Smart School

Malaysia intends to transform its educational system, in line with and in support of the nation’s drive to fulfil Vision 2020. This Vision calls for sustained, productivity-driven growth, which will be achievable only with a technologically literate, critically thinking work force prepared to participate fully in the global economy of the 21st century. At the same time, Malaysia’s National Philosophy of Education calls for 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. The catalyst for this massive transformation will be technology-supported Smart Schools, which will improve how the educational system achieves the National Philosophy of Education, while fostering the development of a work force prepared to meet the challenges of the next century.


Transforming the educational system will entail changing the culture and practices of Malaysia’s primary and secondary schools, moving away from memory-based learning designed for the average student to an education that stimulates thinking, creativity, and caring in all students, caters to individual abilities and learning styles, and is based on more equitable access. It will require students to exercise greater responsibility for their own education, while seeking more active participation by parents and the wider community.


The Smart Schools initiative is one of the seven flagship applications that are part of Malaysia’s Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC) project. The Government of Malaysia aims to capitalise on the presence of leading-edge technologies and the rapid development of the MSC’s infrastructure to jump-start deployment of enabling technology to schools. This will be done by creating a group of 90 pilot Smart Schools by 1999 that will serve as the nucleus for the eventual nation-wide rollout of Smart School teaching concepts and materials, skills, and technologies. By 2010, all 10,000 of Malaysia’s primary and secondary schools will be Smart Schools.
This Blueprint - like the Smart School concept itself - is a work in progress and remains open to evolutionary refinement, including advances in pedagogy and improvements in information technology. Consequently, this document is descriptive, rather than prescriptive. For a fuller understanding of the Smart School initiative, the Blueprint should be read with the Smart School Implementation Plan, which outlines the implementation process and timetable, and the Concept Requests for Proposals, which define the project’s requirements.


This document summarises the Blueprint and is organised into eight sections:


Conceptual Model
Teaching and Learning Concepts: Guiding Principles
Management
Processes and Scenarios
People, Skills, and Responsibilities
Technology Enablers
Policy Implications
Concluding Remarks


Conceptual Model


The Malaysian Smart School is a learning institution that has been systemically reinvented in terms of teaching-learning practices and school management in order to prepare children for the Information Age. A Smart School will evolve over time, continuously developing its professional staff, its educational resources, and its administrative capabilities. This will allow the school to adapt to changing conditions, while continuing to prepare students for life in the Information Age. To function effectively, the Smart School will require appropriately skilled staff, and well-designed supporting processes.


Preparing students for the Information Age depends on an integrated strategy:
Provide all-round development with provision for individual abilities, offering a broad curriculum for all, with electives, that is vertically integrated, multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary.


Emphasise intellectual, emotional, spiritual, and physical growth, concentrating on thinking, developing and applying values, and using correct language across the curriculum.
Produce a technologically literate work force that can think critically, encouraging thought and creativity across the curriculum and applying technology effectively in teaching and learning.
Democratise education, offering equal access to learning opportunities and accommodating differing learning abilities, styles, and paces.


Increase the participation of stakeholders, creating awareness of their roles and responsibilities and developing the skills they need for that.
TEACHING AND LEARNING CONCEPTS: GUIDING PRINCIPLES
The most distinctive feature of the Smart School will be a teaching and learning environment built on international best practices in primary and secondary education. This entails aligning the curriculum, pedagogy, assessment and teaching-learning materials in a mutually reinforcing, coherent manner.


Curriculum


The Smart School curriculum shall be meaningful, socially responsible, multicultural, reflective, holistic, global, open-ended, goal-based and technological. It shall promote holistic learning, allowing children to progress at their own pace, and catering for students’ varying capabilities, interests and needs. It will seek to ensure that children are educated with critical and creative thinking skills, inculcated with appropriate values, and encouraged to improve their language proficiency. Thus, the curriculum will be designed to:
help students achieve overall balanced development
integrate knowledge, skills, values, and correct use of language
state explicitly intended learning outcomes for different ability levels
offer multidisciplinary, thematic, and continuous learning
foster the knowledge, skills, and attitudes appropriate for success in the Information Age.
Pedagogy
The Smart School pedagogy will seek to make learning more interesting, motivating, stimulating, and meaningful; involve the children’s minds, spirit, and bodies in the learning process; build basic skills to prepare children for greater challenges over time; and cater for a range of needs and capabilities among the students. The pedagogy shall:
use an appropriate mix of learning strategies to ensure mastery of basic competencies and promote holistic development
accommodate individual different learning styles, so as to boost performance
foster a classroom atmosphere that is compatible with different teaching-learning strategies.


Assessment


The Smart School’s assessment system will be distinctly different from current systems to help realise the National Philosophy of Education It shall be element-based and criterion-referenced to provide a more holistic and accurate picture of a student’s performance. Teachers, students and parents will be able to access on-line assessment items. Smart School assessment will be flexible and learner-friendly, while assuring the quality of the assessment information by using multiple approaches and instruments. It will lead to living certification, which will not only attest to a student’s cumulative accomplishments but will also be open to continued improvement on a lifetime basis.


Teaching-learning materials


Smart Schools will need teaching-learning materials designed for the new teaching strategies. These materials will accommodate students’ differing needs and abilities, resulting in fuller realisation of their capabilities and potential, and allow students to take greater responsibility for managing and directing their own learning.



MANAGEMENT


The primary objective of Smart School management will be to manage efficiently and effectively the resources and processes required to support the teaching-learning functions. Management will help to reallocate skilled human resources to more valuable activities, save costs over the long term, improve the quality of decisions through better access to information, and accelerate decision making.


To fulfil its objectives, the Smart School management will need strong, professional administrators and teachers who can articulate school goals clearly, lead teaching at the school, and elicit strong parental and community support. They will need to maintain open communication with all constituencies, allocate resources sensibly and equitably, track school performance against financial and non-financial objectives, and provide a school environment that is conducive to learning.


Further, they will need to develop and maintain a happy , motivated and high-performing staff, ensure the security of the school and its occupants, and use and manage technology appropriately, effectively, and efficiently.


PROCESSES AND SCENARIOS


For a Smart School to achieve its educational objectives, its internal processes must be co-ordinated. Ensuring co-ordination entails viewing these processes as a system: if the system is well designed, providing appropriate inputs will yield the desired outputs - namely, students ready for higher education or active and productive participation in the work force. The Smart Schools initiative offers an ideal opportunity to reassess the current schooling system, identifying problems and finding potential solutions, many of which can be enabled by technology.


For the Smart School system, the major inputs are the resources - students, teachers, technology and tools - and the Ministry of Education, in the form of curriculum specification, financing, and management and control functions. The system proceeds through a series of sub-processes - identifying and localising teaching plans, selecting and organising teaching-learning materials, determining a student’s entry level, planning the student’s experience, holding classroom sessions, assessing achievement internally, providing feedback - before delivering the student for external achievement assessment, and ultimately for higher education or the work force.


At a Smart School, these sub-processes will be constructed so that each delivers the desired output in an integrated manner.


PEOPLE, SKILLS, AND RESPONSIBILITIES


The higher degree of individualised attention for students at a Smart School will necessitate new roles and responsibilities for teachers, principals, Ministry of Education officers, support staff and parents. In fact, fulfilling these roles and responsibilities will require specialised training for each group.


Teachers


Teacher development will be critical to the success of the Smart School. Teachers will need intensive training in the use of information technology and in its integration into classroom activities in ways that enhance thinking and creativity. Smart School teachers will also need to learn to facilitate and encourage students in taking charge of their own learning. In the long term, these teachers will need to augment their skills regularly, if they are to stay abreast of developments in their profession and remain confident in their application of the technology.


Principals


The tasks of managing schools involves working with information and building on ideas collaboratively.


The efficiency and effectiveness of this management task can be enhanced significantly through the use of technology. Principals in Smart Schools will need intensive training to equip them to manage the new facilities, technologies and methodologies deployed in their schools.


Ministry of Education Officers


Ministry officers, comprising those at the central, state and district levels are crucial to the successful implementation of the Smart School project, because they play a major role in planning, co-ordinating, monitoring, and evaluating Ministry programmes. Officers will need to understand thoroughly the educational objectives and policies of the Smart School, the information technology being applied, the teaching-learning and management processes, and their own roles and responsibilities in that context.


Support Staff


The advent of new educational processes as well as advanced information technology will present real challenges for the support staff at Smart Schools. It will require creating a new position, that of Media/Technology coordinator, and it will require existing clerical staff to learn new ways of working.


Media/Technology Coordinator.



The coordinator's task will be to support teachers and the principal in deploying multimedia and other technologies in the Smart School. The coordinator should be an experienced teacher who also understands how best to use technology for gathering information, instruction, managing, and communicating. The coordinator will also need to assist the principal in managing software applications and in liasing with technical support staff for the maintenance and upgrading of IT facilities.


Clerical Staff.



School clerical staff will need to build IT skills sufficiently to communicate using the new technology and perform their record keeping functions. In addition to basic IT skills, however, they will also need to understand the new educational processes, so that they can give their support wherever it is needed.


Parents


Parents can play a major role in helping Smart Schools provide individualised education for students. Research has shown that students do better when their parents are involved. This task will go beyond monitoring the child’s progress, and providing guidance, motivation, and counsel; it will require familiarity with the new educational processes, a willingness to assist with developing teaching-learning and assessment materials, as well as the ability to access the school’s public domain databases electronically.


TECHNOLOGY ENABLERS


Technology alone will not make a school smart. Only improved teaching-learning strategies, management and administrative processes, and capable, well trained people with enthusiasm for their work can do that. However, information technology can enable the process of transforming traditional schools into Smart Schools. Consequently, a nation-wide system of Smart Schools will depend on advanced information technology at the school, district and national levels.


School-level technology


Technology has many roles to play in a Smart School, from facilitating teaching and learning activities to assisting with school management. Fully equipping a school might include the following:


Classrooms with multimedia courseware and presentation facilities, and e-mail or groupware for collaborative work.


Library/Media Centre with a database centre for multimedia courseware, and network resources like access to the internet.


Computer laboratory for teaching, such as Computer Studies as a subject, and readily accessible multimedia and audiovisual equipment.


Multimedia Development Centre with tools for creating multimedia materials and catering to varying levels of sophistication.


Studio/Theatrette with a control room for centralised audiovisual equipment, videoconferencing studio, preview room for audio, video, or laser disc materials.


Teachers’ Room with on-line access to courseware catalogues and databases, information and resource management systems, professional networking tools, such as e-mail and groupware.


Administration Offices capable of managing databases of student and facilities, tracking student and teacher performance or resources, and distributing notices and other information electronically.


Server Room equipped to handle applications, management databases, and web servers; provide security; and telecommunications interface and access to network resources.


The technology will enable the school to draw on a variety of external resources, while also making the school more accessible to the community. Students and teachers will be able to tap into public and university libraries; access companies and industry associations; investigate museums and other archives; keep up to date with local authorities.


Similarly, parents, students, and other members of the community can stay in touch with the school. Students can keep abreast of coursework from outside of school; parents can monitor their children’s progress or communicate with teachers from home; people in the community can use the school as a centre for continued learning.


District-level technology


School districts will need to maintain a secure network for communicating with schools in the area and with state and national authorities, while also using the open network for less sensitive materials. Districts will also need to maintain extensive databases for many different types of information, for example, assessment records of student and teacher performance; human resource records; matters of governance, financing, and security; and educational resources.
National-level technology


At the national level, interconnecting Smart Schools and educational authorities will involve both open and secure networks. This will allow open access to educational resources, facilitate collaborative work, and maintain open communication channels with constituencies, while providing for the controlled distribution of sensitive information. In addition, there will need to be a national repository centre that is accessible to all education sites and maintain expedient access to the Ministry of Education and the federal government administration.


This will require highly reliable telecommunications infrastructure to connect state and district education centres and provide international linkages. Given the Smart School initiative’s status as a flagship application, the ideal place for the national repository would be in the MSC.


POLICY IMPLICATIONS


Implementing Smart Schools successfully in Malaysia will be a complex task, requiring changes to existing policies, procedures, and practices, both written and unwritten. It may also require formulating entirely new policies and regulations. A few of the important issues to be addressed include those outlined below, in the areas of the teaching-learning processes; management functions; people, skills and responsibilities; and technology.


Teaching-learning processes


Teaching-learning. What policies need to be amended, if students are to progress at their own pace according to their own capabilities, and if students are to be free to learn in a variety of ways?


Assessment.

What will be the best regime for comprehensively and periodically assessing student aptitudes, and what supporting infrastructure will that require? How can tests be administered fairly in multiple ways, including on-line?


Selection of materials.

What changes will be needed in the process for selecting teaching-learning materials to ensure that the “best” Smart School materials are chosen?


Management functions
School governance. What are the appropriate guidelines for intellectual property at a Smart School? Who owns the information compiled at the school, and who gets access to it? Who owns the teaching materials produced by teachers?


Communications/public relations.

How best to achieve the rapid relaying of relevant information to and from stakeholders? What channels should be created for rapid communication with the world beyond the school and how to manage those channels?


People, skills and responsibilities
What should be the minimum number of hours of on-going, annual professional development required for practising teachers, given their need to stay current with advances in information technology? Should teachers and administrators at Smart Schools, having been trained in the use of information technology, be paid more to ensure that they stay in education?


Technology
What modifications need to be made to the per capita grant to accommodate start-up and on-going technology expenses? What alternative funding sources can be harnessed to acquire additional technological inputs?
To what extent are schools allowed to add technology that is inconsistent with agreed-upon Ministry of Education guidelines and technology standards?


CONCLUDING REMARKS
Transforming traditional schools into Smart Schools represents a major undertaking. It will require a significant commitment of resources, but the nation will benefit from the change for many years to come. Success will require:
support from many stakeholders, including all agencies in the educational system;
sufficient funds to establish and maintain Smart Schools;
appropriate policies, norms, and guidelines to support the schools;
effective and efficient administrative practices in each school;
sufficient deployment of information technology to enable the Smart Schools to function properly;
continuing professional development for teachers, principals, and other educational personnel.
The Smart School initiative represents an investment in the future productivity of Malaysia’s work force and a down payment on the nation’s future prosperity