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.
As an Turkish citizen living in Turkey. this move is bold but too early move. Also it's nothing about killing books. It's just a AKP(the ruling party) pr move without any bases.
We even lack the tech to run governmental sites in a stable and secure way. Forget about making this kind of technological movement worthy for the kids.
These will be highly restricted tablets - even not working outside of classrooms -, and with highly censored Internet. We have a tendency to restrict any sites against Islamic creationism so most of any pro-evolution or even scientific evolution ones will be restricted. I believe they will put the kids on a "white-listed" restriction zone.
Other than these points, we lack a decent educational system. Every government has been trying to circumvent the system according to their views and change curriculum, exam and admission ways annually. And there are too many children lacking the basic thinking and reading abilities. So these tablets won't make any good to them.
-- loosely related political point of view start --
Even governments have been circumventing how long and "how" the education system is. This year AKP legislated an education system of 4+4+4 which means, well I have no fucking idea! But as much as I've heard it would make possible 4 year old kids to be admitted for elementary school which will have "optional" Quran and "Prophet Muhammad" lessons and women to be continue education without attending the last 4 years.
-- loosely related political point of view end --
In the light of these information, I again don't believe this bold move means anything for the children. It's just a pr and social engineering move.
As an American citizen living in Turkey, I agree that this effort is a bit cart-before-the-horse. That said, I think that Turkey is in an interesting place right now. Maybe the way they are introducing technology into the classroom is wrong, but at least they are interested in using technology in the classroom. Meanwhile, the US is arguing over the best way to use statistics to decide which teachers to fire.
It seems that this same story is playing itself out in a number of areas. Turkey "gets it" in terms of science and technology investments, it just doesn't seem to know the best way to go about making those investments. Personally, I prefer this situation to the alternative: knowing exactly how and what to do, but not even bothering to keep a manned spaceflight capability or high-energy particle physics research facility funded.
As for what Turkey can do to get on the right track, I think the first thing that needs to happen is the expansion of homegrown technologies. It seems every user group or startup weekend type event I've seen advertised is almost exclusively sponsored and/or run by Microsoft. Turkey would do well to look at a country like Brazil that, while it suffered being behind the times for a while, is now a strong player in the technology sector because it focused on homegrown tech.
Generally I agree that throwing hardware to schools does not solve anything.
"We have a tendency to restrict any sites against Islamic creationism so most of any pro-evolution or even scientific evolution ones will be restricted"
You have to back this claim. There were incidents where some blogs were blocked but that was because of a court order which was caused by an individual, not government.
"This year AKP legislated an education system of 4+4+4 which means, well I have no fucking idea! But as much as I've heard it would make possible 4 year old kids to be admitted for elementary school which will have "optional" Quran and "Prophet Muhammad" lessons and women to be continue education without attending the last 4 years."
Idea is to revert the previous "27th of february coup"'s education changes which practically destroyed technical high schools and unnecessarily combined elementary and secondary schools. I believe the new system is better, no matter what the government's agenda is. However it was executed too quickly. Also as a side note, if there is a demand for religious education (And there is), parents should be allowed to give it.
The big problem I see with the project is that everone seems to be focused on hardware, which I think should be at the bottom of the the list to provide decent digital education system.
Money should be spent on good educational content and infrastructure to distribute this content. End devices will change every year anyway but content stays for long time and it is content that actually matters.
The content delivery part actually could be independent of the hardware, but government of course can subsidize a cheap and robust device for students. Which naturally means an OSS solution like android.
However Microsoft entrenchment is at highest levels in Turkey and prevents development of a healthy IT ecosystem. Even the best universities completely bound to Microsoft tools and technologies. So I would expect they will try to derail this project on both software and hardware fronts.
This project has slim chance of success because of wrong focus and poor software expertise of contractors. But I can't blame them for trying. Turkey adapts technologies very fast, and has a chance to leapfrog other countries on this front.
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
I don't think they are going to just load the PDF files of current books to tablets and give the tablets.
They are saying that everything will be tablet optimized. Don't think your regular school books, thinks about something like, umm, Flipboard. With video and other content in it. All interactive.
I don't know how much they can achieve, but I'm really looking for it.
Let alone the problem with the implementation of the system,
Almost half of the public schools in Turkey does not have proper funding for decent education.
Quarter of public schools have classes with more than 50 students (that holds true for metropolitans).
Many public schools in the Eastern part of Turkey lack money to provide heating to the students during winter. PS. Winter in the Eastern part can be as cold as -20 Celsius.
Yet government can find funding to provide tablets for students for some lucky schools. This is more than just PR work for the ruling party. This is plain hypocrisy.
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.
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.)
I agree, the title is misleading in that, "Killing the books" is not intended as part of the project if you read the ministry web page (with a grunge design reminding 90s.)
The Peru experience with OLPC is reportedly having mixed results; so such projects should be worked out properly if not targeting short-sighted PR.
I completely buy the idea that there's potential for new learning tools in tablets (or any computing device over books) but has anyone actually done it? Has anyone moved from potential and successfully effected this? At the very least tell me you're going to makes copies of lectures and video examples of everything available.
Changing from paper to electronic still images is kinda "meh".
This is bad. Physical objects are a way to permanently an irrevocably establish a position. It is not possible to delete or change a textbook on the fly. This will open up textbooks to instant manipulation for political goals.
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.
These people have no morals. I remember reading some documents about how neighboring Bulgaria was talked into buying Vista+office licenses for EVERY computer in every high school. At the time, the average computer was probably a PIII if not even PII. Doesn't make sense does it? Well they still did it!
They said the same about the internet but most kids just play games or go on Facebook :-)
I read a recent study by teachers using iPads in the classroom - they said that they didn't help learning as the children just played games or messed around with them instead.
[+] [-] osipov|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fsniper|14 years ago|reply
We even lack the tech to run governmental sites in a stable and secure way. Forget about making this kind of technological movement worthy for the kids.
These will be highly restricted tablets - even not working outside of classrooms -, and with highly censored Internet. We have a tendency to restrict any sites against Islamic creationism so most of any pro-evolution or even scientific evolution ones will be restricted. I believe they will put the kids on a "white-listed" restriction zone.
Other than these points, we lack a decent educational system. Every government has been trying to circumvent the system according to their views and change curriculum, exam and admission ways annually. And there are too many children lacking the basic thinking and reading abilities. So these tablets won't make any good to them.
-- loosely related political point of view start --
Even governments have been circumventing how long and "how" the education system is. This year AKP legislated an education system of 4+4+4 which means, well I have no fucking idea! But as much as I've heard it would make possible 4 year old kids to be admitted for elementary school which will have "optional" Quran and "Prophet Muhammad" lessons and women to be continue education without attending the last 4 years.
-- loosely related political point of view end --
In the light of these information, I again don't believe this bold move means anything for the children. It's just a pr and social engineering move.
[+] [-] jballanc|14 years ago|reply
It seems that this same story is playing itself out in a number of areas. Turkey "gets it" in terms of science and technology investments, it just doesn't seem to know the best way to go about making those investments. Personally, I prefer this situation to the alternative: knowing exactly how and what to do, but not even bothering to keep a manned spaceflight capability or high-energy particle physics research facility funded.
As for what Turkey can do to get on the right track, I think the first thing that needs to happen is the expansion of homegrown technologies. It seems every user group or startup weekend type event I've seen advertised is almost exclusively sponsored and/or run by Microsoft. Turkey would do well to look at a country like Brazil that, while it suffered being behind the times for a while, is now a strong player in the technology sector because it focused on homegrown tech.
[+] [-] afsina|14 years ago|reply
"We have a tendency to restrict any sites against Islamic creationism so most of any pro-evolution or even scientific evolution ones will be restricted"
You have to back this claim. There were incidents where some blogs were blocked but that was because of a court order which was caused by an individual, not government.
"This year AKP legislated an education system of 4+4+4 which means, well I have no fucking idea! But as much as I've heard it would make possible 4 year old kids to be admitted for elementary school which will have "optional" Quran and "Prophet Muhammad" lessons and women to be continue education without attending the last 4 years."
Idea is to revert the previous "27th of february coup"'s education changes which practically destroyed technical high schools and unnecessarily combined elementary and secondary schools. I believe the new system is better, no matter what the government's agenda is. However it was executed too quickly. Also as a side note, if there is a demand for religious education (And there is), parents should be allowed to give it.
[+] [-] dnda|14 years ago|reply
Money should be spent on good educational content and infrastructure to distribute this content. End devices will change every year anyway but content stays for long time and it is content that actually matters.
The content delivery part actually could be independent of the hardware, but government of course can subsidize a cheap and robust device for students. Which naturally means an OSS solution like android.
However Microsoft entrenchment is at highest levels in Turkey and prevents development of a healthy IT ecosystem. Even the best universities completely bound to Microsoft tools and technologies. So I would expect they will try to derail this project on both software and hardware fronts.
This project has slim chance of success because of wrong focus and poor software expertise of contractors. But I can't blame them for trying. Turkey adapts technologies very fast, and has a chance to leapfrog other countries on this front.
[+] [-] ttttannebaum|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] batuhanicoz|14 years ago|reply
They are saying that everything will be tablet optimized. Don't think your regular school books, thinks about something like, umm, Flipboard. With video and other content in it. All interactive.
I don't know how much they can achieve, but I'm really looking for it.
[+] [-] mathetic|14 years ago|reply
Almost half of the public schools in Turkey does not have proper funding for decent education.
Quarter of public schools have classes with more than 50 students (that holds true for metropolitans).
Many public schools in the Eastern part of Turkey lack money to provide heating to the students during winter. PS. Winter in the Eastern part can be as cold as -20 Celsius.
Yet government can find funding to provide tablets for students for some lucky schools. This is more than just PR work for the ruling party. This is plain hypocrisy.
[+] [-] ebiester|14 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] f4stjack|14 years ago|reply
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.)
[+] [-] diminish|14 years ago|reply
The Peru experience with OLPC is reportedly having mixed results; so such projects should be worked out properly if not targeting short-sighted PR.
[+] [-] jeffool|14 years ago|reply
Changing from paper to electronic still images is kinda "meh".
[+] [-] Lednakashim|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] znt|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] siteshwar|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] afsina|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ivansavz|14 years ago|reply
These people have no morals. I remember reading some documents about how neighboring Bulgaria was talked into buying Vista+office licenses for EVERY computer in every high school. At the time, the average computer was probably a PIII if not even PII. Doesn't make sense does it? Well they still did it!
[+] [-] gaius|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Musaab|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yalimkgerger|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kaolinite|14 years ago|reply
I read a recent study by teachers using iPads in the classroom - they said that they didn't help learning as the children just played games or messed around with them instead.
[+] [-] loverobots|14 years ago|reply