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@posix.co.za  -  Mark J Elkins, Cisco CCIE
/ |/ |ARK \_/ /__ LKINS  Tel: +27 12 807 0590  Cell: +27 82 601 0496

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