Turkey kills school books, moves to tablet in all schools | Hacker News Reader

Turkey kills school books, moves to tablet in all schools

fatihprojesi.meb.gov.tr

50 pointsbatuhanicoz38 comments

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.

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.

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.

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.

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...

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.

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

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.

> but at least they are interested in using technology in the classroom

I don't get you. How does being interested in using technology in the classroom align with buying a load of tablets?

Generally I agree that throwing hardware to schools does not solve anything.

"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"

You have to back this claim. There were incidents where some blogs were blocked but that was because of a court order which was caused by an individual, not government.

"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."

Idea is to revert the previous "27th of february coup"'s education changes which practically destroyed technical high schools and unnecessarily combined elementary and secondary schools. I believe the new system is better, no matter what the government's agenda is. However it was executed too quickly. Also as a side note, if there is a demand for religious education (And there is), parents should be allowed to give it.

I won't go into a quarrel about these. And I won't back any of my claims.

At least not on HN

Yet you spilled them here on HN :)

Yes sorry for it.

- late edit: But I had to put my pov to describe why I believe this is a social engineering move.

> You have to back this claim. There were incidents where some blogs were blocked but that was because of a court order which was caused by an individual, not government.

Some parts of the claims can be backed. Just looking at the Internet connection of places which managed by the Ministry of Education can prove that the access WILL be limited.

For example, social networking sites (not just big players like Facebook and Twitter, small ones like FriendFeed as well), most of the blogs, YouTube (and many of its alternatives) CAN NOT be accessed in schools or any of the ministry buildings.

I know blocking social networks and sites like YouTube can be understood since they are distractions in school but the blogs which are blocked shows what they are trying to do. All blogs which has some kind of non-muslim information is blocked. Even my blog, a 17 year teenagers blog, is blocked in schools in Turkey. The reason for it, I believe, is the fact that I'm not Muslim and said so in an old video of mine, which is not removed.

Problem is those sites would be blocked because they are considered as distractions (and yes they are) not because they include evlutionary or non-mulim content. What is the site you are talking about? There should be a specific court order for that. I dont think anyone cares if a teenager is a muslim or not.

I'm not talking about blocking a website country-wide.

TTNET (biggest ISP in Turkey, founded and formerly owned by the government) gives you username for your DSL line, its usually something like phonenumber@ttnet (or yourname@ttnet1). If your username is like that, you connect with TTNET's DNS servers and your only limit is the sites that are blocked by courts.

But, if you're a school, they'll give you* a username like "schoolname@meb", when you connect with this there is a special black list (which includes word filters too) that can't be passed with anything but proxies. And, BTW, "proxy" is a blocked word.

For example, you can't -even- search for "porn" on Google. I'm not saying you'll need to search for porn on Google in school, just explaining how this black list works.

* A friend of mine explained it to me like this, he was a computer teacher in a government school. Now the system may be changed, I don't have clue, but the block is still there today.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.)

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.

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".

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.

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.

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

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.

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!

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

I believe it is a draw.

Epic.

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.

I am afraid they have taken away books and given them a new distraction device.

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.

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

100% agree. I'm just sick of schools spending £1000s on plasma TVs, etc, and then not having enough left in the budget for textbooks (true story).

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.

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