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The New York Times reported on Wednesday that Amplify’s CEO and former chancellor of New York City schools and News Corporation’s education division will jointly offer a 10-inch Amplify tablet equipped with Android OS, as well as a curriculum and infrastructure, for K-12 schoolchildren.
The touchscreen tablet will mostly land in the hands of middle-school children, and it will feature emoticons for student-teacher engagement, an “eyes on teacher” prompt for wandering eyes, and a unique design that marries technology with traditional teaching. Students can also take the tablet home at night and use it for fun.
New York City-based Amplify began testing its tablet in November 2012, but it only introduced the basic and high-end models today at SXSWedu 2013, according to The New York Times:
A preloaded tablet, training and customer care (largely from former teachers) starts at $299, along with a two-year subscription for $99 a year. A higher-end Amplify Tablet Plus, for students who do not have wireless access at home, comes with a 4G data plan and costs $349.
Amplify chief executive Joel I. Klein, who also serves as an executive vice president of News Corporation since 2011, will have tread carefully in regards to tracking children or using their data, as News Corp has been under a microscope in recent months over a much-publicized phone-hacking scandal.
Klein will also need to attractively market Amplify’s tablet in a space that is already brimming with competition attempting to capitalize on K-12 students. Apple, for instance, offers an education discount of 10-pack iPad minis and announced last week that it has sold a total of 4.5 million iPads direct to U.S. education institutions.
Klein told the New York Times that he expects Amplify’s tablets to contribute 40 percent of the division’s revenue in the long run, while the Amplify’s curriculum, including video games, will account for another 40 percent.
The Amplify tablet and related services, if purchased by June 30, will be ready for classrooms by the 2013-2014 school year. Check out the press release below for more details.
AMPLIFY EDUCATION UNVEILS FIRST-OF-ITS KIND TABLET FOR THE CLASSROOM
Today at SXSWedu in Austin, Texas, Amplify Education unveiled the first open, tablet-based learning platform designed specifically for K-12 education. The platform, which runs on a 10-inch Android™ tablet made by world class manufacturers, offers states, districts and schools a one-to-one personalized learning solution that includes customer care, professional development and school-level device management.
“We want to transform the way teachers teach and students learn,” said Amplify CEO Joel Klein. “Technology has revolutionized the world, but not the classroom. Our hope is that this tablet will help change that.”
“This is more than just a tablet. It’s a complete learning solution organized around the school day,” said Stephen Smyth, president of Amplify’s Access division. “We believe it’s both more affordable and more impactful than just about any other product in the education technology market.”
The Amplify Tablet offers states, districts and schools a Wi-Fi enabled one-to-one personalized learning solution at an introductory price of $299 for the device when purchased with a 2-year subscription at $99 per year. The subscription includes our exclusive software designed for teaching and learning, pre-loaded content and reference tools, customer care, professional development and school-level device management.
In addition to the Wi-Fi model, school districts can opt to provide students with the Amplify Tablet Plus, which includes a 4G data plan. The Amplify Tablet Plus is priced at an introductory offer of $349 for the device when purchased with a 2-year subscription at $179 per year. The subscription includes everything in the Amplify Tablet and 4G LTE connectivity, smart data-management tools and more.
The Amplify Tablet and related services are being piloted this year in school districts across the country in collaboration with AT&T. Tablets purchased by June 30 will be ready for use in classrooms in time for the start of the 2013-2014 school year.
“Building a strong economy and a strong country starts with education. Right now our students are lagging behind the rest of the world, and we’ve got to work faster than ever to catch up. That will require both the best teachers and the best technology,” Klein said.
About the Tablet
With the Amplify Tablet, students gain a mobile learning device that is organized around their in-school courses and out-of-school interests. For teachers, the tablet comes packed with a host of user-friendly instructional tools to help plan lessons, prepare quizzes, send assignments, share multimedia resources and easily manage all of their students’ devices.
The Amplify Tablet is pre-loaded with basic reference content and tools including: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Merriam-Webster Dictionary, Google Apps for Education, Desmos graphing calculator, EverFi’s digital literacy curriculum, Project Noah science tools, Common Sense Media and education-specific tools that allow teachers and students to take advantage of millions of multimedia resources aligned to the Common Core Standards. The tablet’s highly flexible, open platform can also easily integrate with both local and teacher-generated curricula.
In order to ensure that classrooms and schools have a successful tablet experience, each teacher and principal will be provided with high-quality professional development. They will also be provided with ongoing technical support by phone, email and live chat as well as pedagogical support from our help desk staffed by experienced former educators.
About the Company
Amplify is working to transform the way teachers teach and students learn. We are changing the realities of today’s classroom experience by leading the way in data-driven instruction, breaking new ground in mobile learning and paving the way for the next generation of digital curriculum and assessment.
Our products and services are designed for tomorrow’s promise and today’s realities. We’ve helped more than 200,000 educators and 3 million students in all 50 states begin their digital transition through mobile assessment solutions, adaptive curricula and tools that harness the power of data for classroom teachers. And we’re just getting started.
At Amplify, we’re creating exciting new approaches to teaching and learning that are: as immersive as the best films; as compelling as the best video games; as social as the best networking applications; as personal as the best tutors; and as analytically sophisticated as the best search engines.
Headquartered in New York City with more than 1,000 employees across the country, Amplify is led by a team of digital education experts and has provided industry-leading instructional tools, data analytics and assessment solutions to the K-12 market for more than a decade as Wireless Generation, now a part of Amplify Education, Inc.
To learn more about the Amplify Tablet please visit: http://amplify.com/tablet
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