SSI3013 INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION

TECHNOLOGY IN SCIENCE
FACULTY OF SCIENCE AND MATHEMATICS

ICT IN EDUCATION (SMART SCHOOL)

LECTURER’S NAME: Encik Azmi bin Ibrahim
NAME GROUP MATRIC NO
NOR AMIRA BINTI WAHAB B D20151070986
NURSHAHIRAH BINTI ZULKIPLI B D20151070955
FATIN MAISARAH BT AHMAD B D20151070999
TARMIZI

NURNABILAH SYAHIRAH BINTI B D20151070964

JAFRI
1.0 Introduction

In Malaysia, there is rapidly change in our educational system. The educational policies
are rules that are intended to help schools teach students efficiently, fairly and safely.
Educational policies constantly been reviewed in order to enhance our quality of educational
so that our education can be same level as international education and also to ensure the
effectiveness of the curriculum implantation. The changing in education system requires a
change in practice and culture in primary and secondary school. Besides, changing in
education system also helps to produce quality of students who practice higher order critical
thinking, creative in learning, innovative and also helps students to be able access the
information by using technology. Malaysian government 2020 Vision is to provide the
country’s entrance in Information Age. In order to achieve the Vision, Multimedia Super
Corridor (MSC) established one of the seven great flagship called Smart School.

Smart school is an institution that provide a systematically learning system in order to

prepare the child for the Information Age. (Asian Journal of Education and Training, 2016)
Smart school program focus on the infrastructure of ICT in education teaching and learning
in few subjects such as Science, Mathematics and English. The purpose of this work is to
reconstruct and build the interesting and attractive learning among the students and teacher.
Early 1996, laws of Smart School concept was created by Ministry Education. There was
teaching and learning based on creative thinking. The most important component for Smart
School program is the technology.

Teaching and learning process were included the process of curriculum, pedagogy,
assessment and teaching-learning materials in a mutually reinforcing, coherent manner. The
curriculum process will help student achieve overall balanced development and integrate
knowledge, skills, values, and correct use of language. Meanwhile, Smart School pedagogy
will seek to make learning more interesting, attractive, motivating, stimulating and
meaningful. Other than that, it also involve children mind, spirit throughout their learning
process. Mix learning strategies is one of the strategies used to ensure mastery basic
competencies and promote holistic development.

Benefit of the Smart School assessment teacher, students and parents will be able to
access on-line assessment items. This will be easier for teacher to provide materials for
learning during school holiday. Meanwhile parents can easily access to get the learning
material for their children. Moreover, Smart School management can be manage efficiently
and effectively when the primary objective were correlation with the resources and processes
that required to support teaching learning function.
In conclusion, Smart school is a placed that used technology as their medium in
process of learning. It also helps students to prepare themself for future as education develop
very fast especially by using technology.

The objective of Smart School

The smart school initiative has five main goal which focus on the need to develop a
skilled work force for the Information Age and to promote the goals of the National
Philosophy Education (Zainuddin, 2015):
The Advantages of Smart School

1. Curriculum is more flexible and open

Smart school is a part of education 4.0 which it is more flexible and open. It is more
on self-evaluation and student-centred. Teachers only as the catalyst to enhance
student’s understanding and guide them on how the knowledge that they gain to be
applied in daily life. Students can learn in variety ways in diverse of time and places.
They can access to the expansive world of online information at anytime. Students
also can personalize their learning by using their own comfortable used tools
according to the capability of the students. This means that they are free to choose on
what items or devices, program, techniques based on their own preferences. For
example, they could using blended learning, flipped classroom and so on.
 Figure cited from Educare Smartschool Product

2. Digital tools help students understand the topic better

Technology is a powerful instrument that helps student in education especially in

science stream. But, in others field, technology also gives a lot of advantages. For
example, models and simulation gives a lot of ideas to the student to enhance their
understanding. This allow teachers to enrich the picture of the concept related to the
topic teach and student’s assessment become more efficient compared to the
traditional method.
For instance, the process of DNA replication. Teachers cannot simply explain
the process because student should know the picture on how the process being carry
on, the movement of the cell, the mechanism on how it being replicate and so on. By
using simulation such as videos, students will know how the replication of DNA
being carry on and they could explain the process in their own words without refers to
any books or scripts. This improvement helps student to become more enthusiastic in
learning and they do not have to memorise all the facts and then forget it all after the
lesson ends. Students good in picturing the concept helps them to remember the
knowledge in a long term and teachers do not have to waste time to repeat the topic
again.
3. Interactive environment favors better learning

Research finding shows that there are significant differences in teaching method
between traditional and assisted by technology. A better student’s performances could
affected by the interactive environment of smart school. This is because technology
providing students with a lots of changes compared to traditional method whereby
teachers only explaining about the topic that they have to learn but chances in giving
them exploring the knowledge become limited. By the existence of technology,
students have a chance to explore and discover the things around them and making
them put an interest in education more.

Creative design and neat arrangement of lay out, and interesting colour
selection are the example of benefits that technology could help teachers in preparing
before class started. Smart school uses all the interactive modules like videos and
presentations and these attractive methods of teaching becomes more appealing to the
students. This type of visualisation in teaching is eye-catching and helps student to
easily understand them. There is no more wasted of time for drawing on board hence
increase the level of healthiness since both students and teachers will not suffering
with the dust from chalk.
The Challenges of Smart School

4. Lack of technological infrastructure and teaching materials in school in rural areas

In order to capitalize on the trending of technology, it won’t be a problem if the

school is located in metropolitan are. But the issue that we must take note is the
school from rural area. There are more costs needed to robust technology
infrastructure and learning material in rural areas compared to the urban areas since
these area do not have much chance to be expose to technology.
In aadition, technology absolutely required strong coverage of internet in order
to access to the global information. This is why students from rural areas are left
behind in technology aspect since they lack of resources. However, in order to access
with strong internet coverage, it will brings the potential for cost effective
improvements in several aspects such as healthcare, education, business and also
public services. By improve the coverage of internet, hence students can access
educational opportunities that involve live streaming videos, virtual science labs and
some other medium of education.
5. Higher cost

Technology having revolution day by day. Of course in order towards education 4.0,
government should provide all school in the country with the latest of technology
gadjets. For example electronic facilities such as technological infrastructure and
teaching materials in school such as desktop virtualisation and cloud computing
technologies. Plus, a smart school won’t be complete without basic technologies tools
such as SchoolNet, educational TV, computer labs and etc. However, not all school
especially school from rural areas are getting quality education assisted by
technology.

This is because most of students from rural area are lacking in interest in
education. They are more focusing on how to survive for daily life. Hence,
government have to invest a lot of money in term of free food, tuition fees and so on
to attract their interest towards education besides providing them with technology.
Apart from that, these students are lacking from proper guideline in order to utilize
with the technology. Therefore, government have to invest in training all the teachers
with the technology tools of teaching so that a learning process in a smart school can
 be carry out smoothly. In the other hand, if teachers are not being trained well, a smart
school can lead to a failure of learning process at once.

6. Capability of teachers as the facilitator

When we discuss about smart school, without realising we also talk about technology
at once. Technology help student’s learning process become more flexible and
independent. But then, teachers should take their responsibility seriously in order to
enhance the understanding of the students although the learning process can be carry
out by student themselves. At this point, teachers act as facilitator assisted by the
advanced technologies tools in order to make sure that the students in tight path of
knowledge without any misconception with the topic they have being learnt. Teachers
could carry out some interesting activities such as problem-based learning, building
model or multimedia presentation to enhance and reinforce their understanding.
 Figure cited from Samsung Newsroom

As a conclusion, the Smart School policy cycle has been planned and managed to
prepare Malaysian students to become knowledgeable and skilled workers for the
Information Age. This is inline with the country’s key goal of Vision 2020. Correspondingly,
the main aim of the government in establishing the Smart School policy was to democratize
education by providing efficient and sufficient facilities in order to enhance individual
strengths and abilities. The implementing the Smart School policy needs continues
monitoring and evaluation in terms of technology performance as well as teacher- student
performance. This is because the Smart School system as a whole comprises two aspects
whish are the factors related to ICT and those related to technology use by humans. The
opportunities given to students will help them to enhance and promote creative and critical
thinking, self-directed as well as self-managed learning. Lastly, although a lot has been done
to achieve the goals, objectives, and values of the Smart School project since its
establishment, there are still opportunities to do more improvement in the implementation of
the Smart School in Malaysia.
References
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Malaysia, K. P. (n.d.). Kementerian Pelajaran Malaysia. Retrieved March 3, 2018, from Polisi
Pendidikan: https://www.moe.gov.my/index.php/en/dasar/dasar-pendidikan-
kebangsaan/book/41-visi-misi-maklumat-korporat/1?page=8

Zainuddin, F. (2015, Oct 31). Slide Share. Retrieved March 3, 2018, from Smart School:
https://www.slideshare.net/Fadzliaton/the-malaysian-smart-school-a-conceptual-blueprint-
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(2018). Rociidaho.org. Retrieved 10 March 2018, from http://www.rociidaho.org/wp-

content/uploads/2015/03/ROCI_2015_RuralTech_Final.pdf

(2018). Pdfs.semanticscholar.org. Retrieved 10 March 2018, from

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/e565/ee532aacb942efeba85c6f3d4709619e88b5.pdf