Basic Development of the Active Textbook System consisted of a General book and a Portable Electronic Terminal

Abstract We have proposed a novel educational system named the active textbook (hereafter A-txt) system. A-txt system consists of an ordinary paper-based textbook, a general portable electronic terminal with a camera like a smartphone and application software for the system. A normal textbook can be evolved into a digital one through the attachment of additional digital information and all kinds of digital contents such as movie, animation, 3D CG and so on will be available. The teachers who use the system can create contents for A-txt freely without expertise about information technology. The introduction cost is relatively low, because the mobile terminal for students may be their owned general-purpose type, not special-purpose type, and authored educational materials do not need particular software. For the reasons above, the system has a large possibility to spread in multiple educational fields and it can be easy for students to understand several subjects into which the system is introduced.