SSI 3013

INFORMATION AND
COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY IN
SCIENCE
ASSIGNMENT 1: CHALLENGING OF SMART SCHOOL
LECTURER

: SIR AZMI IBRAHIM

GROUP

:C

GROUP MEMBERS:
NAME
SHARIFAH AWANIS BT SYED MOHD ASWAD
MAUREEN SANTIH ANAK AMBANG
HEIDI AMELDA ANAK LAGAT

MATRICS NUMBER
D20141067053
D20141067070
D20141067088

CONTENT

TOPIC

PAGES
3-4

1.1 INTRODUCTION
5-9
2.0 CHALLENGERS IN SMART SCHOOL
10-11
3.0 CONCLUSION
12
4.0 REFERENCES

1.0 INTRODUCTION
The smart school is a school that is designed to create teaching-learning environment
and improve school management system and training inquiring students. Smart schools are
schools that have developed based on the foundations of modern information and
communication technologies. Early in 1996, the Ministry of Education was involved in
intense discussion about Smart Schools: the concept and its implications on the Malaysian
education system. By late 1996, the Smart School had become one of the seven flagship
applications of the Multimedia Super Corridor.
Technology as an important component in Smart School concept when Smart Shcool
project exist as one of application that are part of Malaysian Multimedia Super
Corridor (MSC). Learning institution of Smart School was created systemically reinvented in
term of teaching and learning practice and school management in order to prepare student for
Information Age. In the Information Age, a Smart School will evolve over time continuously
developing its professional staff, education resources and its administrative capabilities to
adapt to changing condition, while continuing to prepare student life.
Smart school had differ from national school based on their characteristics. The
characteristics of Smart School does not have in normal national school characteristics. The
characteristics of Smart School were included in process of curriculum, pedagogy,
assessment, teaching-learning material and school management in order to prepare student for
Information Age.
a. Curriculum
Smart School curriculum will be designed to help student achieve overall and
balanced developement. Student also have integration of knowledge, skills, values, correct
use of laguage and attitudes suitable across the curriculum for the Information Age.
b. Pedagogy
The process in Smart School pedagogy involves specific learning goals like active
learning process where learner constructs meaning continuously. But, compare with normal
national school pedagogy there are not involve specific learning goals. The classroom
atmosphere of Smart School also different with normal national school. The classroom
atmosphere is compatible with different teaching-learning strategies. Factor in choosing
classroom environments is the need to deal with diversity of skills, abilities, and enthusiasm
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levels in every group of students. Some students prefer to move around while thinking about
problems, but some students should be provided with additional materials that they can
pursue without disturbing the class while others finish exercises. Variety of different types of
lessons and learning experience and students learning styles can be helpful in managing
diversity of motivation and ability in the classroom.

c. Assessment
The enclosure of assessment in Smart School is holistic in that it covers achievement,
readiness, progress and aptitude. The achievement means that assessing the achievement of
each intended learning outcome in a learning area is necessary to indicate whether the learner
is ready to move on to the next area. Then, readiness is a learners have different experience
sand their levels of entry in certain learning areas need to be assessed and progress is the
students progress in achieving certain learning objectives need to be monitored. Student
strengths and weaknesses also need to be diagnosed .Furthermore, aptitude a learners
different styles of learning and multiple intelligences have to be recognised. 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.
d. Teaching-learning materials
The new teaching-learning strategies for Smart School will fully support by new
quality materials. 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.

2.0 CHALLENGES IN IMPLEMENTATION OF SMART SCHOOL

In implementation of smart school in Malaysia, there are a lot of problems that we need to
consider. In our research, we found that the challenges will be faced by four individuals
which are principals, teachers, students and the school.
A) Principals
Success and school performance is greatly influenced by the effective principal leadership.
As a principal of a smart school, it must not be an easy duty as it was a big challenge to
conduct and organize his or her school well. The principal has to gives more commitment on
provide technology infrastructure such as laboratory, smart whiteboard and media mass
material as smart school related to computing system. It is quite challenging because the
principal has to plan the strategy wisely to ensure the procedure progress smoothly and in
order.

In line with the smart school mission n vision which is to produce students good in IT, the
principal must prepare himself or herself with technology knowledges and skills. Smart
school principals must have a good appearance in the both physical and mental, selfconfidence and ability to communicate with others. Thus, parents will be more confident to
send their children to the smart school when principals seeing seriousness with IT skills.
Besides providing support in terms of money, principals also need to be a model and made
transformation in administration.

B) Teachers
For the smart school, teachers need to use computer intensively in their study, presentations,
teaching process and communication to diversify the use and application of ICT. Most of
teachers are unskilled in IT especially old teacher. They prefer chalk and talk when teaching
and their student still got good result without using technology approach. From this, teachers
also must complete himself or herself with ICT knowledges and skills. This is because
teachers have a big responsible to teach and deliver knowledges to the students. Furthermore,
they did not know deeply the way to handle the computer if there is problem although small
problem and need help from anyone that master in IT. For them, it's very burden because they

need to wait and waste the time to repair the computer problem. Teaching and learning will
be disrupted. Besides, teacher also need efforts in attract students to be interested ICT.

Another challenges for smart school teachers is they play a role in educating the students to
become more IT literate. The main thing that should be made sure by the teacher is that
students are interested and prepared for learning. To that end, teachers need to create a feeling
of interest and fun in the students to more easily convey their knowledge to them. Besides,
some of our teachers are not ready enough to achieve the objectives of smart school concept
and learn new ICT programmes. The teachers themselves have to adapt with the new concept
of teaching and learning.

C) Students
Other than that, student also must take this program as a challenge in their education. For
the some of smart school students, they are not well informed about the unique features of
smart school. They also not familiar with technology and tools. This is because some of them
come from non-academic family background. As they lack exposure to technology, they
preferred to learn in traditional method. So, to overcome those students problems, the number
of students in smart school should be limited. Only the excellent students can attend to smart
school because the learning style in smart school need a students who can explore by
themselves to gain knowledge.

The implementation of smart school will be involved a lot of transformations. Differ from
ordinary schools, most of the students assessments are using a computer with internet
connection. They also have to learn how to gather information from the internet. So, students
should be ready to accept and adapt with the new transformation of teaching and learning
process. They should be prepared mentally and physically so that they can accept the changes
and make as initiative to improve their skills. It is good if the exposure given by the teachers
can help and increase the students interest in learning process. The bad thing is some student
do not have an access to internet at home.

The smart school students should ensure all taught that given by the teachers is a useful
knowledge. They need to give efforts to master at all. For the sake of realize that, the smart
school students should be ready and understand what teachers have taught. They must always
practice and do revision continuously in order to become expert in ICT.

D) School
The smart school itself have to face the challenges in implementation of smart school.
Some of the smart school also lack of facilities. The computer labs are not in adequate
number. There are also hardware problems related to LANs, PCs and servers. Especially in
the rural area, the breakdown of electricity supply is one of the challenges. This is due to
inability of the existing system in school to cope with the increase usage of electricity. Thus,
the government should play their roles in improving the management of smart school. Even if
the school are provided with enough facilities, computer equipment is constantly exposed to
different combinations of damage. To provide each school technicians will spend a lot of
money.
Moreover, the smart school software was not compatible with the national textbook. Thus,
the school has to upgrade the software in line with national text book. Each school also need
to have a system integration engineer who has a broad range of skills including software and
hardware engineering and interface protocols.

In implementation of smart school, managing resources wisely is the main emphasis that
should be given by the school administration. This is to make sure that schools and
infrastructure can well-organized. All the principals have responsibilities to change and renew
management of school system in order to ensure that smart school approach is successful.
However, we cannot deny that there must be some challenges in smart school
implementation. There are some of challenges faced since the inception of smart schools in
Malaysia. The challenges can divide to several categories which are teacher training, lack of
facility and heavy investments on facilities.

A) IT skills among teachers

Many teachers in Malaysia are less expose to the usage of technology. Moreover, time
constraints are one of the frequent issues stated by students and teachers. Some of the
students felt that learning using a computer is very time consuming. Teachers said that they
have to prepare 10 minutes earlier if they want to use a computer lab for teaching and it will
disturb the process of teaching and learning. When the teachers only depend on the ICT, it
will cause the lack of variety in the teaching materials and method. Learning process should
be done with the variety skills to attract students attention and enhance the thinking skill.
When the students only interact with the computer, the communication skills of students will
be limited.

B) Lack of facility
The others challenges concerning the implementation of the smart school concept is the
shortage of computers. The facilities, the computers and the equipments are limited. It gives
problem to student and teacher to start the learning and teaching process. Sometimes the use
of Information Technology does not necessarily make teaching easier because the computer
sometimes can be a distraction for learning. This leads the students would prefer to play using
the internet, which has been programmed with a variety of entertainment such as face book,
YouTube, twitter and so on.
Not only that, internet connection is one of problem in implementing smart schools.
According to the teacher at the school, the internet connection is slow .It did not allow
students to open more than three windows at the same time because it will crash. Teachers
also said that it is difficult to use the Internet as a learning tool since the information is
scattered and not related to the teachers lessons.

C) Heavy investments on facilities

Technology equipment is not cheap. It cost of millions to the success of this program. To
supply LCD, computers, teaching aids and materials technology to every school needs a lot of
expenses. Government need to spend a lot for electronic facilities and new books. The cost
and maintainance fees for the facilities are also high. Beside, effective implementation of

smart school will require funding for the building of new schools with its entire multimedia
infrastructure. Facilities in existing schools also need to be upgraded. Futhermore, to enhance
teachers skill in implementing smart school, we need teacher training instituitions.

3.0 CONCLUSION

Smart School was created to improve teaching, learning and school management
system in order to prepare the students for Information Age. Over time, Smart School will
evolve continuously by developing its professional staff, education resources and its
administrative capabilities to adapt to changing condition in order to prepare the students for
Information Age. Teaching and learning process of Smart School were included the process
of curriculum, pedagogy, assessment and teaching- learning materials. The curriculum
process will ensure that the students will achieve a balanced development of knowledge,
skills, value and correct use of language. Moreover, Smart School pedagogy will make
learning more interesting and meaningful to attract the students.

The strategies used in Smart School pedagogy also involve the students mind, spirit
and bodies in the learning process. The method used is an appropriate learning strategies to
ensure mastery of basic competencies and promote holistic development, accommodate
individual different learning style to boost students performance. Moreover, the method also
used to foster a classroom atmosphere that is compatible with different type of students need
and teaching- learning strategies. Therefore, Smart School assessment gave access to
teachers, students and parents about online assessment items from the online assessment, the
teacher can observe and monitor their students progress.

A teacher nowadays should have the knowledge of designed instruction in

order to give more efficient progress in the learning process. They should make the classroom
the better place to seek knowledge and improve the students achievement. Hence,
it will create environment of respect and support between teacher and students.
Moreover, teacher must have knowledge in assessing and make a judgement about student
learning. The scope of the assessment must be holistic that covers all aspect such as
readiness, progress, achievement, and aptitude.

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In addition, a teacher should have knowledge to facilitate students in cognitively

stimulating activities. A teacher must facilitate and encourege students to
participate in their own learning process. Hence, the participating of students
will increase the students soft skills. Moreover, a teacher should have good thinking
skills. Their thinking should be more critical in order to improve their teaching process. They
must be more innovative and creative in creating teaching process, so that their student will
be

more

excellent

not

just

in

paper

but

in

the

family

society

and

country. They also must have good motivational skills.

Nowadays, most teachers are lack motivational skills. This will create more discipline
problems in school because least teacher can motivate and give advice to a
certain students.Last but not least, teachers also have to play role as a facilitator to the
students so that students can get proper guide. School is the second places which are students
spend most of their time. Hence, teachers become the second person for them to ask
advise and ask for help if they in trouble. For example, if a student give up in their
study, teacher play important tasks in giving advice and encourage the student to be more
eager to study and do not let the problem become the boundaries to success.
The new teaching strategies will need teaching- learning materials designated that will
accommodate different need and the abilities of student itself. Students itself will take greater
responsibility to handle and manage their own learning progress. Smart School management
can be managed efficiently and effectively. The Smart School management will need strong
professional administrators and teachers who are able to express the ideas of school goals
clearly and effectively, lead teaching at the school and express strong parental and
community support to fulfill its objective. Finally, Smart School is important in Malaysian
education system in line with and in support of the nation drive to fulfil Vision 2020.

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4.0 REFERENCES
David Perkins; Smart Schools, Better thinking and learning for every child;
Reprint edition; June 2008; Free Press.
https://www.scribd.com/doc/21413606/What-is-Smart-School

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