Facing the challenges of the One-Tablet-Per-Child policy in Thai primary school education

Abstract

Abstract-The Ministry of Education in Thailand is currently distributing tablets to all first year primary (Prathom 1) school children across the country as part of the government's "One Tablet Per Child" (OTPC) project to improve education. Early indications suggest that there are many unexplored issues in designing and implementing tablet activities for such a large and varied group of students and so far there is a lack of evaluation on the effectiveness of the tablet activities. In this article, the authors propose four challenges for the improving Thailand's OTPC project, consisting of: developing contextualised content, ensuring usability, providing teacher support, and assessing learning outcomes. A case study on developing science activities for first year primary school children on the OTPC devices is the basis for presenting possible solutions to the four challenges. In presenting a solution to the challenge of providing teacher support, an architecture is described for collecting data from student interactions with the tablet in order to analysis the current progress of students while in a live classroom setting. From tests in three local Thai schools, the authors evaluate the case study from both student and teacher perspectives. In concluding the paper, a framework for guiding mobile learning innovation is utilised to review the qualities and shortcomings of the case study.

Designing a ubiquitous sensor-based platform to facilitate learning for young children in Thailand

“…In many cases, students interacted with the tablet passively and only used it to read E-books or watch videos from the Internet [44]. These findings echoed those from studies which examined the use of mobile computers in developing regions, as it was reported that even though such initiatives dramatically increased technology access, motivation in learning and helped improve computer skills, there were no statistically significant effects on academic achievement and cognitive skills improvement [8,58]. It was claimed that the lack of success was due to the lack of indepth understanding of the local context [59].…”

“…There was also a preference for learning which not only improves students' knowledge in specific subject areas but also help them develop their soft skills (e.g. critical thinking) [44], [58]. In addition, schools in rural areas tend to have limited budget, lack modern teaching equipment for science education and have unreliable technological infrastructure [37].…”

Examining Students‟ Attitudes towards Using Tablets Outside School Contexts

“…This suggests that students value quality and usability of their devices. As Viriyapong, Hartfield emphasize "ensuring usability" is one of the main challenges preventing initiatives from succeeding [13].…”

“…This suggests that students value quality and usability of their devices. As Viriyapong, Hartfield emphasize "ensuring usability" is one of the main challenges preventing initiatives from succeeding [13]."These tablets are just like tablet of pills, they break easily" "They say some of the functions in tablets are blocked for security reasons but they made tablets completely useless" Even though majority of the students reported no use, some students reported short amount of daily use. Because the Technology, Vol.…”

Teacher Perception on Educational Informatics Network: A Qualitative Study of a Turkish Anatolian High School

“…Technology integration in education has been situated in the center of the national educational policies around the world for the purposes such as students being able to acquire the skills of 21st century, be prepared for the future business world, and schools to become more effective and productive (Kirschner & Erkens, 2006). Accordingly, several projects, known as "One-X-Per-Child", have been conducted for the technology integration in education in different countries (see Kim & Jung, 2010;Pruet, Ang & Farzin, 2015;Viriyapong & Harfield, 2013).…”