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policy to 'buy votes', while proponents argue it could bypass the root causes of poor education in the country: outdated books and unskilled teachers."

Comments

Teachers are the problem.

[GhigoRenzulli]

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.

Re:Teachers are the problem.

[mirix]

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.

Sounds good to me

[steveha]

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