Thread: First tablet PCs going out to kids soon

It is so sad to see another attempt by "Thailand" to move into the 21st Century when they are still, in many ways, so far back in the 20th. Always about FACE, without substance. Pretty uniforms for every day and near zero emphasis to convey basic education skills. Read, write, add. From the essan mothers plea. Teach my fifth grader to read and write, Thai. and add without a calculator. I respect the current governments plan and applaud their efforts. Unfortunately, the effort is misdirected.

Originally Posted by Butterfly

definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result

Sounds like a definition of Loose Bowels.

Originally Posted by StrontiumDog

Bangkok Post : Why Thailand's children need tablet computers

Why Thailand's children need tablet computers

• Published: 17/12/2011 at 12:00 AM
• Newspaper section: News

The current government has promised to introduce free tablet computers to all school children and already 1.6 billion baht has been put aside to purchase 470,000 tablet PCs for first-grade students.


Students at Wat Thammapanya School in Nakhon Nayok, enjoy working on free laptops given to each student in Mathayom 1 and 2 (Grades 7 and 8) under the pilot ‘‘One Laptop Per Child’’ project in March 2008.

Predictably, gainsayers have lined up to pick at this policy and one argument recently tabled is that there are not sufficient educational programmes in Thai, leading to children using the tablets mainly for English learning.

The problem with that, so this contention runs, is that young children should be concentrating on Thai; if they get involved in English this will distract them from the more crucial purpose of mastering their native language.

Even if this were correct, it is rather negated by the fact that there are several companies which currently have educational programmes available in Thai language and more would become available, as this market will grow once the tablets are in every child's hand.

However, it is worth discussing the concern about Thai children studying English too early. Indeed, is it even desirable to make English a major component of the education of Thai children, and if it is, at what age should they be introduced to English, and finally, what part could tablets play in learning?

Of course most businessmen, educators and politicians recognise that English is a vital component of Thailand's future expansion in international business. Yet despite acclaim for the importance of English and despite the dismal state of English education in most parts of Thailand (partly because Thai students have few chances to practice English outside the classroom, and which could be partially remedied if tablets loaded with self-access English programmes were available), in 2010 the last government turned down a reform committee's recommendation to make English a second official language, saying that such a move could make people think Thailand had once been colonised!

This ambivalent attitude to English (somewhat mitigated by the large numbers of the middle class and rich sending their children to schools with international programmes) combined with the outright fear of the internet shown by governments, needs to change if Thailand is going to take its full role internationally.

Agreeing then that English is essential in the global environment that Thailand operates in, at what age children should start learning English. Is 3, 5 or 8 too young and should we wait to 10, 12 or 15? Let's consider Singapore. At independence from Britain in 1963, rather than choosing to downgrade English in favour of a local language, Singapore put aside patriotic fervour and kept English to the forefront. This was based mainly on economic reasons and I think few Singaporeans regret this choice, and most would attribute some of Singapore's amazing success to the widespread use of English. Singapore introduces children to English at a very young age, usually around 3 years old years in the pre-school education system. Does this introduction of a non-native language at such a tender age cause problems? Well, while it may not be absolute proof of the benefits, it certainly shows that a nation can introduce English as a second language from a very young age and achieve excellent results. How much Singapore is aided in international business by the widespread use of English is unknown, but it surely doesn't hurt.

So agreeing that English is okay, even for young children, what are the reasons to give tablet computers to every child?

They are many, but briefly: the divide between the quality of education received in rural areas compared with Bangkok, and even within Bangkok between the well-off and the less fortunate, could be narrowed, I believe, by children having tablets.

Would it completely eliminate the gaps? No, simply because self-access learning is only one factor supporting education; quality teachers, input from parents and a host of other influences will still play their crucial roles. But at least giving individual access to useful applications, especially for English, mathematics and science will be a boon to the ambitious and intelligent children of rural Thailand.

Specifically, the one-to-one nature of tablet content gives children direct input in a way that a classroom with many students and only one teacher usually cannot. Most applications also intuitively pace the user to suit their current abilities, allowing the gifted to romp ahead and the slower to get the extra repetition they need. Further, it will allow streaming of the best teaching videos, many of them interactive, both from within Thailand and internationally, right to the student's classroom or home.

My own children, now fully bilingual, were introduced to computers from age 3 and I installed vocabulary, mathematics and science applications. All were educational and, because of the game-like competitive nature of them, highly motivating. This, mind you, was some 16 years ago, when educational programs were a fraction of the sophistication of today's. My children still attribute part of their academic success to those early years spent playing those "games".

Will there be problems and will some children not take advantage of the opportunity? Yes undoubtedly, but this is a world of choices and children, too, can see advantages in study and be funnelled into the activities that will be feed their natural curiosity and zest to succeed.


Robert Kirkpatrick lectures at the Master of Education faculty in Shinawatra University, is a reviewer of "Studies in Self -Access Learning" journal, and the editor-in-chief of "Language Testing in Asia" journal.

Please read post 98.

I have only one comment on thie futile policy: a waste of time and a waste of money.

Originally Posted by StrontiumDog

"They mostly use a computer for visiting Facebook and playing the Angry Birds game," he said.

Sounds like ideal training for a future life as a Thai Office worker.

Originally Posted by noelbino

Originally Posted by Butterfly

definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result

Sounds like a definition of Loose Bowels.

you cannot argue about that ™

Perhase this explains why education in this country is so messed up. This article attacking the governments plan, spends almost all its time discussing the very real logistic issues surrounding a useful deployment and almost completely misses the real objection to the project; only hinting at it with:

Schools without electricity or adequate facilities to support tablet use in classrooms (e.g., electrical outlets and televisions), or whose teachers are unable to make use of such technological tools, will not be eligible to receive the tablets. More than 2,000 schools do not have electricity.

At the end of the day the schools in thailand are in a deplorable state and those most affected will be ignored by this program. This money would be better used to refurbish the school infustrcture.

The tablet idea is not stupid, but really they should be spending 5 years piloting the tablets and developing the software before that deployment.

Suchart expands tablet scheme - The Nation

Suchart expands tablet scheme

SUPINDA NA MAHACHAI
WANNAPA KHAOPA
THE NATION January 26, 2012 1:00 am


As many as 900,000 tablets would now be handed out to all Prathom 1 and some Prathom 4 students (first and fourth graders), newly appointed Education Minister Prof Suchart Thadathamrongvej said after meeting with the tablet policy management committee yesterday on his first day in office.

The newly declared number of tablets is an increase from the previously agreed 700,000, with a Bt1.9 billion budget.

As a result, the meeting agreed to submit a request to the Cabinet for another Bt1 billion in budget for the extra tablets, he said.

Suchart said all 860,000 Prathom 1 students under different ministries would be given the tablets, while the remaining tablets would be distributed to some Prathom 4 students.

Thailand would buy all the tablets from China under a government-to-government contract, he added.

At his policy declaration session at the Education Ministry, Suchart vowed to care for students and teachers as if they were family members - and rush to put the Pheu Thai Party's education policies into practice.

Hundreds of state officials from across the country attended the session yesterday. Many more watched the declaration live on National Broadcasting Services of Thailand (NBT channel) and Educational Television of Ministry of Education (ETV satellite channel) and listened to the policies on radio.

Red-shirt supporters from many provinces cheered Suchart and gave him a warm welcome to the ministry.

Originating from the same party as former education minister Woravat Auapinyakul, most of the announced policies are similar to Woravat's and in line with the party's intentions. Some policies will be added to improve the current ones. In addition, Suchart has some ideas about educational development he said he would try to push forward as well.

"My party's administration concept is about taking care of people as family members - and I will apply that to my administration at the ministry, too. I won't force teachers and students to do what the ministry wants to achieve, but will listen to them and what they want."

"With a commitment to a student-centred approach, students will be allowed to think out of the box or think differently and voice their needs," he said.

To adhere to the concept, Suchart vowed there would be no corruption and no cheating among students and teachers. "Although I support donations to provide more educational resources to schools, I will try to ensure no "tea money" bribery at schools. Teachers' recruitment and transfer processes and their academic standing assessments will be open and transparent - they should be allowed to defend their work during the assessment."

Technology-based learning is among the major policies of the party, which he will continue - including the tablet distribution to students and "e-education" programmes and contents developed to change schools to life-long learning centres.

The new minister said he would continue the English Speaking Year policy initiated by Worawat and strongly supports it. "We will try to seek more English native speakers for schools to encourage students to practise it. Every school should stop paying for unnecessary events and hiring companies to make banners printed with my picture to welcome me. The money should be used to hire foreign teachers instead. The Chinese language will also be promoted among interested students."

To open more opportunities for students to pursue education abroad, Suchart said he would add one more scholarship in addition to the current one-district one-scholarship project.

He also pledged to continue dealing with teachers' debt, merging small schools with management problems, creating students to be professionals, and a graduates' endowment fund.

Suchart talked about an idea that would allow agriculturists to transfer their experience to upper secondary and vocational education. Also, he urged officials of the Ordinary National Educational Test to provide a test every month instead of once a year to help students.

"The ministry's administrators and officials must implement their policies [promptly] otherwise they will be transferred," he said.

Properly implemented, a bloody great idea. What is required is appropriate teaching & coaching software.

will this only be govt schools?

Govt to discuss tablet production with China : National News Bureau of Thailand

Govt to discuss tablet production with China

BANGKOK, 26 January 2012 (NNT) – The Government will discuss with the Chinese government the production of tablets for Thai children, in accordance with its policy on One PC Tablet per Child.

Mr. Suchart Thada-Thamrongvech, Minister for Education, has revealed after a meeting of high-level officials of the Ministry of Education and related agencies on One PC Tablet per Child Policy, that the MOE has assigned the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to seek a Government to Government (G-to-G) deal with China on import of tablet components for use in Thailand.

The Minister said he might request to the cabinet an additional sum of THB 900-1,000 million from the central budget because the original outlay of THB 1.6 billion is not enough to obtain high quality tablets. Although the tablets are mainly designed for E-books, they should also be efficient to do other functions. At the initial stage, E-book will provide contents for grade 1 only. Children will be allowed to bring tablets home, and the Government will take care of its maintenance in case of damages. The Government has expected to order about 900,000 tablets to be distributed to over 860,000 students. The rest of them will probably be given to instructors or grade 4 students in a pilot project in the next stage.

Mr.Suchart also said that the Ministry would discuss with the Ministry of Information and Communication Technology the installation of WiFi for 34,000 schools. Currently, there are only 3,000 WiFi hotspots nationwide.

Originally Posted by sabang

Properly implemented, a bloody great idea. What is required is appropriate teaching & coaching software.

But when you consider the speed at which software can be written, the lack of piloting and the speed of the rollout, it leaves little to be confident about.

Given that it will take 18 months to 2 years to develop decent software for the platform and the 'extra' you will get for your money by delaying the rollout until the software is ready. A delay would have been best, with budget being set aside to refurnish some of the worse schools in the country.

After all how can you expect teachers to maintain their moral and care about their job, how to you expect to children to take their education seriously when the school if falling apart around them?

Personally I would have thought that this would be a perfectly acceptable delay to the electorate and would still give the government a couple of years to start the rollout before the next election.... that is unless they are planning one this year, for the soon to be unbanned, in which case any kind of rollout is good as its an easy electoral promise box to tick.

Although the tablets are mainly designed for E-books, they should also be efficient to do other functions.

I'm guessing that any extra software beyond the e-reader is going to be pretty minimal.

It's not the worst idea ever but it doesn't strike me as the most pressing thing on the list of to dos to sort out on the country's education system.

^The ebook itself could be very useful, as the education infrastructure has been pitiful at handling the logistics of maintaining the stocks of usable textbooks in the schools. But then, I am also thinking of this and just how well they are going to handle the 10,000's of these tablets which will break each year.

I have a feeling this project is going to be about as successful as your average UK government IT project, but atleased it won't waste as much money however it turns out.

Originally Posted by hazz

Originally Posted by sabang

Properly implemented, a bloody great idea. What is required is appropriate teaching & coaching software.

But when you consider the speed at which software can be written, the lack of piloting and the speed of the rollout, it leaves little to be confident about.

Given that it will take 18 months to 2 years to develop decent software for the platform and the 'extra' you will get for your money by delaying the rollout until the software is ready. A delay would have been best, with budget being set aside to refurnish some of the worse schools in the country.

After all how can you expect teachers to maintain their moral and care about their job, how to you expect to children to take their education seriously when the school if falling apart around them?

Personally I would have thought that this would be a perfectly acceptable delay to the electorate and would still give the government a couple of years to start the rollout before the next election.... that is unless they are planning one this year, for the soon to be unbanned, in which case any kind of rollout is good as its an easy electoral promise box to tick.

Hey you have to be fair, the new guy has only 6 months before someone else gets his turn, he cant let that juicy plum fall in to sombody else's lap can he?

^If you think about it thats exactly whats happened to the last education minister regarding all this stuff. basically anything he setup, he will have missed out on, because he's been demoted, sorry moved, just before the the budget law is published and the contracts get signed.... if there is any backhanders, they new guy will get them.

If you think about it, most mega contracts outlive ministers and even governments. So both the givers and accepters of bribes must have come up with a system which means that the new boy gets he's fair share without having to f*ck everything up.... as they did with the MRT to dung mung so many years ago.

^ Interesting how he just announced a doubling of the tablets on the first day he moved in, with the time frame they have in place, it will be impossible to implement in a meaningful way. Its just about setting it up so he can get as much in back handers as possible before is time is up, or maybe as you say there is another more pressing deadline thats dictating this policy. one thing is for sure its got fckall to do with educating children.

^you mean like a 'no more desks with holes in the middle' campaign, to actually tart up the schools a bit.

Originally Posted by Dan

I'm guessing that any extra software beyond the e-reader is going to be pretty minimal.

I guessed wrong. I just saw something which says they're negotiating with the Chinese for 7" Android tablets (that bit I understand) with 16GB rom, 512MB ram and 1GHz cpu (that bit I don't) but I assume it means that they'll be all whizzy and wonderful.

^This will depend very much on what they spend. Don't forget the were budgeting on 3000B per table, which is about the same price as a bottom end kindle, which as I understand it are more or less sold at cost.

To get something all singing, dancing and android.... they are going to have to pay quite a bit more, unless someone in china decides they are going to offer some nice subsidies.

If they do use android, which would be sensible, they do need to make sure that these tables are useless ouside the school arena, or they are going to have all the unintended consequences having having children walking around with stuff worth stealing from them.

The report I saw said the Thai government were offering $75 each. At the moment there hasn't been a decision over whether or not children will be able to take them out of the classroom.

To give an idea as to the challenges facing the gov with these tabs. the Bill of materials for a 7" samsung galaxy tab is a bit over 200USD of which the screen is about 60 USD.

PC tablets involve many systems, download problems - The Nation

PC tablets involve many systems, download problems

Supinda Na Mahachai
The Nation February 7, 2012 1:00 am


The Office of Basic Education Commission (Obec) has reported that only 789 schools, out of the 24,098 entitled for the "One Tablet PC Per Child" project, had fibre optic lines to connect the Internet, permanent secretary for Education Sasithara Pichaichannarong said yesterday.

The Obec survey of the 24,098 entitled schools, covering 507,148 Prathom 1 students eligible to receive the tablets in May, divided the schools into three groups.

The first group with a fibre optic system totalled 789 schools and her ministry would ask the ICT Ministry to install more signal enhancing boxes; the second group with ADSL system totalled 6,475 schools and her ministry would ask for more telephone lines; and the third group with a satellite system totalled 16,652 schools, she said. This third group remained rather problematic about Internet connection.

The ministry would gather information on all schools under agencies such as local administrative organisations and the border patrol police command to plan a thoroughly-comprehensive network, she added.

Sisithara's comment was made after a meeting with 14 private publishers' representatives about preparation of content for the tablets for Prathom 2-6 and Mathayom 1-6. Sasithara said because Education Minister Suchart Tadathamrongvej wanted all levels of students to use the tablets, elder kids' contents needed tablets with larger memory of 16GB. Previously the "Learning Objects" and e-book content for Parthom 1 tablets occupied 4GB out of their 8GB memory.

Most publishers told Sasithara the primary level contents were ready while the secondary level content would be ready in March, she added.

Four solutions for content procuring procedures were discussed at the meeting - first: terms of reference for a contractor to do the job; second, downloading from the publishers' servers; third - building a central server for publishers to upload their contents for the schools to later download ; and fourth - having publishers download content into SD cards. The second and third suggestions got the most publisher votes.

Sasithara said the ministry would ask various publishers to propose an appropriate solution by Friday, so the ministry could draw a conclusion and submit it to the IT Minister.

From February 21-22, the Education Ministry will announce its strategy at Muangthong Thani about the tablets' project. She said the prime minister would preside over the event's opening and the publishers would be invited to present their material.