Problems learned from teachers for Thailand 's One Tablet per Child Project

I found a Thai news about reflections by Thai rural teachers on the Thailand's One Tablet per Child Project of interest. Their opinions should be good lessons for next Thailand government on how to implement better in the future, and perhaps to other countries as well.


From the news, Thai rural school teachers complained that tablets procured by the government and distributed to school children for free are troublesome. They are slow. The displays often froze. They are fragile, and if broken, sending for repair at far-away designated centers took a long time before getting them back, so the school often pay local shops to fix them instead.

The schools also lack large screens and digital projectors for their use, so teachers had to walk around the class a lot to instruct individual students. Most rural schools also lack budget to set up their school WIFI network so they mostly use the tablets off-lined which means rural students are limited to only the pre-loaded class materials. Teachers also believed that the tablet's screen size is too small for school children and would likely cause near-sightedness problem.

I am a bit surprised that they have not complained on the digital content, or e-textbooks. I am not sure if the content titles is adequate, or they are of better quality than the paper version at all.