oa Large Scale Deployment of Tablet Computers in High Schools in Brazil

Recently different sectors of society of many countries have been demanding significant improvements in their education systems, and teaching and learning practices (Keller, 2008; Latchem & Hanna, 2001). The need for keeping up or developing competitiveness has been the main reason for these improvements. These countries has been faced with challenges in terms of lack of skilled workers, capacity of resilience from the labor market to deal with dramatic economic changes, and the pursuit for more productivity based on the use of technology. Brazil is a good example of one of these countries. It has been struggling to improve its public basic education in order to develop the workforce. One of the initiatives to improve the education system is by changing the education paradigm in high schools with the use of tablet computers in a large scale deployment. This paper describes the social scenario that led to this initiative and how it has been made in a large country, as well as the research that is being carried out to investigate the impact of such initiative in the learning outcomes in public high schools in Brazil.