I love my country Nigeria, we haven't always made headlines for the right reasons but Nigerians are actually amongst the most talented people in the world. We excel in every field and since we have decided to dip our hands into the mobile computing field we would definitely leave our mark in this industry. I'm proud to introduce you to the "Opon-Imo" Tablet which was designed in Nigeria for Nigerian Secondary School students to aid them in preparing for their school leaving certificate examinations.
"Opon-imo" is a Yoruba word which literally means "tablet of knowledge" in English. It is an android tablet that comes preloaded with the basic secondary school curriculum textbooks and other learning aids. The project was funded by the Osun State Government under the leadership of Governor Rauf Aregbesola. amidst several claims that the project is a façade to enrich certain people in certain coffers, however 150,000 units of the tablets have been produced and successfully distributed to SS3 students through out the state.
The tablet is unassuming in terms of specs. but let's not forget the target consumers are secondary school students and not powerful CEO's of fortune 500 companies. The device is based on Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich Platform. The Tablet has a Dictionary, Bible, Koran and Health book. It also has development games such as chess, Sudoku and Tetris. It however doesnt support cellular activities so you wont be doing any web surfing on it because that would defeat the purpose of the tablet as we know teenagers are highly distracted by the internet.
However its still got the good stuffs like 512MB of RAM and an internal storage capacity of 32GB this isn't so bad considering the tablet is meant for light use, more like an eBook reader on steroids if you may call it that. It also has an amazing eBook Library centred on the curriculum of Nigerian secondary schools. The library consists of 17 core subjects and 7 extracurricular subjects for senior secondary 1, 2 & 3 levels.
What would a tablet designed to aid student learning be without some sort of applications to test the students? Although im absolutely sure this would be the students least favorite app.The Integrated Test Zone makes available Mock Exam tests for 14 core subjects in WASSCE comprising of 10 years of past questions with an average of 500 questions each and approximately 1800 images.There are Practice tests for 46 courses with approximately 1220 chapters containing approximately 29,000 questions.
Wow that's an awful lot of questions I was getting dizzy with the numbers there. I only wish that other states would emulate this and make it available for their students or better still the private sector can take on it and make it even better, maybe they could even throw in a cellular radio and upgrade it to Android 4 2.2 jelly bean as long as they plan to sell it at a subsidized rate through carriers or the Government subsidy it would be a fantastic idea.
In conclusion opon-imo tablet isnt a bitter pill to swallow at all, it is a giant leap in the right direction as far as technology is concerned in Nigeria, nobody can argue with the functionality of this tablet. The Osun State government under the leadership of Governor Rauf Aregbesola has really outdone themselves on this one.
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