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Education Books Technology

South Africa Begins Ambitious Tablets In Schools Pilot Project 66

Posted by timothy from the goverment-schools dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Guateng province — which is home to Johannesburg and Pretoria and is the richest state in sub-Saharan Africa — has just kicked off a pilot project to replace textbooks with tablets in seven government schools. If successful, the project will be extended to all 44 000 schools in the area. It's all been put together in a hurry — the local minister for education announced it in a media interview less than a year ago and details have never been made fully public, but he's hoping it will be an end to 'Irish Coffee' education in which rich white students float to the top." From the article: The classroom of the future being piloted is modelled on the system that’s been in use at Sunward Park High School in Boksburg for the two years. That former “model C” was the first state school in South Africa to go textbook free, and has pioneered the use of tablets in public education here. ... As with Sunward Park, the schools in this new pilot will be using a centralised portal developed by Bramley’s MIB Software for managing tablets and aggregating educational content into a single portal. MIB’s backend pulls in CAPS aligned digital textbooks from the likes of Via Afrika as well as extra resources from around the web. Content from Wikipedia, the BBC, the complete works of Shakespeare and Khan Academy is all cached locally for teachers to reference during lessons and pupils to use for self-directed study and research.
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South Africa Begins Ambitious Tablets In Schools Pilot Project More

South Africa Begins Ambitious Tablets In Schools Pilot Project

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  • everytime this is tired (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ganjadude ( 952775 ) on Tuesday January 13, 2015 @12:13PM (#48803435) Homepage
    it fails. Why do we keep throwing tech at a non tech problem just for the sake of throwing tech at it? Cali is in the process of taking back all the tablets they passed out after major issues. Sometimes real paper books are the answer.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by tom229 ( 1640685 )
      California tried to give everyone iPads: very expensive multi-purpose tablets. It was a terrible decision.

      Something like this could work but the device would have to be specially designed for the purpose. Something with an e-ink display would be ideal.

      • Re:everytime this is tired (Score:4, Insightful)

        by TWX ( 665546 ) on Tuesday January 13, 2015 @12:27PM (#48803577)
        It fails in part because the textbook creators are so wrapped up in protecting their intellectual property that using the device to pull up the textbook becomes a nightmare. the only way this can work is for the textbook to be pulled down to the device, like any other e-book, and accessed without any kind of network or wirless connectivity to bounce 'rights' checking against. You're right that these being multipurpose devices usually hurts too, as students can easily procrastinate their actual work by finding an inordinate amount of things to entertain themselves with.

        We need real devices that are as durable as the ficticious PADD from Star Trek: The Next Generation. Basically the tablet-equivalent of a Panasonic Toughbook, with software specifically tailored to the needs of students. I'm thinking it should be two devices essentially hinged in the middle, like a traditional book cover, so that more content can be displayed or homework can be done on one side with the content displayed on the other. But that's just me.

        Oh, and that requires proper software to be written for it too, and requires those textbook creators to cooperate.

        • What we need is to develop open text books with a creative commons license. Doesn't work for everything - sure - but let's face it: math, algebra, works of Shakespeare, these are things that never change (and Shakespeare isn't copyrighted, anyway, although I'm sure you can find copies of the works that are "protected"). Basic science changes slowly - talking about stuff that kids learn in school here. Really, there's no reason anybody should be making money from elementary school textbooks at this point

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by itzly ( 3699663 )

            Or we just keep paper books. Paper books have done a fine job for the last century helping to educate the best and brightest minds.

            • Note that I said nothing of the books being on a tablet. While that's certainly possible it would be nice to see text books distributed solely for the cost of printing and distribution.

          • THIS ^^^^^^

            I'll extend that with enough support, there only needs to be ONE textbook for all jurisdictions.

            Create a single textbook with all the variations needed for every district/board of education. Configure the "Textbook" software to download the entire book (all versions) and have a management feature that checks off which version to display, and the software formats the book accordingly.

            This way, you could have a "progressive left" version and a "Bible Belt" version of the same book, each tailored t

            • You could mix and match chapters. A teacher could roll his own text book, the same way we can roll our own Linux distros. I'm pretty sure this is already a thing. If you can collaboratively spawn Wikipedia and Linux, I don't see why collaboratively creating a third grade math book should be that difficult.

              Of course, that would only work in a sane country. In the United States, we make our teachers get Master's degrees, whereby they pay thoughtful attention to different learning methods and how to make thin

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by dj245 ( 732906 )

                Of course, that would only work in a sane country. In the United States, we make our teachers get Master's degrees, whereby they pay thoughtful attention to different learning methods and how to make things click for different students who exhibit different types of understanding. Then we take those freshly minted grads, passionate about reaching young minds, and hand them Common Core and every other state-mandated curriculum and force them to recite from the book like robots.

                We want kids to have quality educations. Implementing standards and then following them is the cornerstone of even the most basic quality program. Having a good quality control system doesn't guarantee the result will be good. However, NOT having a standardized system of maintaining quality standards means that it is a lot more difficult to have a consistent good result.

                There are very few white-collar professions where a person uses their entire 4-year university experiences every single day. As an

                • The problem isn't standards. The problem is "One size fits all" standards. There are no gradations or levels of competency, just more or less "pass/fail" series of hoops.

                  The fact is the industrial method of teaching has to be changed, and we are starting to see those changes. But it is going to require a whole new type of teacher, and most teachers are not up to the task.

              • I don't see why collaboratively creating a third grade math book should be that difficult.

                Politics.

        • It fails in part because the textbook creators are so wrapped up in protecting their intellectual property that using the device to pull up the textbook becomes a nightmare.

          Which is why it's great to see the tablets are filled with so much locally-cached free content.

        • We need real devices that are as durable as the ficticious PADD from Star Trek: The Next Generation.

          And while we're at it, let's get the Warp Drive and the Transporter on line. That ought to improve things.

        • Maybe "textbooks" are an inferior way to learn? What's the point of having students just read stuff of a tablet - the learning should be interactive. This is what current textbook makers are worried about, and the ones that survive will embrace it. Even, what... 10 years ago we had a fantastic formal logic textbook that came with a CD that you more or less used for everything. It had all the lessons, tests, problems and even an online companion to submit your work. If they had something in the kin of c

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by rtb61 ( 674572 )

            The interactive aspect is exactly why tablets fail in education. The keyboard is essential in ensuring student input and creativity is the focus and not just becoming a mindless consumer of content. The keyboard also protects the screen and acts as a more effective stand. Now all that is needed is a shift to alphabetic keyboards for the new generation coming out.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by TWX ( 665546 )
              Alphabetic keyboard?

              Last time I looked at a keyboard, all letters of the alphabet were represented.
        • This is South Africa, where they already have [siyavula.com] open licensed text books covering a significant fraction of their school curriculum.

      • California tried to give everyone iPads: very expensive multi-purpose tablets.

        I live in California, and my kids go to school here. California absolutely did not try to "give everyone iPads".

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by TheSync ( 5291 )

          The LA Unified School District is spending over $1 billion [utsandiego.com] to give all students (650,000) iPads.

          Note that Beverly Hills School District is independent, and not part of LAUSD...

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by shugah ( 881805 )
            My kids elementary school in Vancouver did this. They replaced an entire computer lab of PCs with a bunch of iPads. Half the iPads were stolen within 6 months, but worse than that - they were useless. A tablet is good for consuming content, not creating content. If you want kids to learn to do something more useful with a computer than watch YouTube videos, teach them to work on real computers.
      • It was the Los Angeles Unified School District which tried to give everyone iPads, not California. And the program was halted before it was completely rolled out because of problems with kids hacking the restrictive software controls (if you can call deleting the user and restarting the device "hacking").

        Also, what the LAUSD tried was different from what South Africa is trying. LAUSD was trying to incorporate tablets into the teaching program. There is very little evidence that this has any beneficial

        • I dunno exactly about South African education, but typical textbooks don't 'last' 10-20 years, nor is their cost $100 outside the US or Europe. A typical textbook lasts the year or 2 for that grade, after that, they get replaced by new ones. Yeah, the kid can go back to his old class textbooks and read that, but how many actually do?

          I like the idea of tablets replacing textbooks. Let's decouple 2 things:

          1. 1. The cost of textbooks, and how they are distributed
          2. 2. The medium in which textbooks are distribu

          • what i could see is a truly epicly massive Education DataCore where STEM stuff could have the Standard Textbooks stored and then have the top say half dozen* or so "alt" textbooks for the rest of the subjects (including The Arts).

            And even with STEM stuff how do you decide to teach Electronics? Conventional or Electron Flow?? hint DO BOTH wanna see WW2 from the German side?? then access that file and check it out.

            the only locks i would want to see is keeping students from subjects that are not "age appropria

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Because tech solutions are pork barrel and non-tech solutions (ex. hiring teachers) are not.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Tx ( 96709 )

      Just because it's been done wrong in the past doesn't mean it can't be done right in the future, although it doesn't bode well that this particular project appears to have been rushed, and significant questions not answered in detail. However there's nothing wrong with the theory; access to textbooks, collaboration and communications tools, monitoring of students progress while they perform activities (and as the article mentions, monitoring of teachers as well), the list of potential benefits to using tabl

    • Why do we keep throwing tech at a non tech problem just for the sake of throwing tech at it?

      In my experience, this sort of thing usually has a lot to do with bribes paid to the school board and/or administrators by some contractor. And by "bribe," I mean whatever euphemism they're going by in any given situation: "Campaign Contribution", "Educational Conference" (in an expensive tropical resort), "Donation", "Gift", etc.

    • The correct technology for education is thousands of years old.

      The ancients--the greeks and romans--didn't use a lot of writing. It was expensive and bulky. Wax tablets were huge, papyrus was costly. You'd hardly have books; if you saw a scroll or codex, it was probably for the first and last time. If you saw a codex twice, there wasn't an index to reference; you had to know what was in it, flip to a random page, and say, "Oh, no, the material I need to reference is before this", then flip backwards.

    • And the bizarre solutions they have - Wikipedia, BBC, Khan Academy... What makes them think that these would provide a well rounded education?

  • Tablets. Yup. That's what Ed is missing... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Don't you all know the famous story?

    Archimedes was killed by a Roman soldier whilst he finger-painted on a Syracusian tablet running Android 0.0000001 Olive Tree.

  • Not a Bad Idea (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Tech in school is generally a bad idea, I feel (children don't need tablets to learn) but this is an example of it done right. South African schools can use those tablets to build a massive library of free reference resources and public domain literature and share that with the students. It's more a pop-up computer lab, if anything.

  • This is the solution how? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by DumbSwede ( 521261 ) <slashdotbin@hotmail.com> on Tuesday January 13, 2015 @12:22PM (#48803519) Homepage Journal

    And how would this in any way address the “Irish Coffee” problem?

    If anything I could see this exacerbating the problem. Rich white kids are probably more computer literate than poorer black peers – going full on digital will amplify the difference.

    Do it if it improves education in general (a big if). I know that tablets and online education are the future, but one that never quite arrives in the correct form. Content is key whether it is online or in a book. Handing out hardware doesn’t solve the content problem.

    • South Africa is not America, and computer illiteracy won't stop poor black kids from learning how to use what sounds like basically an e-reader. And in this case, it sounds like they got the content right:

      Content from Wikipedia, the BBC, the complete works of Shakespeare and Khan Academy is all cached locally for teachers to reference during lessons and pupils to use for self-directed study and research.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Tx ( 96709 )

      Content is key whether it is online or in a book. Handing out hardware doesn’t solve the content problem.

      Good thing they're not just handing out hardware then.

      FTA: "As with Sunward Park, the schools in this new pilot will be using a centralised portal developed by Bramley’s MIB Software for managing tablets and aggregating educational content into a single portal. MIB’s backend pulls in CAPS aligned digital textbooks from the likes of Via Afrika as well as extra resources from around the web."

  • Cool! Just one thing missing... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by dskoll ( 99328 ) on Tuesday January 13, 2015 @12:28PM (#48803589) Homepage

    ... all that's needed is for Eskom (the South African electrical utility) to actually supply reliable power to recharge all those tablets!

  • well, i failed. i actually read the article (Score:3)

    by turkeydance ( 1266624 ) on Tuesday January 13, 2015 @12:34PM (#48803641)
    these tablets are traveling Time Clocks for Teachers.

  • Good Luck (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    he's hoping it will be an end to 'Irish Coffee' education in which rich white students float to the top

    Rich students have so many advantages over poor students that nothing you can do in the schools is ever going to fully compensate for it - not that they shouldn't try. From infancy wealthier kids are (on average of course) spoken to more, with a more varied and stimulating vocabulary, and with more encouraging words. They are generally exposed to more stimulating activities, and read to more regularly. By the time they hit Pre-K they already have significant cognitive advantages. The achievement gap needs t

  • Do they expect to fix education problems by throwing more tablets at it?

  • If it were me though, I'd go the way the military does for some of its members: A "sealed" (no radio or USB, with tamper-evident seals on the case) e-reader pre-loaded with the textbooks the student will need. This will keep theft way down.

    Make it rugged enough to handle 5-10 years of careless use by students, but cheap enough so if it gets lost or really banged up it can be written off.

    Use "e-paper" so there is no battery use until the student turns the page and so they can read it right before bedtime w

    • something that might cut down on theft of these tablets (since you are going custom anyway)

      1 make it obvious that this is a childs ELearning device by cooking the rom and using a nonstandard casing

      2 rig it so that if you open the unit it fuses something important (main power lines or the CPU data lines) on the motherboard (dead man circuit with glue on the back??)

      3 make these things as cheap and low power as possible (cheap enough that OS upgrades are not worth it)

      4 the only 2 jacks on the device should be

  • Or are the kids only going to be using these indoors?

    Is anyone doing a true daylight viewable display, like the transflective LCDs which were used on Fujitsu tablets?

    I need to replace my Fujitsu Stylistic ST-4121, and there simply don't seem to be any real options (need a Wacom stylus as well).

  • "The XC Collaboration AddOn Software [xc-collaboration.com] is a 3rd party product and not a default part of your installation of SMART Notebook Platform. In order to use this AddOn, you first have to download, install and activate it."

  • Ask how it went in LA. Also, does it bother anybody that "Khan Academy" popped up again?

  • I work in educational IT, and that generally means some executive wants something shiny with no clue as to the resources needed to make it work. Hilarity ensues.

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