Guide For All

News Corp rebranded its educational unit as Amplify in July. Since then the Joel Klein-headed company has been working with AT&T to develop a tablet expressly designed for the K-12 educational market. After months of testing the Amplify Tablet, an unspecified 10-inch Android slate loaded with custom software, is ready for its official debut. Lots of things have changed since we first caught a glimpse of the project many months ago. For one, the UI has been completely redesigned to be clean, modern and simple. The new look is much more inline with Googles Holo, with extensive use of action overflow buttons, the sharing menu and solid blocks of color-coded material. The default home page offers a grid of app icons, but it also displays student information and lists "notebooks" on the right hands side. Those notebooks deliver quick access to different subjects for students, but they also give teachers direct links to materials for their classes, categorized not just by subject, but also by period. Klein and company dont stop at simple organizational tools and reference materials, however.

Amplify aims to be not just a tool but a platform for managing a 21st century classroom. Where past efforts to incorporate tablets into a K-12 environment have been satisfied with simple (and carefully controlled) social features and some reference materials, this actually offers features to teachers aimed at delivering instant feedback and differentiated instruction. Everything from taking attendance and blocking distracting apps, to polling students comprehension and pushing supplemental materials to those that need it can be managed from the educators unit. Theres also the ability to build custom lesson plans called Playlists, that can incorporate material from locally stored textbooks, pre-loaded Khan Academy videos and the internet.

The biggest stumbling block continues to be price. A WiFi-only Amplify Tablet will set schools back $299 apiece, so long as you agree to a two-year subscription to Amplifys services at $99 a year. (Its nice to see Klein has learned something from working closely with the carriers.) Prices climb even higher if schools wish to have LTE connectivity; an Amplify Tablet Plus will put a $349 dent in a schools budget and thats before factoring in the two-year mandatory subscription which includes AT&T service for $179 a year. Still, theres plenty of solid ideas at work here that we could see enjoying great success if theyre incorporated into a more affordable product. For more, check out the video above as well as the PR below.