Tablet delivery under way

News > Local News

EDUCATION

Published: 19 Jul 2012 at 00.00
Newspaper section: News

The government held a ceremony marking the delivery of the first batch of tablet computers to Prathom 1 students Wednesday.

A worker loads boxes labelled "One Tablet Per Child" on to a truck at the Education Ministry in Bangkok. The ministry sent off trucks on Wednesday to deliver the first batch of 55,000 tablet computers to primary schools in eight provinces. The government plans to distribute 800,000 PC tablets to Prathom 1 (Grade 1) schoolchildren nationwide. The devices are made in China. CHANAT KATANYU

It was also announced that two billion baht has been earmarked for next year to buy more of the devices, which will go to students in Grade 7.

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Aussie John
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Discussion 22 : 27 Jul 2012 at 06.1722
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Great political tool for future 'brainwashing' of Thai young minds. It wll be interesting to see what propaganda in put into these iPads.
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johninbkk
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Discussion 21 : 20 Jul 2012 at 22.5321
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bikeme 13 - There was never any rule that required the manufacturer to be Chinese. HP, Macintosh, Microsoft, Sony, Google and many other companies all manufacture their tablets in China.

bkk-farang 15 - Tablet trials have been ongoing since October, and there are plenty of articles already to read.
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lazar
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Discussion 20 : 19 Jul 2012 at 20.0020
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Bluebottle: they're not iPads ther only cheap copies.
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bluebottle
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Discussion 19 : 19 Jul 2012 at 17.5319
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It would seem the money would have been better spent on teacher training if some previous comments are to be believed.Still Thailand can now safely boast to the world that they supply free of charge iPads to there school children.
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genii
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Discussion 18 : 19 Jul 2012 at 17.4518
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It's rare that anything is perfect but it is great to see the effort in trying to improve the education of the youth. Education is the key to the preservation of equal rights, freedoms and liberties.
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englishbob
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Discussion 17 : 19 Jul 2012 at 17.3617
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Disc12 - It's a year since this project was promised. 1 million tablets were to be distributed (which has now been revised downward by 200,000).
It's taken 12 months to find 55,000. You want us to wait before passing judgement? I'm willing to hold back before judging the quality of the project, but I can certainly criticise the progress so far. It's as slow and top-heavy as the flood compensation. People are still waiting for compensation promised. Cash... that's light, easily portable and readily available. If the government can't arrange that, how confident should we be they can arrange 800,000 tablets distributed in a timely and efficient manner?
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dickemery
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Discussion 16 : 19 Jul 2012 at 16.4516
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no doubt the man from far away is rubbing his hands most government requistion will be channelled thru by these means whilst china will be supplying 10000 teachers to teach english but alas no original nasa project
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bkk-farang
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Discussion 15 : 19 Jul 2012 at 14.3115
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I hope the media will follow this project closely. It would be nice to see the first steps when the children receive the devices and when the teachers explain them how to use them – or will it be the other way around?
I don’t have much hope that this will help with the education of the kids but I am happy if I am proofed wrong. Let’s see how the kids develop over the next couple of months and years. Let’s look how the China devices will look like after a year.
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dao
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Discussion 14 : 19 Jul 2012 at 11.0014
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One tablet one teacher I would have supported to upgrade teacher training and to use as a tool to teach maybe viewed by the students through a TV .As it is now it is just a big vote getting give away with no clear direction to reform education .I,m sure the one providing internet services must be excited .
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bikeme
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Discussion 13 : 19 Jul 2012 at 10.3113
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They randomly inspected ... that means they took random samples to test ... how many did they actually test? 7 bad ones out of 50 random tests is atrocious, 7 out 10,000 is acceptable. How about some more facts & figures.

D8 Johninbkk - as I recall reading the bidding was limited to 4 pre-selected Chinese companies.
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