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DEPARTMENT OF BIOLOGY

FACULTY OF SCIENCE & MATHEMATICS


UNIVERSITI PENDIDIKAN SULTAN IDRIS
SSI 3013: INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY IN SCIENCE
ASSIGNMENT 1 : CHALLENGING IN SMART SCHOOL PROGRAMME IN MALAYSIA
NAME

MATRIX NUMBER

SHAFIQAH BINTI HANAFI

D20141067057

FARAH AMIRAH BINTI AZMI

D20141067058

SITI NUR ATHIRAH BINTI MOHMAD

D20141067060

LECTURERS NAME: ENCIK AZMI IBRAHIM


GROUP
: GROUP C
DATE
: 15/9/2016

Introduction
The smart school Project of Malaysia was developed in early 1996 with contribution of
Ministry of Education. Smart school had become one of the seven flagship applications of the
Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC) project, promoted by the Multimedia Development
Corporation (MDC) by the end of the year (Lubis et al., 2009 b). In July 1997, The Conceptual
Blueprint of Malaysian smart school was produced by a project team, which consisted of
industry representatives, officials from the Ministry of Education. A joint venture company,
Telekom Smart School Sdn Bhd (TSS), was incorporated in June 1999 with the objective of
transforming the Malaysian education system into a technologically advanced process (Kanwar,
2006; Ridzuan, 2000). The government awarded the TSS the contract for implementing the smart
school solution at ninety pilot schools nationwide. The pilot was completed in December 2002.
Smart School Integrated Solution (SSIS), developed by the Ministry of Education and TSS,
attempts to cover all of Malaysian schools by the year 2010 (Lubis, 2009).

The smart school programme in Malaysia is a learning institution that has been
systematically integrated with ICT in terms of teaching learning practices and school
management in order to prepare children for the Information Age (Malaysia Government, 1997).
Besides, the smart school require appropriate skilled staff, complete infrastructure and good
designed supporting processes to be function effectively. Then, the new learning atmosphere and
environment encourage an active thinking process among the students and encourage the
students to use personal computers and internet for research and communication tools. This is
important to

produce good quality of students which are creative and innovative that can help to developed
and developing our countries.
Objectives of Smart School
1)
2)
3)
4)
5)

To produce thinking and technology literate workforce


To develop a workforce for the information age
To develop student physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually
Provide opportunities to improve individual strengths and abilities
To democratize education

Challenging in Smart School Programme in Malaysia


1.0 Lack of Technological Infrastructure and Teaching Materials in School in Rural Area
There are several challenging that have been face to develop smart school programme in
Malaysia. The main challenging that have been faced are the lack of technological infrastructure
and teaching materials in school especially in rural area. Infrastructure refer to structure, systems,
and facilities that serving at the school for students and staff of the school. Poor and insufficient
school infrastructure negatively impacts student learning and schooling outcomes. This is
because the lack of number of infrastructure such as computer labs at the school prevent the
students to explore more information by using the technology. Besides, the limited connection of
internet have also affect the effective use of the technology in school because time-consuming
and difficult to get an information from the internet in faster way. Then, this situation will block
students interest to use the technology and explore more about the technology. This cause most
of the students at rural areas have lack knowledge about technology and give the negative impact
to them when they make their further study at university that require technology such as laptop to
solve and complete their assignment.

Because of that, all parties should cooperate to complete the technology infrastructure in
schools in order to provide convenience for students to explore emerging technology. Then, this
is important to produce students who are competitive, creative and innovative in solving their
task and assignment by using multimedia and ICT. The government must be sensitive to the lack
of facilities available in schools, especially rural school so that the difference of school education
between rural and urban areas can be reduced through the technology provided. In addition, the
school management can also block certain websites such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter
during our school to prevent limited internet line and give full attention towards study.
2.0 Heavy Investment on Facilities
Then, the challenging that have been faces by the smart school at Malaysia are heavy
investment on facilities which should available in every school. The government need to spend
lot of fees and electronic facilities to improve the quality of infrastructure at the school. Then, the
smart school that need more facilities such as computer laboratory and the number of computer,
internet and multimedia structure need more funding to complete the effective facilities. Besides,
the cost maintenance fees for the facilities, teacher training institutions, and maintenance of new
technology are also high and need more funding to implement with successful.
Thus, government need to spend more funding to improve the facilities at the school in order
to achieve the objectives of the smart school. Besides, the prime minister of the school have also
to find the fund from the investors or wealthy to improve and help in increasing the fund of the
school. This is important to help to upgrade the facilities in existing schools. Then, the fees for
the teacher training are important even though there are costing to improve the skills in
technology. Because of that, the sacrifice of the teacher are important in order to produce high

quality of smart school and produce quality students that can help to develop our country with
their critical thinking an creativity based on learning process at the school.
3.0 Negative Attitude of Teachers
After that, there are some teachers that have negative attitude which are less knowledgeable
about the technology and prefer to use traditional methods in learning and teaching process in
their class. This is because the teacher especially senior teacher that has been blended with the
traditional methods and difficult to adapt with the new instructional technology. This will retard
the process to produce quality smart school students and move forward. Besides, there are some
teachers that are afraid to learn about technology and use the infrastructure that provided to teach
their students. Then, the new teacher have lack intensive training and lack of experience in ICT
knowledge caused difficult to them to teach the students with the technology.
Thus, the teachers who are located in smart school should change their mind set to the
method of teaching by using more effective methods which is the technology. Besides, teachers
who are lack of experience and finesse about the ICT need to go to intensive training to improve
their knowledge about the uses of technology. This is important to ensure that the objectives of
the smart school to produce people who are have thinking and technology literate workforce.
4.0 Students
In smart school, the students were taught in new way and using new technology as well. This
means that the students have to know how to use the computers and other technologies. As we
know, the students came from various kind of background. Some of them are from well family
and some are not. The students who came from the well family usually already adapt with all
these new technologies since their family could afford it. But, this will be a problem to the

students who are not come from rich family. Teacher have to play their role well in order to
educate this kind of students to get well with the technology in their studies. At the same time,
the teacher have to ensure that there is none of the student who left behind in academics due to
this problem. All students must achieve the capability to use technology and also get flying
colours in their academics with help of the technology.
Next, the challenge that related to the students is the way of their learning. Some of the
students preferred their teacher to teach in traditional way. The concepts of learning in Smart
School needed the students to explore by themselves to gain knowledge. It is differed from the
old style where the teacher prepared everything for the students. This new way of learning allow
the students to be more active and produce generation that are creative and smart.
5.0 Principals
On the other hand, as a principal, he or she have to handle the system in the smart school.
How the system works depends on the capability of the principal. Besides, they need to struggle
to open the minds of the students parents about the new way of learning in the smart school. As
we know, in our community, we are too afraid to accept new things in our lives. So, the principal
need to convince the parents on how the system that applied in the smart school can help to
produce smart generation. Plus, the parents need to know how important are the technologies in
nowadays and why do we have to improve our way of learning in order to stay align with the
other countries as well.
Next, before the principal wants to introduce how to use the technology to the students
and other teacher, he or she need to complete himself or herself with technology knowledges and
skills.

As a smart schools principals, they must have a good appearance in both physical and mental,
honesty, selflessness, self-confidence and ability to communicate with others. So that, the other
teachers and students will be confident to try the new way of learning.
Furthermore, the smarts school principal will face difficulty to provide high quality and
relevant of teaching and learning materials for the students. As we know, the cost could be too
expensive and not suitable with the syllabus. The principal also have to ensure that all the
procedure progress smoothly and in order.
6.0 Pace Of Change
As we know technology need rapidly update as well. Not all schools can keep up with the
rapidly changing technology. The upgrading of the computer hardware or any other equipment is
often costly and schools might have not enough manpower to handle the equipment. Most
classrooms contain at least twenty students, which can take up a great deal of internet bandwidth
in the instance that they all must access their laptop or tablet at once. Furthermore, new hires
may be needed for monitoring and teaching students how to use and handle latest digital media,
yet this is another expense to the school. This could be hard as needing an IT staff to work out
potential glitches in the system to hiring teachers with an ability to use various software instead
of teachers that are somewhat less skilled with technology. If a student is required to complete a
task by using technology equipment such as tablet, their parents may not be able to help them
with any questions that being asked by children as they are not familiar with the software or
equipment.

7.0 Distraction
We had known that technology gives impacts on students either in positive or negative
ways. In teachers point of view, smartphones, tablets, with internet connectivity and text
messaging services can merely be some examples of distraction for students as opposed to a
learning tool. Teachers carry a high responsible to take a look on each uses of internet by
students. It may be hard for them to monitoring their students closely in class to make sure
whether they are using educational apps on their tablets and maximizing the uses of technology
in education or browsing any other social media network. Furthermore, teacher need to decide
whether need or not to use filtered browsing on each student devices to minimize or cut down on
distraction during the learning process. This is to make sure that students give 100% of attention
and using the technology provided only on educational matters without interrupting it with
surfing on the social media or pornography website.
The main issue of uses of technology in classroom is that emerging students should had
the ability to apply classroom concepts in daily life, as we know our daily life is surround by
technology.
As we can see, students nowadays not to mention expert but being at the maximum level
of knowledge in using all these technology, and tools such as laptops, smart phones, and tablets
are already being nature to them as they were born with it. Technology is part of the learning
equation, taking it out from the equation is like trying to denying an integral part of the students
abilities. Likewise, even if the student isnt already technology savvy, thats even more of a
reason to embrace the skill. Trying to understand the technology has becoming more important in

the workplace and other areas. Competing with peers in the 21st century simply necessitates the
need for technological fitness. But digital innovations can be source of problems for schools as
well.
Conclusion
There are many challenges and issue that have to face in integrating ICT in learning and
teaching process in Smart School. Thus, the initiative and solution in order to solve the problem
need to be taken to ensure the ICT in our education are develop and interesting to attract the
students attraction. Plus, they will apply the things that they learned in school in their daily life.
In addition, we must support and try our best to achieve the smart school objectives and produces
the great generations that can help to develop our country in the future.

Reference
Gershberg, A. l. (2014, Januari 1). Educational Infrastructure, School Construction and
Decentralization in Developing COUNTRIES : Key Issue for an Understudied Area. p.
34.
Kanwar, R. (2006). Smart School Smarter Asia digital learning.
Lubis, M. A. (2009). Teaching and Learning Process with Integration of Ict : A Study on Smart
Schools of Malaysia. WSEAST Transactions on Information Science and Aplications 6(8),
pp. 189-197.
Malaysia, G. o. (1997, July 4). Smart School Conceptual Blueprint. Smart Schol Project Team,
pp. 01-220.
Siavash Omidinia, M. M. (2016). Smart School System Issues and Challenges. Primary
Findings of Interviews, pp. 02-12.
http://www.academia.edu/3158453/SMART_SCHOOL_SYSTEM_ISSUES_AND_CHA
LLENGES

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