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One Tablet Per Child Program Begins In Thailand

Posted by samzenpus on from the have-a-tablet dept.

societyofrobots writes "Thailand has now put the first 50,000 of a planned 800,000 tablets into the hands of elementary students. Each tablet costs only $80/unit, runs Android ICS, and was manufactured in China. Opponents claim it to be a very expensive populist policy to 'buy votes', while proponents argue it could bypass the root causes of poor education in the country: outdated books and unskilled teachers."

5 of 90 comments (clear)

  1. Good. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Teach them, young, to be CONSUMERS of content; not creators of it!

  2. Teachers are the problem. by GhigoRenzulli · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Even a powerful and flexible tool is useless if teachers don't know how to use it. I had the same experience with Multimedia Interactive Whiteboards at my daughter school: great potential, but teachers ignore the features and have no practice.

    1. Re:Teachers are the problem. by mirix · · Score: 4, Insightful

      How much tools do they really need for elementary school anyway?

      We had chalkboards, and 20 year old books (usually had to share them, also)... I thought the schooling quality was fine on average. Some teachers weren't as good as others.

      It's all about the teachers and curriculum, everything else is just fluff. Extras can be nice, but they aren't going to make bad teachers and bad mandatory material magically effective and interesting/fun/whatever.

      --
      Sent from my PDP-11
  3. Unskilled Teachers? by Alworx · · Score: 3, Insightful

    If the issue is unskilled teachers, I don't think tablets can make miracles.

    Rather, invest in long-distance video conferencing gear!

  4. instant access to "free" information... by acidfast7 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ...that's what the children will have, for better or worse.

    wikipedia does quite nicely replace either outdated/beat-up textbooks or overcomes a text book shortage.

    even if the teachers are not replaced, those who can and want to learn, can do so with the tablets :D