25,000 laptops for students in Terengganu
I had a chuckle when I first read this newspaper report . Apparently the Terengganu state government wants to give out 25,000 laptops to Primary 5 students to replace their heavy textbooks. This is another example of a policy decision that was poorly conceived and will probably be poorly implemented as well. I think that the idea of giving away free laptops to students is a bad idea in principle especially if they are conventional laptops. (I'm a little bit more agnostic about the 100 dollar laptops which are being promoted by OLPC ) I think it diverts attention from other bigger problems which kids in rural and poorer schools face which is the lack of resources, poor infrastructure and poor teaching. There is no guarantee that having a laptop will improve the quality of teaching or learning or if it will help in reducing the digital divide between kids in urban and rural schools. But this specific idea in Terengganu seems even more ill-conceived. For example, these laptops are sup...