Finally A Wireless Service That Improves Education In The United States!
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Across the nation, forward-thinking educators are taking positive steps by distributing tablets in schools, in the hopes that the glimpses of efficiency we have seen to-date can continue to evolve for the long-term, changing classroom education for the better.
Many schools across the world are well on their way to integrating tablet technology into their daily routines. We receive hundreds of emails every week from teachers, schools and even businesses that are integrating tablets into their working environments.
Some schools are choosing to scrap textbooks all together in a pioneering pledge to remain at the forefront of technology. With Edstar Wireless, schools now have the opportunity to no longer be years behind with their classroom technology, but actually to be at the starting line, as the interface continues to evolve into a respectable tool for work purposes.
As technology only continues to advance and become more readily available, there is no reason to not integrate it into our classrooms. While teachers and students using social networking sites together can result in questionable situations, these sites can be restricted and don’t merit the abandonment of tablets altogether. If our children are to be successful in the future, they need to have the best technologies available to them – and tablets are definitely a gadget that could easily become far more important and far more helpful than a textbook.
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"Because A Good Education Can Make A Star"
1. Tablets Are the Best Way to Show Textbooks
Tablets are capable of offering enhanced ebooks featuring images, video and audio. These elements are impossible to include in print or in a standard ebook. Read about music? No thanks, I’ll follow my auto-advancing sheet music as the audio plays. See a picture of Martin Luther King, Jr. as I read his “I Have a Dream” speech? I guess that’s fine, but with one tap of my finger, I’m watching it. The result is a more integrated learning experience, which is more engaging for students. This isn’t the future — this is today. By allowing students to highlight text, take notes in the margin and access a dictionary directly within the book itself, tablets are matching (and in some cases, surpassing) everything that a traditional book — print or digital — can offer.
2. Classrooms Are Ready for Tablets
Though tablets are a recent phenomenon, many students in high school and college have been using smartphones for years, and are already well-acquainted with touchscreen technology. Because they’ve become so accustomed to using these devices, students are increasingly expecting to use them in the classroom setting. When classrooms don’t implement what has now become “everyday” technology, we’re doing students a disservice.
Additionally, students — and consumers in general — are becoming more comfortable using tablets for advanced tasks. According to a new Nielsen survey, 35% of tablet owners said they used their desktop computers less often or not at all now, and 32% of laptop users said the same. Most tellingly, more than 75% of tablet owners said they used their tablet for tasks they once used their desktop or laptop for. While tablets can’t totally match laptops in terms of functionally (yet), they can get today’s students most of the way there.
3. Tablets Fit Students’ Lifestyles
The appeal of tablets to a college student is obvious: They’re thin, lightweight, and spring to life without delay, making them much easier to take to (and use in) class than a laptop or netbook. Longer battery life means that students don’t have to worry about carrying a charger with them. Forgot what the professor said at the end of class about the mid-term? Launch Tegrity, tap the lecture and replay it in just seconds. That’s faster than texting a half-dozen classmates and waiting for what might be an inaccurate response.
Recent decades have seen an increased focus on implementing technology into the classroom. All around the world, schools are investing in new laptop or desktop computers and other devices that expand educational resources and appeal to today's students.
It would appear that the U.S. is lagging far behind the rest of the world in expanding the use of tablets in the classroom.
For example on October 5, 2011, the Indian Ministry for Human Resource Development announced the launch of a new low cost educational tablet: the Aakash. Developed by the London-based company DataWind with the Indian Institute of Technology Rajasthan, the Aakash has been described by some as potentially heralding a new 'Internet revolution' within India education, doing for educational computing what the mobile phone has done for personal communications over the past decade.
Another strong example of progressive technological approaches to education abroad is that Thailand’s new government, led by the Pheu Thai party, wasted no time pushing ahead with one of its more unique pre-election pledges, to equip schools and students with tablet PCs and free WiFi.
The Bangkok Post has more details:
The new Pheu Thai-led government wants the winners of the next third-generation (3G) licence auction to make
broadband and WWII service available to school children. The requirement will accommodate the party’S "One Tablet Per Child" policy and free WWII under universal service obligation conditions, says Pica Mauritanian, a party policymaker.
Mr Pica, who is in the running to be the new information and communications technology (ICT) minister, said the new government was determined to start delivery of the first batch of 800,000 tablets to primary-school students nationwide next May at a cost of 4 billion bat. "For the project to succeed, a nationwide broadband and WWII network must be available in schools, he said."
In the most obvious move ever that will never be imitated by anyone South Korea has announced that it plans to replace textbooks and all paper in its schools with tablets by 2015. CHECK THIS OUT MORE!
Undoubtedly, we know that laptop and tablet computers carry plenty of advantages over textbooks in the classroom. For example, these devices are highly interactive and can engage students more effectively. And as the education sector migrates more toward technology, online learning materials make it easier to access the latest editions of textbooks and other educational resources.
However, cost continues to be a barrier for many schools in the U.S. resultantly, EdStar Wireless has developed cost saving strategies to make tablets readily available for most school districts across the nation.
4. Tablets Have the Software to Be Competitive
Some of the most innovative software around is being developed specifically for tablets. In addition to the thousands of exciting educational apps available, tablets are fully compatible with online teaching and learning platforms, such as Blackboard, which are becoming the norm at colleges and universities. In fact, tablets’ current shortcoming — limited multitasking — could be their greatest asset in education, as it forces students to focus on one task at a time.
5. Tablets Integrate With Education IT Trends
Cloud-based solutions have become ever more popular with colleges and universities, which are looking to deliver synchronized experiences that are device agnostic. Tablets align well with this trend, given their portability and options for constant connectivity. With tablets and cloud-based systems, students can work anywhere on campus and make sure that their work is saved in a central location and accessible from all of their devices. They also don’t have to pay for computing power that they no longer need.
6. Tablets Are Becoming More Available
One of the primary reasons that tablets have been slow to penetrate the higher education market was their limited availability. Apple’s supply chain issues and the difficulty that some Android tablet manufacturers have faced in getting their products to market have made it difficult for schools to get serious about adopting. As these issues are resolved over the coming year, expect to see more and more tablets popping up on campuses.
Lower price points will make tablets even more appealing to colleges and universities. For close to a year, Apple went virtually unchallenged in the tablet market. Increased competition have driven down prices. The wave of tablets introduced at CES in January 2012 is just the tip of the iceberg. With dozens to hundreds of offerings, many based on Google’s open source Android OS, expect price points to fall quickly just as they have for laptops, smartphones and HDTV sets. Heck, many manufacturers are now selling tablets for less than $100.00.
How close are we today to tablets displacing computers in K-12 schools in the United States? With EdStar Wireless; closer than you might think.
