By Goh Chin Lian

It's lesson time, but none of the students has a textbook at hand. Instead, they are all using digital 'interactive textbooks'.

The secondary students are playing a computer game that is also a lesson on electricity. Points earned allow them to rise from apprentice to researcher or chief scientist.

Their efforts are captured on a virtual scoreboard that their peers in other schools can view. Everyone wants the bragging rights of being among the top 50 scorers nationwide.

This classroom scene has yet to come to pass here, but the Ministry of Education (MOE) wants to make it happen.

The MOE is exploring the use of such fun learning methods for students in the Normal (Technical) stream, using the tool of next- generation interactive textbooks.

This digital version might even replace hard-copy textbooks - while whetting students' appetite for learning.

Teachers say Normal (Technical) stream students, most of whom go on to the Institute of Technical Education, learn better by seeing and doing through hands-on activities.

The interactive textbook - complete with software and a Web-based application - will come with bells and whistles like interactive simulations, video clips and quizzes, the MOE told The Sunday Times.

Students will also be able to tap into online networks of friends to share information and to work virtually with one another on assignments.

Upper secondary students from six schools, which the MOE declined to identify, will be the first to get a taste of the interactive textbook.

It will be used in science lessons, covering physics, biology and chemistry topics like the effects of forces, blood circulation and food colouring.

The pilot project, expected to kick in come June next year, should be completed by 2013.

If it works, the technology could be extended to all students in the same stream and cover other subjects, an MOE tender document for the project, which was obtained by The Sunday Times, indicated.

'New-generation interactive textbooks could one day replace today's hard-copy textbooks and enhance not only the learning of different subject areas, but also the development of 21st century skills,' the document said.

Such skills refer to IT skills and the ability to communicate persuasively and collaborate effectively, it added.

The interactive textbook dovetails with the MOE's IT masterplan for engaging students in class: by encouraging them to initiate questions and find answers, and by immersing them in interactive learning that involves all their senses.

Mr Chee Meng Teck, who has taught the Normal (Technical) stream for the past three years, thinks his students will take easily to the interactive textbook.

'They grew up playing computer games,' said Mr Chee, 37, who is the head of the science department at Ngee Ann Secondary School.

One of his students, Terence How, 14, plays games like Counter-Strike and Defence Of The Ancients for more than six hours a day. Schoolmate Melissa Lim, 14, prefers to search the Web for Japanese songs and watch Japanese anime on YouTube.

Interviewed by The Sunday Times, the two students could vividly recount science lessons that involved video clips, such as an insider's view of a tapeworm in the digestive system, and the time it takes a hamburger and french fries to decompose.

But some other teachers and students had concerns.

St Andrew's Secondary School's head of science, Mr Michael Lim, 50, was worried that students may not internalise the information if they simply 'cut and paste' chunks of the text on their computers, without making their own notes.

St Andrew's student, Bryan Ng, 14, reckoned that students could also be distracted in class while engrossed in chatting online or playing other computer games.

This article was first published in The Straits Times.