SSI3013

INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY IN

ASSIGNMENT 1 : SMART SCHOOL AND THE CHALLENGES IN ITS

LECTURER : ENCIK AZMI BIN IBRAHIM

MEMBERS
MUHAMMAD NOOR EIMAN BIN ZAILAN AFFENDI D20171078241

MUHAMMAD ARIF AKMAL BIN MUHAMAD D20171078232

The concept of smart school was introduced in the late 90s as an initiative to improve the

system of education in Malaysia. A smart school is a learning institution that has been

systematically reinvented in terms of teaching-learning practices and school management in

order to prepare the children for the information age. In 1996, prior to the introduction of smart

school in Malaysia, Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, the then Prime Minister of Malaysia stated

that the government at that time was examining the education system in this country to create

a curriculum where people learn how to learn so they can continue their education throughout

the rest of their lives. The measure of success in 2020 will be the number and quality of our

people who can add value to information. It was a part of transforming the curriculum for the

21st century, which is today.

These teaching and learning topics should be addressed in order to achieve smart school

educational goals: curriculum, pedagogy, assessment and teaching-learning materials. As the

second pillar of smart schools, information and communication technology (ICT) plays

multiple roles in a smart school, from promoting teaching and learning experiences to helping

with school management. For example, classrooms with multimedia courseware and

presentation facilities, teaching computer labs, multimedia development centres and server

rooms equipped to handle applications, management databases, and web servers can be some

of the technology that can equip a smart school. There are a total of six components of smart

schools:

I. Teaching and Learning Materials

Teaching-Learning Materials Interactive courseware and printed materials for

Mathematics, Science, English and Bahasa Melayu that enables students to practice

selfpaced, self-accessed and self-directed learning.

Management and Administration represents the driver of the smart school in which

everything is computerised. Management software helps the Smart School principal

and headmasters to manage more resources efficiently and effectively, as well as

processing them to support the teaching-learning functions.

III. People, Skills and Responsibilities

The stakeholders involved in the implementation of Smart Schools will be equipped

with specific skills and requisite knowledge base to enable them to play their roles

effectively.

IV. Process

Since Smart School processes are viewed as a system, these processes have been and

will continuously be studied and reviewed carefully to ensure that the system provides

accurate and functional input in order to produce the desired output.

V. Technology

Technology is used as an enabler for Smart School to operate especially the practices

in teaching-learning management and the communications with external constituencies.

VI. Policies

In order to ensure the successful implementation of the Smart School, changes in

existing policies and regulations, as well as the formulation of the new ones have to be

conducted.
2.0 History of Implementation

Malaysia established Information and Communication Technology (ICT) as the only basis for

a more industrialised nation in 1996. The government also recognised in declaring these

objectives that such changes would involve a workforce capable of leveraging ICT to generate

new economic opportunities. In order to grow this talent, under the Eight Malaysia Plan (RMK

8), the government declared the need to rebuild the country's education system in order to align

it with its Vision 2020. The Smart School Flagship was one of the seven applications identified

under Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC) initiative. Based on a comprehensive look at the

innovative teaching and learning processes, the Ministry of Education planned the Smart

School model. Technology is seen as an enabler and the guiding principle of Smart Schools

will become relevant. As a consequent, the Smart School operates based on the Teaching

Learning Concept related to Smart School Curriculum, Pedagogy, Assessment and Teaching

Learning Materials.

The history of the implementation of smart school, known as the implementation waves has 4

main waves comprise of wave 1 until 4. The first wave, Wave 1 is the Pilot Phase, which took

place in 1999 until 2002. During this phase, there were a total of 88 schools were selected

across the country to test the ability of the technology to run at these selected schools and how

it will give affect to their education system. The second wave, Wave 2 started in 2002 until

2005, known as the Post-Pilot phase. This phase analyse the data gained during the Pilot Phase

and start improving their system by doing a massive computerization phase to all 10,000

schools across the country. The Wave 3 then took place in 2005 until 2010 where the intention

is to make all schools smart by leveraging all ICT initiatives. Lastly, the 4th wave is to

consolidate and stabilize the system of smart school by enhancing the use of technologies and

making innovative practices using the ICT equipments, that took place in 2010 up until today.
3.0 Objectives

The primary objectives of a Smart School are as follows :

i. To produce a knowledge society that is critical, creative and innovative.

ii. To produce technology savvy individuals for the Information Age

iii. To bridge the digital divide

iv. To cultivate life-long learning based on ICT.

4.0 Characteristics of Smart School

Smart Schools is the part of Malaysian Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC) projects. The

Government of Malaysia aims to capitalize on the presence of leading-edge technology in

schools. At the same time, such aims intend to transform its educational system in line with

and in support of the national drive to fulfill the vision of 2020.

Smart school is a student-centered teaching and learning. With the help of technology,

student will conduct the lesson and participate all the activities by themselves and teacher will

help them if there are any problems or questions. With this learning concept, student will easily

understand and master the lesson successfully as they learn and explore it with the help of

technology tools.

Besides, smart school also helps students exhibits the high order thinking skills by

having various types of questions that have different levels of difficulty and they need to answer

it by themselves. Since this are student-centered, they need to done all exercise that have been

given by their teacher. All the question provided in the exercise are mostly high order thinking

skill (HOTS) question and the student need to answer it. Student may learn at their own paced,

self-accessed and self-directed and the teacher will guide them if they need helps or having
trouble in answering the question. This can increase the student knowledge as they need to

explore and try to solve the question by referring the internet and learn something new.

This advance learning method can help teacher in having creative and innovative skills

in having a better teaching and learning lesson by using the ICT tools. Beside using the tools

for learning purpose, it also can help teacher and administrators in increasing their skill using

ICT for daily task purpose and they can complete a lot of work in a short time.

5.0 The Benefits of Smart School

Since smart school is quite different from a traditional school where it used advance equipment

and technology to take the educational process forward, there a few of benefits that can obtain

by having this smart school.

1. No written notes needed since gadget such as smartphone and tablet being use by the

students to take their notes. This way also can able to save amount of the students

learning time. Technology such as Microsoft Word and PowerPoint also have made a

lot easier especially for student for taking notes and also used for having presentation.

This also can increase their soft skill in using technology.

2. Smart school also will give interactive learning experience. This kind of learning give

more advantage to student since the learning is student centered with surely will involve

student during the lesson. Compared to traditional method which called as chalk and

talk method, this advance method that uses gadget as main things can easily attract

student to give full attention during their lesson and participate all activities that been

provided by their teacher.

3. This smart classroom gives the biggest benefit especially during learning sessions since

all information are easily accessible. By having the classroom that uses many gadgets
 such as tablet, it makes students easier to find and gain access to information on the

internet. Using those gadgets make all the information is just at their fingertips. This

smart classroom also gives benefits to teacher as well since they able to learn outside

the syllabus that can increase their student knowledge and make them more

understanding on what they have learnt about.

4. Smart school also give effective learning experience. This can enable teacher to share

their knowledge in interesting way and can easily make student understand with helps

of digital technology. During lesson, teacher will have many options of share their

lesson in many mediums such as videos, presentation and audio and many more. This

also can help teacher to increase their teaching skills by using technology and the way

to deliver their teaching lesson to the student in a creative way.

5. Using gadget during learning session with give better understanding of topics through

digital tools such as PowerPoint during presentation, audio sessions and videos.

Students will have better understanding on what they learn about compared using

traditional methods that are considered irrelevant for learning sessions nowadays.

6. Smart school replace pen and paper with digital tools making the entire educational

experience paper-free. Neither teachers nor students does not need to bring and books

or paper that is thick and heavy since everything is already in the gadget that is easy to

access and it makes them become more comfortable and heaving conducive learning

sessions.

7. In a smart school, all lessons taught in that day can be recorded. For those students that

miss a class, they still have opportunity to learn the lesson that they missed during that

day and can directly asked their teacher if they have any confusion about the lesson.

8. Smart school make educational easy to maintain. During traditional classroom, there a

lot of money that student needs to spend every year to buy equipment for their education
 such as exercise book and stationery. Even if the costs of all these education equipment

increases, the student does not to worry about that anymore as this smart schools make

the student need to make onetime investment and buys those gadgets and can be used

for a long time.

6.0 Challenges Of Smart School

1. Continuous monitoring and coaching of innovative use of technology in schools

 Smart school hardware, software and courseware was found to be under utilized.

Due to the lack of ICT expertise, some teachers were not keen on using the

courseware. They are also not comfortable with the use of hardware and

courseware. The teachers prefer conventional teaching methods that are chalk

and talk.

2. Upgrading infrastructure such as broadband and hardware

 As the government has to spend a lot on electronic infrastructure and new books,

heavy investments in infrastructure. The expense and maintenance fees for the

facilities are high. Successful smart school implementation would include

funding for the construction of new schools with all their multimedia

infrastructure, the renovation of existing school buildings, teacher training

institutions and the maintenance of new technology.

3. Changing the mindset of teachers and stakeholders

 Basically, challenges encountered by old teachers that are not interested in using

technology are more comfortable with conventional approaches that have been

used ever since. Thus, it affects teachers who are willing to use modern

technology to teach in the classroom. A teacher especially senior teachers has

instructional technology. Students are more willing to adopt new ICT tools than

teachers because they are more advanced than teachers in using technology.

4. Alignment of objectives at all levels required within the Ministry and between

Ministry

 The most challenges to build a smart school are top management such as

Ministry of Education that wants to improve our education system to be better

an defective. So they prefer to make all school in tis country to be smart school.

But in other to achieve this goal Ministry of education must joint force and

collaborate with others Ministry as well such as Ministry of Science and

Technology in terms of upgrading technological infrastructures and teaching

materials in school in rural area. The limited internet connection is one of the

challenge in rural area. Limitation of infrastructure such as computer labs lead

to the ineffectiveness of technology supported teaching and learning.

5. Technological infrastructure in school

 As we all know, there are several schools in their schools that do not have ICT

equipment. The problem is due to insufficient school resources to have ICT

equipment. Mainly happening in rural schools because they are far from the city

so they are the least of ICT facilities. Compared to urban schools that are more

advanced and complete all ICT equipment with computer labs.

6. Technical support or technician at computer lab

 When the government has confidently given the required ICT facilities in the

computer lab, there would definitely be damage to the facilities. Therefore, if

there is any problem, each laboratory would require at least a technologist.

However, almost any school where there is no trained technician to solve this
 problem. School teachers often do not have an ICT expertise to fix if there is

an ICT awareness.

7.0 Conclusion

Smart school plans to provide a strong forum to form the next generation of the Malaysian

nation and shape the future development of the country. The presence of smart school is in line

with the development of information technology and communication (ICT), it is a scene in

Malaysia's new millennium of education and in line with the social and cultural present of

technological development. Smart school can simply be described as an education framework,

where the essence of smart school is based teaching and learning for students with more

important and innovative ways of using technology as enablers. The use of ICT as an element

in the teaching and learning process. This approach is not restricted in curriculum , pedagogy,

evaluation, teaching and learning, but also in school management.