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Turkey kills school books, moves to tablet in all schools

fatihprojesi.meb.gov.tr

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Re: Turkey kills school books, moves to tablet in all schools

#5

Post by ttttannebaum »

Where here does it say Turkey is "killing school books"? Even if they were replacing all schoolbooks with tablets, I find that idea kind of bad seeing as it makes it difficult to flip between exercises and the chapter or the index and the rest of the book (or other functionality that a textbook is supposed to support). Ebooks are fine for novels but I just can't use an endless scrolling touchscreen tome for learning something

Re: Turkey kills school books, moves to tablet in all schools

#6

Post by afsina »

siteshwar wrote: post #4

I heard Nokia got the contract to distribute these tablets.I am not sure whether these are ones running Meltemi.

In the Pilot they used a US based Android tablet manufacturer (General Mobile) and Samsun Galaxy Tab. Initially they were going "only Android" but after some MS-Nokia lobbying (This is my guess, Both are very strong in Turkey) they had to change the requirements and they invited Nokia to the bid.

Re: Turkey kills school books, moves to tablet in all schools

#7

Post by osipov »

Here's an inside story about this project: up to this point the government has been running a small scale pilot which has been hit with all kinds of problems. For example, the kids who have received these tablets have been selling them on the street to buy candy instead of using them to study. Further, there is no centralized management software for the books and other tablet content. As a result, kids just delete books on the tablets and tell their teachers that tablets don't work because they are missing books. The data center that the gov't has been using is not equiped to deal with the volume of service requests that the tablets are sending to the DC. There is a real sense amongst participants that despite all the investment on part of the Turkish government the project will be a huge failure.

Re: Turkey kills school books, moves to tablet in all schools

#8

Post by ebiester »

Disclosure: I'm currently in Istanbul.

This seems like an idea that could go pretty wrong.

1. I have doubts to the quality of screens they will choose, for cost's sake. This is a country that still has a lot of poor people and doesn't have the tax base to use iPads exactly. Is a poor screen better than a "Retina Display" paper book? Now, while displays will be cheaper and better by the end of the 5 year rollout, and (barring more Europe recession) Turkey is still growing at a respectable rate, giving them a better tax base in 2018. I'm still not convinced what they can reasonably afford.

2. If these tablets are too good or can do too much, they will be stolen. Kids will drop them. Dropping a paper book isn't as problematic as dropping every book you have and the tablet shattering, or a kid stealing another's tablet/submerging it in water out of spite, or adults stealing the tablet. It will happen.

Re: Turkey kills school books, moves to tablet in all schools

#10

Post by f4stjack »

Be serious. You'll see that nobody is planning to kill school books, if you can read between the lines. That could have happened if the ministry had restructured the educational system to use tablets effectively. All they've done is scan the books and slap them into feature restricted tablets.

Unfortunately, this is just a public relations move and nothing more IMHO. (Oh and the site is down I think? It only gives me a "1" when I click on the address.)

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