Tablet project under pressure

Education Ministry has only 4 months to buy 470,000 computers to be given to Prathom-1 students in phase one of the policy

More than 400,000 tablets are to be delivered to Prathom 1 (Grade 1) students on May 23 in the first phase of the government's One Tablet PC per Child policy, a top official at the Education Ministry told The Nation recently.

"We need to deliver tens of thousands of tablets to Prathom 1 students in May, which is the month that the first semester of the 2012 academic starts. Prime Minister Yingluck [Shinawatra] has already announced in Parliament that the first phase would start with Prathom-1 students at pilot schools and the tablets would be given to them at that time," Sasithara Pichaichannarong, permanent secretary of the ministry said. She gave an exclusive interview to the Nation Group of publications during her visit to their offices on Friday.

Sasithara added that the government would expand the distribution to older students in its long-term plan.

"To be able to hand out up to 470,000 tablets on time, for which we have only about four months left, the Education Ministry will conclude next week how to purchase such a huge number of tablets," she said.

The ministry is in the process of considering the buying process amid time constraints. It is looking at two options - holding an auction in which private companies manufacturing tablets can compete, and discussing with China if Thailand can buy the tablets from China under a government-to-government contract.

"The PM is worried that the government will not be able to distribute the huge number of tablets on time. So, she has told the Foreign Ministry to discuss the issue with China."

"India is the other interesting partner with whom we could have an agreement for purchase of the tablets," Sasithara added.

Meanwhile, many tablet companies in Thailand have approached the ministry to present their products, she said.

Late last year, 17 companies met Woravat Auapinyakul, then Education Minister, to present their products and discuss the pricing. Lenovo (Thailand), the China-based computer maker, donated 600 tablets for free preliminary testing and for research on the impact of allowing the use of tablets on students at five selected big schools in different regions of the country.

About 62 per cent of the total 850,000 Prathom-1 students will be given the tablets, requiring a budget allocation of Bt1.6 billion. Each tablet will cost about Bt3,400 (Bt3,100 for hardware and Bt300 for software installation), with a capacity of 16GB. Teachers will keep the tablets at schools and allow them for use only in the class.

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.

Asked about worries in some quarters about whether economically priced tablets would have specifications good enough for use by the students, she replied: "Since the targeted students are only six years old, they do not need high-spec computers. Using just simple programs and applications and having fun during academic learning from the tablets are enough for them. They don't need ones with quick response and fast downloads from the Internet. Please do not compare your needs with those of children."

The permanent secretary said the content of five subjects - maths, science, Thai, English and social studies - would be installed in each tablet. She told the Office of the Basic Education Commission (Obec) to provide its e-content and interactive learning objects. It had to choose suitable ones from a total of more than 800 items.

"Due to time and budget constraints, we are unable to hire private companies with interactive teaching software to deal with the content," said Sasithara.

During preparation of the content, Obec made a presentation of its interactive teaching software to Woravat. The e-content of some of the five subjects, using cartoon animations to describe the content, and learning games were shown to him late last year.

Providing training to teachers to enable effective use of tablets in the class will be the next challenging task for the ministry before it undertakes distribution of the tablets.