The specifications for Thailand’s one tablet per child have been released and some of the specifications are managing to raise eyebrows.
A budget of 1.9 billion baht ($60 million) has been set aside for 900,000 tablets for the country’s 860,000 first grade students. That works out at $66 each. The tablets will be given to students rather than lent out so that students can use the devices at home.
The tablet is to be pre-loaded with content for five core subjects for classes from first to third grade.
The tablet will be bought as part of a government-to-government procurement from China, and the prices will be for delivery to the airport where Thai Airways will provide shipping to Thailand. Key parts of the Terms of Reference for the bid include:
Dual core CPU of at least 1 GHz fabricated on a process smaller than 45 nanometres, 512 MB of RAM, 7-inch screen and 16 GB of flash storage, GPS and Wi-Fi and a full-sized SD-card slot.
The operating system will have to be Android 3.2 or Android 4.0, and must be customised so that the Ministry of Education’s logo appears on bootup.
Support will be a two year on-site warranty, five day turnaround and a 24-hour call centre with at least 1% of stock ready for replacement.
The bidder will have to be responsible for injury or death of the user in the case of the battery exploding and must replace the entire unit in such a case, not just the battery.