1,250 Tablets Bring Adaptive Math Software to Palau's Schools — With Lessons on What Training Gaps Cost

COVID-19 school closures and disruptions in late 2021 threatened learning continuity across Palau's small, dispersed school network.
From August 2021, Japan's JICA, together with PADECO Co., SuRaLa Net Co. and Osaka Kyoiku University, ran the "Project for Improving Teaching and Learning Mathematics by Utilizing Tablets," distributing 1,250 tablets loaded with SuRaLa Ninja — a Japanese individualised, adaptive math e-learning programme that adjusts practice content to each student's pace and includes a teacher dashboard for tracking progress — to Palau's roughly 16 elementary schools and its high school. The project closed with a ceremony at the Ministry of Education on 4 March 2022.
JICA's own project report is unusually candid: it documents that classroom equipment was insufficient and that teachers were not fully trained to use the tablets, limiting how much of the platform's adaptive-learning design was actually put into practice. The project is a useful, honestly-evaluated example of the gap that can open between distributing ed-tech hardware and building the teacher capability needed to use it well.

Read the full analysis: https://www.palau.emb-japan.go.jp/itpr_ja/11_000001_00425.html