What are the implications of ICT-enhanced education for educational policy and planning?

Attempts to enhance and reform education through ICTs require clear and specific objectives, guidelines and time-bound targets, the mobilization of required resources, and the political commitment at all levels to see the initiative through. Some essential elements of planning for ICT are listed below.

• A rigorous analysis of the present state of the educational system. ICT-based interventions must take into account current institutional practices and arrangements. Specifically, drivers and barriers to ICT use need to be identified, including those related to curriculum and pedagogy, infrastructure, capacity-building, language and content, and financing.

• The specification of educational goals at different education and training levels as well as the different modalities of use of ICTs that can best be employed in pursuit of these goals. This requires of the policymaker an understanding of the potentials of different ICTs when applied in different contexts for different purposes, and an awareness of priority education needs and financial and human resource capacity and constraints within the country or locality, as well as best practices around the world and how these practices can be adapted for specific country requirements.

• The identification of stakeholders and the harmonizing of efforts across different interest groups.

• The piloting of the chosen ICT-based model. Even the best designed models or those that have already been proven to work in other contexts need to be tested on a small scale. Such pilots are essential to identify, and correct, potential glitches in instructional design, implementability, effectiveness, and the like.

• The specification of existing sources of financing and the development of strategies for generating financial resources to support ICT use over the long term.

ICT empowering citizens of Malaysia Development with Destiny

Upasna Kakroo Senior Research Associate csdms upasna@csdms.in

Malaysia, an upper-middle economic state in SouthEast Asia, found its connectivity with the world with the installation of the first telephone line in 1874. The country developed its first computer system in 1966 and since then several initiatives to facilitate the integration of ICT in different areas have been introduced. The privatisation of the telecom sector in 1987, and the formation of the NTP (National Telecom policy) in 1994, led to the full liberalisation of the market. The enactment of the Communi-cations and Multimedia act in 1998 established the Malaysian Communication and Multimedia Commission (regulator) in support of national policy objectives. The regulator provides for economic, technical, consumer and social regulation ensuring competitiveness, licensing, frequency allocation, affordability and availability of ICT technologies and services. Framework for development (FID) is a five year rolling plan for ICT development. The country now faces the dilemma of ensuring global competitiveness as well as access to all.

e-Readiness of Malaysia
With a population of 25.58 million (2004) over an area of 330,000 sq. kms., Malaysia had an average population density of 74 people per square km., though it is unevenly spread across the country with the bulk of the population residing in the west half of the country. The economy of the country has been robust even in the wake of the economic setbacks in the Southeast Asian economies in 2000 and a SARS outbreak in 2003. The GDP of the country was reported as RM394 billion (2003) (RM 3.8= US $1), with a growth of 5.2 percent over 2002.

ICT has grown substantially in Malaysia contributing a (gross) revenue of RM19 billion to the economy. The total telephone penetration rates have reached a combined telephone penetration of 61.99 telephones per 100 people (2003).

The tele-density (fixed) has climbed to 20, with the mobile phone connections overtaking fixed lines. Deployments for 3G and EDGE mobile networks have also started.  Malaysia's performance with respect to other ASEAN countries has also been good, as shown in the graph.

The country's Internet development started in 1988 and by the end of 2003 the total dial-up penetration rate was 11.4 percent. Broadband Internet services started in 2001 and are still in their infancy. The absence of regulatory mechanisms allowing for local loop unbundling, the slow paces of the incumbent, and issues with last-mile connectivity have resulted in wireless broadband being preferred by operators. The broadband as well as the mobile segments though have been deployed around cities and urban areas.
Malaysia has embarked upon various measures to ensure the ICTs play an important role in the society. For ICT development the MSC - Multimedia Super Corridor (for global competitiveness) has been developed.

 The government has invested highly in its infrastructure. The MSC contains a high-speed 10Gb/s network connecting MSC to Japan, ASEAN, EU and the US. It supports public administration, education and business applications. Malaysia was ranked 26th in the world for e-Readiness. The telephone penetration rates rose by 7 percent while for the rural sector there was a rise of 6 percent (2000).

Facing challenges

ICT infrastructure development in Malaysia has been concentrated mainly in the urban areas. Even in the urban sector itself some areas are highly developed as compared to others. Regional differences in economic development and population density across the country have also resulted in some areas are considerably lagging behind. About 89 out of 136 districts in the country have been identified as undeserved. According to MEWC, about 3000 villages are not connected to the country's communication infrastructure.

The divide exists due to illiteracy, low incomes, amongst physically challenged people and due to difference in ethnicity, gender marginalising people whose access to ICT services is limited. Relatively low PC ownership has also been a reason for low access. The urban-poor of the country are also disadvantaged digitally.

The country is a federation of 13 states and 3 federal states. According to estimates the 'Bumiputeras' have low incomes and low education levels and suffer the most due to knowledge divide as well as digital divide. Data suggests that the states of Kedah, Sabah, Sarawak, Terengganu, Kelantan, Perlis and Pehang have more than 50 percent people in rural areas and also the highest percentage of 'Bumiputeras' in their population constitution. Thus they lag behind the rest of the country in terms of ICT.

According to the available data, most of the states mentioned have had traditional agro-economies and have had little development in terms of ICT industries. These states currently have a mean GDP less than the mean GDP of the country. The percentage of people below the poverty line is also higher than the national average in most of these states. More number of people here have never been educated.  Some of these states specifically Kelantan and Terengganu consist of some socio-cultural and religious parameters causing prominent gender divide, as has been observed in other South Asian and South-East Asian countries as well. Some of these states, specifically Sabah and Sarawak have a large number of ethnic groups, that sometimes causes difficulty in policy implementation as observed by several studies. It is not only an issue in Malaysia but also an issue in most countries around South Asia.

Political instability is also sometimes experienced, especially in the states like Sabah which has the chief minister changing after every two years (so that all ethnic communities are equally represented) and Kelantan which is the only state not ruled by the BN party alliance.  It is evident that political stability poses great hindrance to the growth in most countries around the developing world. Also, according to sources, Sabah has had an inequitable distribution of wealth between the state and federal government, which has adversely affected progress. The state of ICT in these states is below the national level. These states have low tele-density values and high number of undeserved areas. Sabah and Sarawak are the poorest states in Malaysia with the highest unemployment rates and have been the targets for many a development schemes.

'Vision' with ICT – mission for knowledge
In the recent past, there has been lot of arguments on how to close the digital divide, while access to all is essential, it doesn't meet the purpose. Effectively, meaning that when people on the wrong side of the digital divide will be able to use technology to their benefit in a manner similar to everyone else, only then the gap will close.

Malaysia has taken a pro-active approach to solve the issue. This is especially evident in the 8th and 9th Malaysia plans wherein the government has taken policy initiatives and with the help of private partners, several programmes for deploying ICT infrastructure have been started in remote areas. To enable Malaysia's growth into a knowledge society, various plans- NITA '96 and Vision 2020 have been initiated. ICT has been recommended as being strategic for development.

The Vision 2020 plan envisions Malaysia as a developed country by 2020 with the establishment of a K (knowledge)-community. Special emphasis has been given to development of infrastructure and potential human capital by involving state, local governments as well as the private-public community. ICT plans for universal access, content development, affordability, lifelong learning have been started. RM 1098 million was allocated for ICT- related activities for bridging the Digital Divide with RM10 million for local content development in the 8th Malaysian plan.

A Strategic Thrust Implementation Committee (STIC) has been set up to monitor the implementation of plans. 60 initiatives have been implemented upto 2002. Malaysian Administration, Modernisation and Management Planning Unit (MAMPU) has been set up within the Prime Minister's office as the lead agency in the public sector for ICT development. MSC has also established some key projects: e-Governance, multipurpose cards, smart schools, tele-health, R&D clusters, e-Business, etc.

Specific policy initiatives

• Universal Service Provision - It enables the creation of a USP fund, administered by the regulator MCMC. The fund pays for capital expenditure and yearly operational expenses incurred on providing services under the plan. The areas, which have a penetration rate of less than 20 percent below the national rate, are categorised as undeserving.
  
  
• Licensing – It has been made flexible keeping in mind the imbalance in the ICT infrastructure through the country. Wireless technology has been promoted with deployments being made easier by various spectrum allocation policies whereby the spectrum has been made more affordable.
  
  
• The DAGS (Department Application Grant Scheme) – It is intended for facilitating social and economic progress through innovative use of ICT.

Community kiosks in the rural areas have been established under programmes like the Rural Internet Centre (Internet Desa), Community Communication Development Programme, etc. The programmes have tried to involve the rural communities and helped to connect them to the K-community. ICT training has been encouraged with economic training in relevant fields. Free Internet access has been provided at post offices and petrol stations and in multipurpose kiosks. Social and economic programmes through the use of ICTs have also been started. e-Commerce and e-Communities have been encouraged especially in projects like the AkisNet and TaniNet where e-Agriculture software applications have been made available to help improve cost efficiency. Online ordering and auctioning systems have also been put in place to streamline the supply and the demand chain.

Regional development has also been promoted with state-wise programmes. In Sabah, the Resource Development and IT Ministry directed a grant of RM 33.6 million for ICT development in the state. They would be given a further RM 1.38 billion according to the 9th Malaysia plan. The state departments likely to be benefited are- forestry, land & survey dept., the state library, and public works. In Sarawak, which established the UNIMAS after Vision 2020 plan, projects like e-Bario and e-Bedian with active community involvement have received awards. In Kedah, a project called KTOPIA has been initiated which is a public-private partnership with open public infrastructure and multiple service providers, aimed at bringing broadband to all. Terengganu has initiated a tripartite alliance for ICT projects between Extremadura region Spain, State govt., and Mimos Bhd. for e-Learning, e-Business and information security.

The road ahead
The Malaysian government has been very proactive towards ICT development, and Malaysia was ranked 30th in the world for Internet penetration. Various dimensions characterise the state of ICT in a country. Absorption, connectivity infrastructure and sophistication of use are the problem areas in Malaysia at present. The country is still lagging behind in broadband development.

The issues and challenges Malaysia may be confronted with in an attempt to close the digital divide are enormous. On one end it is looking towards competing globally in the ICT sector while on the other hand, a large group of people is lagging behind. The country also faces a dilemma in a trade off between devoting resources to MSC at the expense of ICT4D. Definitive attempts thus are necessary for developing a strategy, which would ensure 'growth with equity'.

Even though a number of ICT4D programmes have been initiated a lot is yet to be achieved. Also, with a number of plans for ICT development, some clarity is needed in overlapping areas. The division of responsibilities amongst various depart-ments, which manage various projects, can sometimes prove difficult to discern.

Most of the states mentioned lagging behind have an agricultural base, so it would be advantageous to bring in programmes like the 'AkisNet' and 'TaniNet' to these states. It is imperative that the 'old' and 'new' economies are made to co-exist. Though there are programmes with national coverage, which look into the above issues, they are based in bigger cities and it would make sense to have a base in the rural areas too. It would be sensible to have an independent agency to monitor the ICT activities in the states. A lot of the websites are under-construction and inaccessible.

Malaysia is a multiethnic society and the knowledge and digital divide is multidimensional in nature, this implies that great care has to be taken in the proper and fair implementation of the projects. A better system of data collection and a feedback mechanism needs to be in place for the same.

A tri-sectoral partnership involving the government, a private partner and the community should be encouraged to instill the importance of learning and knowledge in the minds of the Malaysians which would further help promote the concept of a K-based economy, with ICT as the relevant tool to reach that goal. The adoption of private led initiatives can alleviate the burden on the government and provide benefits to the private sector also. Several such initiatives have had success and through the implementation of these policies, initiatives and activities the role of ICT towards socio-economic development has been impressed upon the Malaysian population, which is the driving motivation behind the country's huge effort in bridging the digital divide. The future focus of the country thus will remain towards strengthening the human capital, developing hard and soft e-Infrastructure, bringing innovations through ICT in the small medium enter-prises and reducing the digital divide.

Properly Using ICT in the Classroom

Properly Using ICT in the Classroom

One thing about the changeover to teaching science and maths in English in 2003 was that for the first time ICT (Information and Communications Technology) began to be used on a large scale throughout our school system as a teaching aid. Unfortunately, instead of being a teaching aid, in many cases the poor English of the teachers turned the teaching aid into the only teacher many kids got. I can speak from personal experience that as good as my science teachers were, there wasn't much they could do to add to the ICT-based teaching aids. If anything, the structure of the aids seems to have been meant to supplant teachers instead of assist them. This is really a great shame, because ICT can be a fantastic teaching aid when used correctly.

The slideshows which schools use as teaching aids presently are essentially whole lectures with some visuals included. There is not a whole lot teachers can add to the ICT-based teaching aids, especially if their English is poor. Teachers are pretty much reduced to opening the slideshows and clicking "next".

Of course, teachers still have a role to play. After all, teachers should be able to tell when students are not paying attention to the virtual lecture, and answer any questions the students may have. If anything, the slideshows probably give more effective lectures than some teachers do.

The problem as I see it is that instead of playing to the advantages of ICT, this marginalises ICT. We're just replacing human lectures with computer lectures. Teachers are now more like teaching assistants than actual teachers.

The primary advantage of ICT is that it offers access to a lot of data and information which teachers don't have, and that it can present this information in compelling and interesting ways. The way we've rolled out ICT is such that our students get a voice from the computer droning at them while some pretty cartoons pop up on the screen. At best, students may get the chance to play a game or two which facilitates retention of the material — but this isn't really playing to all the advantages of ICT.

Let me give some examples of how to effectively use ICT, based on my experiences in university. In my game theory class just two days ago, my professor mentioned a scene from the movie A Beautiful Mind illustrating the principles he was teaching. He then loaded up Youtube and showed a clip of the scene to us. In previous lectures, he's used the internet to locate studies proving that the theories he's teaching actually apply to the real world. While my professor could have just told us to look these things up in our spare time, having the option to call up all these visual aids and supporting facts in the classroom itself is clearly invaluable to the learning experience.

When I was studying Chinese last year, my professor frequently made us watch the news on CCTV, or called up Chinese clips on Youtube. It was an obvious and easy way to help us practice our listening, and it was a lot more natural than repeating sentences from our textbooks to one another. In my calculus class last term, the lecturer used graphing software to illustrate the things he was teaching us about vectors. ICT lends itself readily to all sorts of interesting applications in the classroom.

The one thing in common here is that nobody made the instructors use particular software or stick to particular applications of ICT. So far, our approach to ICT in the classroom has been to hand out CDs to teachers, without making teachers realise how they can more broadly apply things like the internet to lessons in the classroom. Our ICT strategy has been essentially "If we give teachers CDs with slideshows on them, we're making use of ICT! It's a success!"

But a truly successful programme for ICT use in the classroom would not only allow but encourage teachers to go beyond government-supplied tools, and to use things like the internet to better their teaching. Even if all they do is use Google to search for answers to questions they don't have answers to, I think it's a lot more instructive and useful for students to see how to use Google to find answers than it is for them to get a simple lecture from the computer.

Right now, we're not doing anything really useful with ICT. All we're doing is pretty much what a teacher with decent English and maybe some visual aids of her own can do anyway. The true advantage of ICT lies in things which ordinarily teachers can't do: answering almost any question imaginable, and offering exciting and interesting ways in which to present those answers. A good education policy would go beyond handing out CDs to schools; it would train teachers how to include ICT as part of their lessons in the classroom.

Malaysia: ICT education for a “creative society

"By Alice Kok | 12 May 2009"

Malaysia Higher Education Ministry is studying how to develop a creative and innovative Malaysian society through human capital development.
The ministry is planning to work with Microsoft in unearthing creative and innovative students of tertiary institutions in the area of ICT and with Shell Malaysia in energy saving.
Its minister Datuk Seri Mohamed Khaled Nordin said the study to produce creative, innovative human capital was started last year by the Malaysian Invention and Design Society (MINDS), Universiti Teknologi Mara and Malaysian Design Council. This study will be looking at programmes by government agencies that could contribute to the creation of “innovative human capital”.
“We hope when the study is completed, expected this year, we will be able to draw up a national blueprint in this context,” he said. “Malaysia wants to move away from a resource-based economy to one generated by innovations with the existence of an innovative society, which will indicate that the country has reached developed-nation status,” he said.
Nordin said creativity and innovations were vital for a country and studies had shown that technological innovations contributed to higher productivity, Gross Domestic Product, economic growth and improved standard of living.

Critical Issue: Using Technology to Support Limited- English-Proficient (LEP) Students' Learning Experiences

This Critical Issue was researched and written by Asta Svedkauskaite, NCREL program specialist; Laura Reza-Hernandez, a doctoral student in educational leadership at the University of Texas, El Paso; and Mary Clifford, NCREL program associate. Editorial guidance was provided by Gil Valdez, Ph.D., chief officer, Learning Point Associates, and director, North Central Eisenhower Mathematics and Science Consortium. NCREL Program Specialist David Durian also contributed to this issue.

ISSUE: Since 1992, limited-English-proficient (LEP) student enrollment has nearly doubled. Most recent data from the National Clearinghouse for English Language Acquisition and Language Instruction Educational Programs (NCELA) indicate that there are close to five million students identified as LEP (NCELA, 2002). The number, primarily of Latino students, has doubled in the last ten years. These skyrocketing numbers of LEP students underscore the importance of ensuring that student academic success becomes a reality and that teachers provide them with every opportunity to excel.
The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB, 2002) clearly sets a goal for LEP students to meet the same challenging state academic achievement standards and state academic content standards expected of all students. The law also states that every student should be technologically literate by the eighth grade, regardless of student background or family socioeconomic status. LEP students, moreover, will be tested in English after they have attended school in this country for three years.
With these rigorous requirements in mind, this paper will focus on the critical issue of using technology as a tool to enrich classroom practices for LEP students. Educational technology as a learning tool can increase opportunities for students. Developing effective and adequate strategies is critical as educators and policymakers look at multiple ways to integrate technology in LEP students' learning. A thorough research-based understanding of technology integration to support and extend LEP students' learning experiences is a necessity. This Critical Issue supports the view that academic content understanding, linguistic knowledge, and technological literacy should, ideally, develop simultaneously in order to:

• Increase strategic use of technology.
• Enhance LEP student orientation in content classrooms.
• Redefine teacher roles.
• Increase access and equity for LEP students.

Arising from the informed understanding of a variety of language instructional programs (see "Mastering the Mosaic"), this paper shows how technology can be beneficial and successfully used, regardless of whether the classroom setting is mainly bilingual or contains an ESL (English as a second language) component. We also look at research and examine diverse school settings from two areas where technology is used successfully with LEP students: one from high-poverty schools in El Paso, Texas, and the other from a more prosperous district of Schaumburg, Illinois. Together, development of these interrelated components offers a promise of making LEP student academic success a reality.