School adopting tablets

If they're worried about locked and restricted nature, they made a mistake going tablets IMHO.

Lets's see the kids try to put an audiovisual presentation together on a tablet. The very form factor is far more restrictive than the OS.
 
Sinbad said:
If they're worried about locked and restricted nature, they made a mistake going tablets IMHO.

Lets's see the kids try to put an audiovisual presentation together on a tablet. The very form factor is far more restrictive than the OS.
Click to expand...

Notebook, at home?
If they have to do it at school, they can use the computer center. Reddam has an awesome computer center.

Remember, the tablet is a textbook replacement and to save paper. Tablet is perfect for that.
 
Mike Smit said:
Notebook, at home?
If they have to do it at school, they can use the computer center. Reddam has an awesome computer center.

Remember, the tablet is a textbook replacement and to save paper. Tablet is perfect for that.
Click to expand...

Fair enough, good point. But PDF or ePub is pretty open, I don't see apple ever restricting that.
 
Sinbad said:
If they're worried about locked and restricted nature, they made a mistake going tablets IMHO.

Lets's see the kids try to put an audiovisual presentation together on a tablet. The very form factor is far more restrictive than the OS.
Click to expand...

+1
 
Sinbad said:
Fair enough, good point. But PDF or ePub is pretty open, I don't see apple ever restricting that.
Click to expand...

How does security work with PDF? If not secure, the publishing houses won't go for it cause all the kids/parents will just share the books.
I don't know much about security related to the options you presented so ignore me if I am speaking out of my ass.

I am sure the school and their partners investigated these options. Been a 2 year walk to this decision.
 
Mike Smit said:
How does security work with PDF? If not secure, the publishing houses won't go for it cause all the kids/parents will just share the books.
I don't know much about security related to the options you presented so ignore me if I am speaking out of my ass.

I am sure the school and their partners investigated these options. Been a 2 year walk to this decision.
Click to expand...

Kindle provides an iPad app... Amazon must feel fairly safe?

Don't get me wrong - I think adoption of technology in schools is fantastic. I don't mean to criticise... I do devil's advocate by force of habit. Comes from working with crazy developers.
 
Mike Smit said:
Okay, wifey home and info forthcoming.

The school has entered into a trial with Samsung and Dellro (spell).

Dellro are the publishing house for the text books. They have agreed to put all the kids books on the tablets.

Reddam have been working on this for 2 years and this is a first in SA apparently. Even Reddam Australia could not get it right (electronic versions of the textbooks).

The whole idea here is a textbook substitute and to save paper.

They aim to make the textbooks interactive too. That a little later.

In the next month the whole school will be WiFi enabled for connectivity all over the school. Restricted of course.


To remove the incentive for theft, the pricing is actually damned good (ignore the rant OP). They are making it cheap enough for all kids to get them.

R1,300 up front fee. Fee includes insurance, books and a locker for the tab.
If the tab is lost/stolen they get a replacement. If the repeatedly lose their tablet then the cost of the tab is pushed to the parent eventually. Fair enough.

The school also upgraded their cameras around the school which reduced cellphone theft to almost nothing so should work for the tablets.

This is being introduced for next year's grade 10s only. If successful they are rolling it out for the whole highschool.

Overall it looks impressive. Reddam really taking the lead here.
Click to expand...

+1
 
Sinbad said:
Kindle provides an iPad app... Amazon must feel fairly safe?

Don't get me wrong - I think adoption of technology in schools is fantastic. I don't mean to criticise... I do devil's advocate by force of habit. Comes from working with crazy developers.
Click to expand...

I get you and wish I had all the answers, but I don't :o

From what my wife relayed, textbook replacement is not where it stops. They have further plans for the tablets, like taking their tests in class, year end exams, etc... That coming though so don't know the details yet.
If they looking forward they really don't want Apple to stand in their way.

A notebook IMO is too big for these everyday kind of tasks. You will need them for certain tasks that a tablet cannot do (maybe) yet? But they have computers at school and home at their disposal anyway.
 
we just did an analysis for delivering training content for a parastatal..their approved vendor costed at R2700 per training manual!!! can you believe THAT!
the ebook readers we are planning to pilot are best-branded products coming in at under R1k per unit, with the training content loaded.
if we get this right, its a MAJOR contract won right there!!
 
We've also been looking at this so I'll follow what's happening with Reddam closely if I can. Mike, you're going to have to keep posting about this :p

The textbooks for CAPS seem to be pretty horrendously priced - one of the schools here wanted to get it going and they just couldn't afford it.
 
AntiThesis said:
We've also been looking at this so I'll follow what's happening with Reddam closely if I can. Mike, you're going to have to keep posting about this :p

The textbooks for CAPS seem to be pretty horrendously priced - one of the schools here wanted to get it going and they just couldn't afford it.
Click to expand...

I will do dude. This place is my second home so no problem ;)

Reddam must have organised something really good here because a cost of R1,300 per student PA that includes books, Galaxy Tab, insurance and locker is pretty decent and really affordable.
 
Just learned that it is R1,300 and the tablet must be handed back at the end of next year. If in decent condition still you get R700 back.

This for the pilot. Final decision on costs will come end of next year when the pilot ends and they make their decisions.
 
Android ... that headmaster is a smart man. Didn't fall for the hype but went for what will work best. They can develop and side-load to hearts content and get it right without any limitations/interference. Kids can now start writing their own apps in Java as part of their curriculum.
 
BeVonk! said:
Android ... that headmaster is a smart man. Didn't fall for the hype but went for what will work best. They can develop and side-load to hearts content and get it right without any limitations/interference. Kids can now start writing their own apps in Java as part of their curriculum.
Click to expand...

Exactly :)
 
Mike Smit said:
They don't want iPads because of the locked and restrictive nature of them.
This straight from the principle this evening in response to the same question from a parent.

Reddam want to evolve this to become the standard at all their schools and Apple will just stand in the way.

EDIT:If this works out as all parties anticipate, Samsung and Dellro will take it to other schools too. Win win.

The principle said that this is not just a first in SA, but we are one of the first countries to implement this.
Other schools have tablets, but they don't have their textbooks on them. That is the first!
Click to expand...

This is pretty much why we dropped ipads for serious consideration with the work I do. You need something that plays well with others.
 
Your kid's school made the Star publication today. Seems like you bunked quite an important event :)
 
This is really cool and I hope the idea takes off and spreads to other schools.

My kid's school seemed to be doing this at one stage (started in 2011 iirc) but with iPads and at the Pre-Primary and Primary schools. It seemed like they were exposing the little ones to what might a future way of learning. Not sure what the high school was doing about it though. Concept appears to have died down :(

The school also made a video and put it on youtube to show their intentions. Can't seem to find the clip on youtube.

Kudos to Reddam House. This is definitely the way forward...
 
Mike Smit said:
Okay, wifey home and info forthcoming.

The school has entered into a trial with Samsung and Dellro (spell).

Dellro are the publishing house for the text books. They have agreed to put all the kids books on the tablets.

Reddam have been working on this for 2 years and this is a first in SA apparently. Even Reddam Australia could not get it right (electronic versions of the textbooks).

The whole idea here is a textbook substitute and to save paper.

They aim to make the textbooks interactive too. That a little later.

In the next month the whole school will be WiFi enabled for connectivity all over the school. Restricted of course.


To remove the incentive for theft, the pricing is actually damned good (ignore the rant OP). They are making it cheap enough for all kids to get them.

R1,300 up front fee. Fee includes insurance, books and a locker for the tab.
If the tab is lost/stolen they get a replacement. If the repeatedly lose their tablet then the cost of the tab is pushed to the parent eventually. Fair enough.

The school also upgraded their cameras around the school which reduced cellphone theft to almost nothing so should work for the tablets.

This is being introduced for next year's grade 10s only. If successful they are rolling it out for the whole highschool.

Overall it looks impressive. Reddam really taking the lead here.
Click to expand...

I think its great that they are pioneering this, its definitely the future.

However I do think that they have jumped the gun (even though this is a pilot).

-The first reason is that this was clearly driven by business, a hardware company and a publishing house were trying to make sales (good on them)
-What the schools really need is a locked down education driven device. Something that will only allow content sanctioned by the school, making it useless to thieves and only useful as an education device.
-Lastly the content and material needed to make this thing a success are not their yet.

Given those criticisms I think that its a good thing that this is being tested out. Its sustainable and could be scaled out to a lot of schools.
They need to look at projects like the $100 laptop and emulate those principles (in to a tablet/eReader)
 
Some good points there Nerfherder and I agree. There is still a hell of lot that needs to be done but the possibilities and rewards are huge.
 
We are a term in and no theft reports. So that is good.
Kids carry less books around. That good too.

Will gather some more info and report back.
 
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