Thailand reportedly also looked at some of China’s largest tablet manufacturers, such as Lenovo and Huawei, but the pricing per unit was too high for its budget. Conversely, a lower bid from another company was offered but rejected by the government, perhaps due to less specs for the value.</p><p>

The select device model, priced at $81 per unit, is the Scopad SP0712: An 7-inch Android device running the 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich operating system. It’s also got 1GB of RAM, 8GB of internal memory, 1.5 GHz single core CPU, and comes in four color options: Red, blue, silver, and gold. Shenzhen Scope will also set 30 help centers around the Southeast Asian country to provide user support specifically for tablets received from the campaign. Not too shabby of specs for tablets for elementary school students.

Now consider what those childrens' reaction will be to a standard PC when they're older. (Thanks @undersinged for the link.)

One Laptop Per Child arrived in Peru. How well did it fare?

An <a href="http://www.iadb.org/en/research-and-data/publication-details,3169.html?pub_id=IDB-WP-304">evaluation</a> of the laptop programme by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) found that the children receiving the computers did not show any improvement in maths or reading. Nor did it find evidence that access to a laptop increased motivation, or time devoted to homework or reading. The report applauded the government for providing much-needed hardware: less than a quarter of Peruvian households had a computer in 2010. But it now needs to improve teacher-training and the curriculum, said Julian Cristia of the IDB. Above all, the classroom environment needs to change.

Emma Mulqueeny:

In my opinion, Year 8 is too late. We need to start teaching digital literacy and coding as a part of the curriculum in Year 5, when most children's maths is strong enough. The curriculum has fostered a familiarity with computing and computers and the young minds are ready to start learning programming languages. Indeed primary school children are creative, excited and less likely to have developed associations, good or bad, with certain subjects.

John Gruber on Apple's expected swoop into education on Thursday:

"I’m guessing Apple’s pitch to the textbook companies is something like this: 'Digital transformation of your industry is inevitable. Here’s our plan; we’d like you to come along for the ride. But if you choose not to, we won’t hesitate to leave you behind.'"

"I am not speaking out of turn here in saying that this is a very common theme and a common argument and it drives me insane and most of the teachers in the group were wearily starting to accept defeat. I have also, to my utter despair, seen members of Young Rewired State fall at the same hurdle, where they have gone into schools and suggested running computing clubs or events, only to be patronised and dismissed.

"There are so many counter-arguments to it aren’t there? But you know that in fact, these are not the real reasons, if they were Physics would not be taught, nor music, nor high-jumps, back-flips or burpeez – who cares, right?"

If people were suggesting not teaching history, or physics, or English, we'd laugh at them. When they suggest not teaching coding, everyone agrees.

A resource only created on Wednesday night but which is going to improve and improve - bookmark it, take part, improve it. Really, it matters that our kids can code: if you wait until they're past 10, it can be too late to create the best.

"So after declaring that this would not become a personal mission for me in my post: year 8 is too late it has become a personal mission.<br />
"The petition is appallingly written. In my defence it was a brutal, and random, word count; I had to keep removing chunks of copy and keep trying to submit it, until suddenly it worked (no the word count that it eventually allowed through bore no relation to the word count originally stated… bug?). Anyhow, this terrible prose means that many have tried to explain it through writing their own explanatory blog posts and I thought I had better have a bash at explaining the background better myself.<br />
"What do I mean by code?"<br />
<br />
She explains. Meanwhile, go and sign the petition (linked from her page).

Interesting roundup of languages to let your ...eight-year-old upwards?.. teach themselves with. (Perhaps with a little help.)