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Supinda Na Mahachai
The Nation February 7, 2012 1:00 am
The Office of Basic Education Commission (Obec) has reported that only 789 schools, out of the 24,098 entitled for the "One Tablet PC Per Child" project, had fibre optic lines to connect the Internet, permanent secretary for Education Sasithara Pichaichannarong said yesterday.
The Obec survey of the 24,098 entitled schools, covering 507,148 Prathom 1 students eligible to receive the tablets in May, divided the schools into three groups.
The first group with a fibre optic system totalled 789 schools and her ministry would ask the ICT Ministry to install more signal enhancing boxes; the second group with ADSL system totalled 6,475 schools and her ministry would ask for more telephone lines; and the third group with a satellite system totalled 16,652 schools, she said. This third group remained rather problematic about Internet connection.
The ministry would gather information on all schools under agencies such as local administrative organisations and the border patrol police command to plan a thoroughly-comprehensive network, she added.
Sisithara's comment was made after a meeting with 14 private publishers' representatives about preparation of content for the tablets for Prathom 2-6 and Mathayom 1-6. Sasithara said because Education Minister Suchart Tadathamrongvej wanted all levels of students to use the tablets, elder kids' contents needed tablets with larger memory of 16GB. Previously the "Learning Objects" and e-book content for Parthom 1 tablets occupied 4GB out of their 8GB memory.
Most publishers told Sasithara the primary level contents were ready while the secondary level content would be ready in March, she added.
Four solutions for content procuring procedures were discussed at the meeting - first: terms of reference for a contractor to do the job; second, downloading from the publishers' servers; third - building a central server for publishers to upload their contents for the schools to later download ; and fourth - having publishers download content into SD cards. The second and third suggestions got the most publisher votes.
Sasithara said the ministry would ask various publishers to propose an appropriate solution by Friday, so the ministry could draw a conclusion and submit it to the IT Minister.
From February 21-22, the Education Ministry will announce its strategy at Muangthong Thani about the tablets' project. She said the prime minister would preside over the event's opening and the publishers would be invited to present their material.
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