

Turkey kills school books, moves to tablet in all schools - batuhanicoz
http://fatihprojesi.meb.gov.tr/tr/duyuruincele.php?id=17

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osipov
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.

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fsniper
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.

~~~
jballanc
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.

~~~
fsniper
The ones that are advertised are from Microsoft. Because they have the money.
I'm a - past time active - Turkey LUG/LUF (Linux User Foundation) member and
we still continuously do events but lack the funding for advertisement.

On the topic, In my point of view, these moves are just wasting government
funding, even a corruption possibility. If you know about Deniz Feneri Lawsuit
you can understand my doubts.

Without deep understanding of the upcoming results and project targets, these
projects are only time and resource wasting. Also giving false hopes to
parents about our education systems quality.

~~~
jballanc
I think the outcome of this experiment very much depends on the attitude that
parents and students take into it. If they passively accept the technology,
don't ask questions, and don't push for more access, more technology, then the
project will be a waste regardless of any corruption or inefficiencies.

If, on the other hand, the students and parents expect to take this technology
and _do_ something with it, to _change_ somehow the state of education, then
it won't matter how poorly executed this first project is. Students will
demand more and better access as time goes on.

I am an optimist. Recent reports on the success (or lack thereof) of the One
Laptop Per Child program make me slightly more pessimistic, though...

~~~
fsniper
I believe, only a few of the kids will push whatever they have for better use.
This may be my pessimism, but lack of DIY culture and abusing of technology
tendency of Turkey population makes me think like this.

~~~
jballanc
I can't say you're wrong. I only wonder what it would take to change that...

~~~
fsniper
Better education.

Better funding for education and better life conditions for teachers. Putting
science before religion. Going against memorization and teaching kids
analytical thinking and social arts.

Of course academia is another place that must be revolutionized.

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dnda
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.

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ttttannebaum
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

~~~
batuhanicoz
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.

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mathetic
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.

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ebiester
Disclosure: I'm currently in Istanbul.

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.

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f4stjack
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.)

~~~
diminish
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.

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jeffool
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".

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Lednakashim
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.

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znt
I should also add that the contract bidding for this project was a 'closed'
one. So they are just transferring tax money into their friends' pockets.

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siteshwar
I heard Nokia got the contract to distribute these tablets.I am not sure
whether these are ones running Meltemi.

~~~
afsina
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.

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ivan_ah
If M$ is involved, it can't be good.

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
Question: Who has better support for Turkish right now, MS or Linux?

~~~
fsniper
I believe it is a draw.

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Musaab
Epic.

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yalimkgerger
This is such an amazing move. It's going to put access to information into the
hands of millions of children. It is a revolution in the making.

~~~
kaolinite
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.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Which is not really a problem with iPads, nor with kids - it's a problem with
education.

~~~
goblin89
Exactly. During traditional class, as I recall, your options are roughly
these: 1) mess around with something, 2) study or make it look like that.

In terms of temporal motivation theory, the utility of messing around is much
higher than the utility of boring study. Two ways to fix this—either lower the
utility of messing around, or raise the utility of actual learning.

A punishment by teacher (with high enough expectancy) for messing around with
classmates or cellphone does the first. Obviously, a book is too boring—but
replace it with an iPad and children can now play games while no one
notices[0], which makes the utility of messing around go up again.

Another, arguably better way would be raising the utility of actual learning
relative to messing around with stuff. In other words, make so that children
would like to do it themselves—through some psychological reward (valuable and
close enough temporarily), or by making it an enjoyable process (i.e.,
immediate reward). It means fixing the system though.

[0] Like many of us, in regular day job environments, can (and do)
procrastinate with the help of our fancy devices.

