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One Tablet Per Child Program Begins In Thailand
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policy to 'buy votes', while proponents argue it could bypass the root causes of poor education in the country: outdated books and unskilled teachers."
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.
they have more to worry about if elementary school students are voting!
for humanity.
Even if 80% of the teachers lack knowledge, with this gear, at least the kids stand a chance of growing up with technology, and can get online somehow, and get access to vast amounts of information, the young minds so heartily crave.
Sure, a bunch of them will be sold off by poor families, and a lot will not know what to do with them, but it's a start. This is VERY forward thinking from the Thai gov. and very promising, never mind the votes, this will be great for their people. This will give the kids a taste of technology, and who knows? Maybe that's exactly what's needed to get just ONE kid off to become that great engineer in the future, if so - it's already a success.
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
The assumption with little evidence that putting computers in classrooms at great expense is better than spending the money elsewhere is astounding. Just because alpha geeks enjoy "learning" with computers most people use them as a passive tool. This is not that such tools are good or bad as general consumer items but it is hard to claim that they are a miracle cure for an education system. It is about as a ludicrous claim as "Jesus Saves"
The bikini - security through obscurity since 1943
If the issue is unskilled teachers, I don't think tablets can make miracles.
Rather, invest in long-distance video conferencing gear!
...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wikipedia does quite nicely replace either outdated/beat-up textbooks or overcomes a text book shortage.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
This isn't a magical silver bullet; nothing is. But these tablets cost $80 and are planned to last for three years; that's less than $30 per year, and then the student gets to keep the 3-year-old tablet. The tablet can serve as a textbook, or can run interactive lessons, and the article says the Thai education ministry is developing tutorial content that will run on the tablets.
Like the OLTP XO computers, these tablets will have no moving parts, and no cooling fan. If they are well-made, they should be reliable even in Thailand's climate; and they may be more cost-effective than paper textbooks.
P.S. It's amazing to me how so many people here can speed-read a summary and go straight to the dismissive comments about how this won't solve anything, etc. Presumably the Thai education ministry studied the problem and came to the conclusion that these tablets would be worth buying. Maybe you really are that much smarter than the Thai education ministry... or, maybe you shouldn't be so quick to make a snap judgement.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
How is this flamebait? I've done many holidays to thailand.
I live in thailand and in the last 2 years. 2 things have got done.
#1 3G acesss.
#2 Tablets in the hands of kids.
That is a hell of a improvement.
The previous military goverments parlament. Keep in mind thailand is still not a democracy.
They met twice.
#1 1 time was to give themselves a raise.
#2 Start a war with cambodia.
For the record these tablets where supposed to be in the hands of the kids over 2 years ago. Before current goverment was in place.
Nuff said.
The USA is also moving towards one tablet per child except here it is called Ritalin.
Tablets can run programming languages, drawing programs, word processing, etc. Why can't they create content on it?
-- Support a free market in the field of government
I don't know if anyone has been keeping track, but there's this thing called the internet where you can get a really good education for free. Tablets will give children access to this internet.
We currently have four major players in this arena:
This is in addition to all the universities which are putting lecture videos online, along with course materials and (in a few cases) the textbook content. Oh, and youtube videos of lectures, and the zillion-and-one websites explaining whichever subject you're interested in. Google "relativity" or "tensors" sometime - see if you can find an explanation that works for you.
An experiment in India has shown that when you give uneducated, poor children access to an internet-connected computer they figure things out on their own. Complex, interesting, and difficult things that you might not expect an ignorant user to manage. (Such as typing a thank-you note without access to a keyboard.)
This is all you need, kids will figure things out for themselves. Having a teacher to nudge them in the right direction, or help them over a difficult part is just gravy.
Kids are voracious learners, and have always been. Abe Lincoln used to sit at home practicing his "ciphering" (arithmetic) by drawing numbers on a shovel with charcoal. Over and over, until he got comfortable with the math. All kids do this - it's in the nature of growing up.
Just giving kids access to material will be a huge leap over the current situation. Schools and teachers are extra.