, including our always popular Regulatory Blockbuster panel and so much more:

• The Performance Cloud
• Mobile Commerce
• Social Networking
• Consumers & Businesses in a Multi-Screen World
• Customer Data: Opportunity or Minefiel
• Unified Communications
• Building a Digital Canada
• Wireless Spectrum: Paying for Air.

Now in its 11th year, The 2012 Canadian Telecom Summit has become Canada’s most important annual ICT event, attracting attendees from around the world. For 3 days, The Canadian Telecom Summit delivers thought provoking presentations from the prime movers of the industry. This is your chance to join in a structured atmosphere of frank discussion while enjoying our high-octane idea exchange. Or schmooze in a more relaxed social setting of genial conversation over an espresso while solving how to place Canada at the forefront of the global digital economy.

Have you registered yet?