[kictanet] School visit

Fri Apr 12 02:35:02 EAT 2013

Hi Mark,

Thank you so very much for sharing this with us. What I like the most about
this model you have shared is the quasi Public-Private-Partnership where
the businessman has taken the risk element, innovated with the publishers,
and worked out a way of putting more than 1,000 tablets into the students'
hands WITHIN 1 MONTH!

1,000 units a month is godd business for any type of company - if the
margins have been designed right and the costs of finance are not too high.

Best regards,

Brian

On Thu, Apr 11, 2013 at 6:01 PM, Mark Elkins <mje at posix.co.za> wrote:

> Today, Thursday 11th April, 2013, I visited the Sunward Park High
> School, Sonskyn Rd, Sunward Park, Boksburg (Johannesburg).  The school
> has recently embarked on a one tablet per child project.  My purpose
> was to simply visit the place to satisfy my own curiosity.
>
> The School is an old Model-C school, teachers are generally white or
> indian and the lerners are about 90% black.  It is by no means a rich
> school.  There are about 1250 children - excluding the matric learners.
> There are three double story blocks of classrooms and a further block
> which houses administration and a school hall.  Classes are usually
> just under 40 learners.
>
> This school has achieved some interesting goals.  They have a very
> active soccer program with an on-site dormitory for 20 or so learners.
> I understand the team has travelled around Europe and that a number of
> the learners are already pre-signed to play at various clubs in
> Europe.
>
> I understand that the Teachers were all equipped with Laptops a year
> or so ago.  The Classrooms all seemed to have VGA projectors and there
> is a smart white board as well as a traditional blackboard in every
> classroom.
>
> Towards the end of last year, a plan was formulated by a businessman
> to provide a Wifi access point in every classroom and to provide every
> learner with either a 7" or 10" Android tablet.  There was initial
> Headmistress and staff buy-in followed by parent buy-in to the
> project.  The Wifi units are switched back to a central server via UTP
> copper cable.  The Server provides the content.  There is a localised
> e-mail server.  A Firewall connects just the staff to the public
> Internet.
>
> The Businessman arranged with various publishers to obtain all the
> learners curriculum in an electronic format.  For example, McMillian,
> one of the primary publisher, has provided a three year licence for
> half the price of paper based books.  There is also a lot of other
> electronic media available, Wikipidia, Learn channels video content,
> Mindset Learning material and educational media from more than twenty
> other sources.
>
> I first spoke to the business man and the vice head of the school.
>
> Hardware costs were:
> Server R70,000
> Wifi   R250,000
> Other  R50,000     Total R320,000 or just under R300 per student.
>
> The E-Media costs are R300 per student per year and the 7” Tablet R1000.
>
> The cost thus for the first year is R1600 followed by R300 a year for
> two years.  The usual fee cost for a student was given as R2000 a year
> using traditional methods - so fees have actually come down by half if
> you look at a two year cycle.
>
> There was some initial theft of tablets in the first day or two.
> Since then, no theft.  After a month, only a handful of students had
> not purchased tablets so these students were "loaned" devices.  About
> one third of students purchase the 7" tablet, the remainder purchased
> a more expensive 10" tablet.  The choice of device is governed more
> by security and the ability to hide a smaller tablet than of cost.
> There have been breakages - Tablets dropped or used in lieu of a
> book to hit a fellow learner over the head.
>
> I then visited some classes.
>
> In a "Life Science" classroom, the teacher was presenting a class on
> the water cycle (sea->evaporation->rain->river).  He presented from
> his laptop via the VGA projector and the students were looking at two
> equivalent presentations via their Tablets.
>
> Some of his comments were:
> End of class tests are easy, I get instant feedback on whether my
> teaching is being effective and so can react immediately.  I spend
> more time teaching and less time doing administration and marking.  I
> can teach in short bursts to match the learners attention span rather
> than give a half hour monologue from the front of the class and instead
> of spoon feeding them, I get them to research the subject.  Its
> easier to handle learners of different ability, the quick I can give
> more work to and the slow can continue the work in their own time.
> He also believed that learners were becoming smarter and more interested
> in what was being taught.
>
> I then entered a History lesson where Martin Luther King was being
> discussed.  The learners (a class of boys, one of the most difficult
> classes due to the presence of a large proportion of the successful
> football team) were using the Tablets as book-readers.
>
> This teacher also was in full support of the Table.  She claimed the
> boys were much easier to keep in control than before (last year).  She
> indicated that some work has still to be written in text books to
> comply with the educational department rules but students now have
> much thinner text books - saving money.
>
> I then talked to a small gathering of learners outside who seemed to
> have a spare lesson.  They were Matric learners.  As they are leaving
> at the end of this year, they are not a part of the Tablet program -
> though about 60% of them have Tablets.  One, who has a younger
> sibling, remarked that she is envious of her sister.  Homework seems
> much easier and more interesting now.  Also, she still has to carry a
> full bag of books where as all the non-matric learners just carry
> Tablets.  All of this crowd had Tablets and do use them unofficially at
> school.
>
> The "experiment" has only been running for three months but the
> results so far look very promising.  I would like to visit the same
> school in a year.
>
> Mark Elkins
>
>
> --
>   .  .     ___. .__      Posix Systems - (South) Africa
>  /| /|       / /__       mje at posix.co.za  -  Mark J Elkins, Cisco CCIE
> / |/ |ARK \_/ /__ LKINS  Tel: +27 12 807 0590  Cell: +27 82 601 0496
>
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