The Department of Communications of the Government of South Africa reports
With inland schools opening today, learners in seven Gauteng schools are walking into a new era of the digital classroom, which will connect them to a world of endless educational opportunities.
The pilot project, known as the "Big Switch On", is a paperless education system, which will enable learners to have access to learning material, workbooks and other subject matter through the use of Information Communications Technology (ICT).
The seven schools in the pilot project will also receive state-of-the-art internet connection and each [learner] will receive a tablet, turning ordinary schools into "classrooms of the future".
According to the provincial Department of Education, the "Big Switch On" pilot project is the first step in realising Gauteng's vision, which aspires to build a world-class education system by modernising public education and improving the standard of performance across the entire system.
[...]The price tag to migrate all schools in the province to the digital system is estimated at R17 billion [about $1M USD] over the next five years. The tablets are programmed for educational purposes only, with lessons pre-loaded. Permanent IT specialists will be on site at any given time to assist the students and educators with the new system.
Apart from surveillance cameras, each school will have two armed security officers. The tablets have also been fitted with tracking devices.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by PizzaRollPlinkett on Monday January 26 2015, @11:58AM
A world of DRM? Usually these no-book initiatives are designed to get schools to lease their educational materials from year to year. The unhelpful article doesn't mention if any big education companies like Pearson are involved, what kind of tablets are involved, or what kind of DRM is involved. And I have to wonder if any world of endless educational opportunities is worth having security guards and tracking devices. Sounds like a world I wouldn't want to live in.
(E-mail me if you want a pizza roll!)
(Score: 4, Informative) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Monday January 26 2015, @12:42PM
> And I have to wonder if any world of endless educational opportunities is worth having security guards and tracking devices
In South Africa security guards are a fact of life, fancy ebook readers or not. Don't know about tracking devices though.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 26 2015, @12:49PM
Seems more like the tracking and surveillance cameras are the real goal.
What does security have to do with education?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 26 2015, @07:08PM
It's South Africa. They used to (maybe still do) sell car alarms with flamethrowers attached [youtube.com]. The security guards and cameras are there to keep people from breaking in and stealing the equipment. No one would bother stealing books, but electronics are sufficiently value-dense to make theft attractive.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Thexalon on Monday January 26 2015, @01:01PM
The problem, specifically, was that a couple of years ago there was a scandal where a company hired to deliver textbooks to schools decided it was easier to deliver them to a nearby river instead. This led to a significant student protest, with the students demanding replacement textbooks while the government scrambled to find the money. The incident made national news, and in the aftermath some people in the education ministry were implicated and fired. (I know this story because my dad and step-mother were teaching there at the time.)
It's worth noting that in general, at least where this happened, the students really really want proper schooling. They know that an education is what will give them a chance to live a much better life than their parents live, so when they protest it's to demand textbooks and better teachers. The problem is that the government culture is one of corruption and nepotism, not competence. The ANC has been starting to get into trouble because of that, especially now that Nelson Mandela isn't around.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 26 2015, @05:03PM
So next year they will dump some silly tablets into the river. I wouldn't call that problem solved...
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Monday January 26 2015, @07:12PM
So some vendors got into the public treasury in a corrupt failed state. News? Not really.
Sorry, while I'm still confident IT -could- revolutionize education, every attempt to date has only made things worse, usually by doubling down on the worst (faddish, politically correct, etc) practices that has made it all but impossible for children to get a quality education today. This sounds like more of the same. Tablets are harder to read than textbooks and while sold as a cheaper alternative, always end up with a TCO higher than the books they replace. Turning a purchase into a lease always benefits the seller more than the buyer... because the seller doesn't offer the option otherwise. Waving tech pixie dust over the argument doesn't change that basic economic reality.
Teaching children the basics of literacy (reading, writing and math) was a solved problem several hundred years ago, until we convinced ourselves that nothing our forefathers did could possibly be 'correct' and set ourselves to reinventing everything... worse.
Once a child can read and write they of course should be taught how to use the Internet. Despite its many problems it is truly a Wonder to have instant access to pretty close to the sum total of human knowledge and truly the sum total of the knowledge old enough to be free of copyright entanglements. But not until they can read and have the mental foundations to avoid falling into the many traps the Internet lays for the unprepared.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday January 26 2015, @09:19PM
every attempt to date has only made things worse,
Pretty broad brush you've chosen there.
Some failures have been seen, usually from bad platforms. But the rush to tablets and computers can hardly be called an overall failure. And the word "worse" isn't even worth addressing, since you've left it so vague.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 26 2015, @11:43PM
Oh, look. Our resident Reactionary Neoliberal once again craps on anything that isn't Reactionary and Neoliberal.
I made a point of including the word PILOT in the page title.
If they allow themselves to learn from the successes and weaknesses of the pilot program in South Africa, they have a serious chance of success.
If they also allow themselves to learn from the successes of others, like Uruguay (a nation of 3.4 million people), their chances of success are even better.
Ceibal project [wikipedia.org]
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by meisterister on Monday January 26 2015, @11:51PM
...was that these schools were finally getting off the edition treadmill pushed by textbook publishers. Then I saw that they were going with a different form of BS instead.
Fantastic.
(May or may not have been) Posted from my K6-2, Athlon XP, or Pentium I/II/III.