1.0 Introduction
Smart
school is the one from the seven flagships applications under Malaysia’s Multimedia
Super Corridor (MSC) project and it is has been launched by the Fourth-Malaysian
Prime Minister, Tun Dr Mahathir Bin Mohamad in July 1997 which to capitalise on
leading-edge technologies and the rapid deployment of the MSC’s infrastructure
to jumpstart deployment of enabling technology to schools.
Smart School project’s is synchronised with the
National Philosophy of Education which education
in Malaysia is an on-going effort towards further developing the potential of
individuals in a holistic and integrated manner so as to produce individuals
who are intellectually, spiritually, emotionally and physically balanced and
harmonious based on a firm belief in and devotion to God. Such an effort is
designed to produce Malaysian citizens who are knowledgeable and competent, who
possess high moral standards and who are responsible and capable of achieving a
high level of personal well-being as well as being able to contribute to the
betterment of the family, society, and the nation at large.
The
Smart School is one of the initiatives for making the school system relevant to
workplace fast-moving world, which meant, looking up for the competence
workforce that enables to digest the information and transform it into a new
products. The aim of the Smart School is to change the culture and practices of
Malaysia’s primary and secondary schools, moving away from rote-memory learning
toward fostering creative thinking skills. The 21st century teachers
have been possessed by ICT’s challenges for them to equip themselves with
creativity and competence in using technology in classroom for interactive
learning, which the focus of activities have been changed from the teacher to
the students as a learner.
2.0 Smart Schools
2.1 Smart Schools initiatives
There are five main goals which focusing on the need
of competence and skilled work force for the era of rapid growth of
technologies as it promoted the goals of National Philosophy of Education. The
first one is, to produce thinking and technology-literate workforce which is
correspond to the main vision of government for implementing the smart school
policy. Thus, the ICT is integrated in teaching and learning as the strategy to
achieve the goal as provided opportunity for all students to practice
technology utilization in their learning environment, for example, the students
are competence to use computer for completing their homework’s and access the
learning materials.
Next is, democratise education by providing equal
access education opportunity or learning.
Increase the participation of stakeholders also one of the smart school
initiatives. The stakeholders, namely parents, the community, the private
sector plays important roles for improving the performance of the school, so, the
constant and continues participation from non-government organisation (NGO) or
Parents and Teachers Organisation is required as it created awareness towards
the school’s technology or new developments or new things which be implemented
by government for education system.
Other than that is, providing opportunities to enhance
individual strengths and abilities. This has been shown by variety of electives
in curriculum, such as pure science, accounting and others. Last but no least, smart schools initiative
also provides all-round development of the individual in aspect of
intellectual, physical, emotional and spiritual by providing a broad curriculum
for everybody whether in rural area or urban area. In intellectual aspect, it
helps in enhancing the students to be a critical thinker when faced with some
difficulties or problems.
2.2 Focus on teaching learning components
In 1990, the MOE the Smart School concept based on a
critical look at the creative, teaching and learning processes. The Malaysian
Smart School is a learning institution that has been systemically reinvented in
terms of teaching and learning as well as the improvement of the school
management processes in order to help students cope and leverage on the rapid
growth of technology era.
Smart School is not just about ICT intervention in
teaching and learning. The national curriculum and pedagogy are given the
highest importance, with the role of teachers, administrators, parents and the
community enhanced in the education of the Malaysian students. However, ICT is
critical in making the teaching and learning processes easier, more fun and
effective, as well as making communication and management among the
stakeholders more efficient. The Malaysian Smart School is a place where all
students can study and learn in a conducive environment.
Teaching and learning processes is the core of the
Smart School. The processes relating to curriculum, pedagogy, assessment, and
teaching-learning materials are reinvented to help students learn more
effectively and efficiently. The Smart School enables students to practice
self-accessed and self-directed learning at their own learning pace. Each of
area will be critical elements in defining the teaching and learning
environment for Smart School students.
The Smart School curriculum is designed by
incorporating the elements that enables the education system to achieve the
goals National Philosophy of Education. In the curriculum of Smart School
technology education, there are four elements which are knowledge, skills,
values and language. The integration element is suitable for the challenge of
the Information Age. The elements of knowledge include that of content, problem
solving, epistemology and inquiry.
Different knowledge is infused into the curriculum in an integrated
manner. The elements of content knowledge concern the facts, concepts,
principles, and generalization of technology education. The problem solving
knowledge concerns the knowledge of solution of problems. The epistemological
knowledge concerns about justification and explanation. While, inquiry
knowledge is about the results are challenged and new knowledge constructed.
In addition to technical and mechanical skills, Smart
School needs to include some other skills in order to fully-fill the children
to be technology literate. The skills include personal skills, social skills, and
knowledge acquisition skills, mathematical skills, thinking skills, scientific
skills, generic skills, environment skills, creative skills and information
technology skills. They are requisite in technology education of Smart Schools.
The values infused into the curriculum are effective and
emotional domains. It has been emphasized that some moral and religious values
need to be instilled into all children, so that they can achieve overall and
balanced development. They are values infused into the curriculum of Smart
School are compassion, self-reliance, respect, love, freedom, courage, physical
and mental cleanliness, cooperation, diligence, moderation, gratitude,
rationality, public spiritedness, humility, honesty, and justice.
The elements of language emphasize the abilities of
reading, writing, and oral communication. Constructing meanings from written
text and knowledge of varied cultural influences are some examples of language
abilities that will be infused into the curriculum of Smart School. The
benefits from this curriculum are children educated with critical and creative
thinking skills, inculcated with values and encouraged to improve language
proficiency. Besides that, holistic learning promoted, children allowed to
progress at their own pace and students varying capabilities, interests, and
needs catered.
The process in Smart School pedagogy involves
specifies method like students-centred. This innovative and effective teaching
method is used to provide the different learning experience for the student.
For instance, the possible role of students and teachers in classroom is range
from teacher-centred to student-centred. Besides that, this process of pedagogy
of learning goals is to ensure the mastery of basic competencies and promotion
of holistic development. Both combinations of roles in classroom and learning
strategies will results in different environment.
There are some characteristics in pedagogy of Smart
School are appropriate mixing of learning strategies to ensure mastery of basic
competencies and promotion of holistic development, encouragement of learning
activities to promote creativity and experimentation with content-independent
subject, trend towards students-centred learning activities with increase in
age and maturity, allowing for individual differences learning styles to boost
performance and the classroom atmosphere is compatible with different teaching
and learning strategies.
There is also a need to enhance the implementation of
innovative and creative teaching pedagogy by enhancing the monitoring of log-in
systems to track the actual utilization rates among teachers of ICT facilities
and establishing reporting mechanism for example lesson plan that makes
students peer learning components mandatory.
There some of benefits of pedagogy in Smart School,
which learning becomes more interesting, motivating, stimulating and meaningful
and it is a basic skills to prepare the children for greater challenges over
time. Besides that, the mind, spirit and body of the child also involved and
working in learning process, in other words, the students are able to be a
critical thinker as they received new information.
The Smart School assessment systems is through
incorporate not only achievement, but also readiness, progress and aptitude.
The achievements means that assessing the achievement of each intended learning
outcome in learning area is necessary to indicate whether the learner is ready
to move on to the next area. On top of that, the assessment system also
learner-centred, where flexible system of assessment which is administered on
an individual basis is done. The integration of technology as a tool enables
the online assessment and conducted in various from to perform strength,
abilities and knowledge.
The current assessment structure has to be reviewed to
incorporate innovation and creativity elements in learning, such as creating
special provisions for integration of ICT in extra co-curricular activities and
presentation of assignments in students’ assessments. For example, impose a
minimum percentage of scoring as a prerequisite for university entrance
qualification.
There some of benefits of assessment in Smart School
are helps realize the National Philosophy of Education, assure quality,
flexible and learner-friendly, provide more accurate picture of students achievement,
readiness, progress, aptitude, learning style and students’ abilities.
The teaching and learning material of Smart School is
specially designed to support the teaching and learning concept of Smart
School. The selection of teaching material will cover five main areas which are
meets curricular ad instructional needs, is cost effective, as well as
cosmetically and technically adequate. Smart School teachers must be able to
use technology as a tool in teaching and learning process. The materials used
must consider the students learning preferences. This is because each student
has different learning styles, so they need a variety of materials to maximize
their learning potential. Whatever, materials are being used, it must meet the
criteria which are cognitively challenging, attractive, motivates students to
learn, and encourages active participation. There are some benefits teaching
and learning materials accommodates students’ different needs and abilities
resulting in the fuller realisation of students’ capabilities and potential and
students take responsibility for managing and directing their own learning.
2.3 Uses of technology in Smart School
For Smart School, it is a curriculum driven, but
technology is widely used in teaching and learning process as supporting tool
in the process as it is crucial factors for successfully for smart school
program. The examples of technology that have been used in smart school are
hardware, software, non-IT supporting equipments such as projector.
The implication of uses of technology in teaching and
learning process which can be divided into some categories, first,
self-exploratory learning, the students is able to use the computer to search
or access the latest educational materials available locally, as well as to
external resources. Next, for collaborative
learning, ICT is used as a tool that facilitates group work within the class
and across the class and distance learning also can be convenient by using ICT
that enable communication with outside constituencies using technology.
The use of
software or courseware helps the students to stimulate learning in experimental
learning process and very useful for drill and practice purpose, where it
allows the students to practice on their own or with peer. By using ICT, the
electronic assessment can be performing by using built-in assessment
courseware.
2.4 Overview of progress of Smart School
There are several components in the Malaysian Smart
School which can be divided into four other components which are curriculum,
pedagogy, assessment and teaching-learning materials. Every school have their
own curriculum objectives include the Smart School curriculum. The main
objective of smart school is to promote holistic learning as the students are
allow to progress at their own pace, varying their own capabilities, interests
and needs.
Besides
that, it is to ensure that students are educated with critical and creative
thinking skills, inculcated with appropriate values and encouraged to improve
their language skills. Due to these objectives, the curriculum will be designed
to integrate knowledge, skills, values and correct use of language’
furthermore, it will state explicitly intended learning outcomes for different
ability levels and also to help students achieve overall balanced development.
The Smart
School Qualification Standards (SSQS) was introduced in 2006 to measure the use
of information and communications technology (ICT) at the 88 smart schools and
it has integrated into the school culture. Schools are graded on their ICT
strengths by rating systems which star ratings, from one star (the lowest) to
five stars.
In initial
survey, most of the Smart Schools are believed to have performance poorly some
barely obtaining a star as they are need to act as role models for other
schools on how to increase and maximize the ICT usage under the ministry’s
Making Smart Schools iniative, where all schools are expected to be Smart
Schools by 2010. The MDeC Senior Manager (Smart Schools), Dr. Norrizan Binti Razali
said that, more structured programme to monitor the use and
outcomes of the technologies being applied was required “to prevent more
slippages.”
Key
performance indicators (KPIs) are needed to monitor the types of ICT resources
available, the extent and nature of professional development efforts
undertaken, and the changes in teaching and learning practices in schools.”
Many would argue that the biggest obstacle to the full
implementation of making Smart Schools is the obsession with exams and
completing the syllabus as the schools are constrained by an exam-oriented
curriculum while teachers are faced the pressure of finishing the syllabus. But,
students and teachers should use the ICT as a learning tool as they can use all
the skills that they have learnt in a manner which is challenging and
enjoyable. For example, the students got chance to work on a virtual field trip
project, to find out more about the topic that have been studied in a class.
It’s also helped improve student’s English and communication skills.
Besides that, the Smart Schools project components
include the management system, teaching-learning materials, technology
infrastructure, smart school assessment system, professionally trained
teachers, systems integration, and support services. By the end of 2006, the
ministry had set up more than 4,500 computer laboratories, provided 93% of
schools with broadband Internet access through the School.Net project and given
out 97,000 laptops and 70,000 LCD projectors.
2.5 Challenges of inception of Smart School
There are some problems and challenges faced since the
inception of Smart School Concept in Malaysia. First of all, teachers are now
faced with the challenge of dealing with a learning environment, which is
borderless, offers multi-modal learning pathways, and is resource rich. This is
because, some teachers cannot teach effectively and lack of intensive training. They are still practicing teacher-centred teaching where
teachers should be the facilitators and students are active learners because they are lack of ICT knowledge and not comfortable or
confident to use the ICT hardware and courseware since they are not deftly
using ICT tools. This implies that the teacher needs to understand how an
ICT-based learning environment as intended by the Smart School education
concept affects the student's training and learning. Besides, these teachers
are more prefer the traditional way of teaching which by using chalk and talk because
their mind setting about using courseware will be wasting time for teaching and
learning, thus, they rather pay more attention on parts that are related to
examinations.
One of the
problems of Smart School also is to design teaching-learning materials that
will accommodate students’ differing needs and abilities as designed for the
new teaching strategies. The courseware has to be developed for all subjects in
the curriculum and to cater for the high fliers, the average and the slow
students in teaching-learning in the class. This courseware must have discrete
self-contained packages, interactive, cognitively challenging, with
self-assessment and built-in checkpoints for teachers’ inputs. For examples,
teachers have prepared the teaching-learning materials before they want to
start the class with more interactive and attractive videos, latest pictures,
simulations, issues or challenges and others to get students’ attention during
teaching-learning process. Besides, there is a need to make available rapid and
sustainable supply of courseware in the next year or two, and to have these
constantly replenished and updated.
Passive students also one of the challenges that need
to faced. They are not trained to be self-learning as hoping everything
materials will be provided by teachers. Although the teacher is mainly responsible
in the learning environment and technology applications, the students should
also play an active role in determining the direction of their learning by take
part and participate in all activities in the class. Software that is designed
to facilitate students’ active, creative and critical engagement with the
content can help enhance the active construction and reconstruction of ideas
and experiences of their understanding of the content presented. But, some of
the student lacks of ICT skills in their learning even the computer. Thus, it
is a problem to the teachers and waste of time of teaching-learning in the
class.
Apart from that, participation from adults, mainly
parents. This is because, most of the
parents do not want be apart of the society by giving constant and continues
support. Generation nowadays should be exposed to the facilities and technology
that available in ICT. But, they need have a guider and parental controls to
prevent the children access unnecessary website like pornography, online games,
social network and others. Parents need to take the responsibilities for teaching
and learning time at home when the students do not go to the school. This is
because, in some case, parents are too busy in order to fully-filled the needs
of upgrading life and provide the better environment to their children. They
thought, the responsible of education of their children is on teacher’s hands,
not them.
In addition, limitation of infrastructure, such as
computer labs and continuous limitations to access the network hamper the
effectiveness of technology supported teaching and learning. Besides that, the
findings indicate that both teachers and students are ready to teach and learn
English the smart-way, although some teachers expressed their non-readiness to
teach English the smart-way. Furthermore, some schools also lack of manpower in
handling the technical problem. For example, when technical problems occur
during class, teacher and students have to wait for the technician to overcome
that problem. As time pass-by, the teaching-learning process is affected. Next,
the huge investment for ICT tools such as projectors and the costs for maintenance
fees for the facilities also are huge for repairing breakdown tools and
upgrading the tools.
3.0 Conclusion
As a conclusion, in ensuring that the concept of Smart
education can successfully breed and nurture lifelong education at the school
level we need to overcome the challenges that we faced. The Smart School is one
of the government’s plan for education system so that the young citizens who
going to take over the country in future will literate enough with ICT or technology.
Thus, people’s participation and supports in smart
schools is required so that the aim of the Smart School which to change the
culture and practices of Malaysia’s primary and secondary schools, moving away
from rote-memory learning toward fostering creative thinking skills is
successful.
Reference (s)
Simrit Kaur, Hariati Azizan. “Race to make schools smart”. The Star, Ahad, 22 April 2007.
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