FACULTY OF SCIENCE & MATHEMATICS
CHALLENGES AND ISSUES CONCERNING THE
IMPLEMENTATION OF THE SMART SCHOOL CONCEPT
GROUP B
LECTURER NAME: SADIAH BINTI BAHAROM
NAME
|
MATRIC NO.
|
NURBAITILIZZAH BT ZAKARIA
|
D20101037514
|
SITI NORHAFIZA HAFINAS BT MOHD
ZANUDIN
|
D20101037503
|
NUR SYAFIQAH BT ABD KADIR
|
D20101037467
|
INTAN NATIKA BT MAMAT
|
D20101037535
|
NURAINA MARDHIAH BT ABU
|
D20101037515
|
CHALLENGES CONCERNING THE IMPLEMENTATION OF
THE SMART SCHOOL CONCEPT
PARENTS NEEDS TO INCREASE
PARTICIPATION IN EDUCATIONAL PROCESSES
Delivering education and developing
balanced and holistic students are the critical role played by the parents of
Smart School students. There is the need to increase the participation of
parents in educational processes such as teaching-learning, development of
educational materials, assessment, etc.
Parents can be educational resources, and in the process benefit
themselves as their own learning needs become a life-long endeavor. With the
support from the parents, students will be more motivated and this will lead to
student’s delightful performance. Parents should take part in student’s
education and make sure the students get exactly what the Smart School can
give.
The roles and responsibility of
Smart School parents must be widely acknowledged and accepted, in order to
create significant buy-in for parents to assume a much stronger role in the
Smart School education process. Parents’ takes personal charge of children’s
learning experiences. They can guide, motivate and counsel their children on
the Smart School way of teaching and learning. Every student have different
ability on something new like the Smart School progress which most of the
teaching and learning using the technology tools. Parents also have to be
familiar with the technology so the children can talk comfortably about it with
the parents. If the parents know zero about the technology, there is a gap
between the youth and the old folks. The skills and knowledge needed by the
parents like ability to access school public domain database.
There
are many possible strategies for the parents like National campaign on parents
in Smart School, briefing on Smart School educational process, learning basic
IT skill training at school level and doing school tours or exhibition of the
technology available in school. Most of the activities provided to give the
parents knowledge on today’s technology where their children are very familiar
to it. Other than the above techniques, there are also parent’s support group
monthly meeting and IT camps at school for the parents. From the meeting,
parents among parents can discuss the problem with each other and together
solve the problem. This is done for the children better future. Today’s story
is no longer on television and radio but also on the Internet.
TEACHER NEED MORE TRAINING ON ICT
PROGRAMS THAN THE STUDENTS
One of the challenges of
implementation of Smart School is teacher need more training on ICT programs
than the students. This training is done in order to achieve Smart School
mission. Besides, we know that teacher plays an important role in school as
primary deliverer of Smart School teaching.
These teachers will need intensive training on information technology
skill and technology integration into classroom instructions to enhance thinking
and creativity. It’s important to ensure
teachers capability to deliver their curriculum. The training is
allowed teacher to explore a wide variety of areas and strategies. Besides
that, a continuous learning is also necessary for teachers to keep abreast of
development in their professional practices and in order to be confident to
keep in touch with technology. Moreover, teachers also need to have IT skills,
thinking skill, values education and language proficiency. This is because
teacher responsible to plan and prepare learning activities, manage technology
enriched environment, deliver effective instruction and handle professional
tasks. In addition, Smart School principals will also need to go through an
intensive management training course to equip them to manage the new
facilities, technologies and methodologies to be deployed in Smart Schools. ICT
facilities are accessible to the school community even when the school is not
in session, thus students able to explore their studies at all the time.
WELL DEFINED TECHNICAL SUPPORT
The other challenge to implement
Smart School is technical support.
Technical support is critical to maintenance of all installed hardware
and software to ensure minimal description to the teaching-learning and
management process. Thus, every Smart School should have a well-defined
technical support organizational structure which will provide help-desk
function to Smart School students, teachers or administrators who require
assistance in solving technical problems. Other than that, a number of
organizational options can be deployed to ensure a tight, coherent centralized
support organization backed up at the local level by self-sufficient teams
based at either individual or identified clusters of Smart School. The first
level support is School Media or Technology coordinator. He or she will attempt
to troubleshoot any problems relating to the use of technology before routing
it to the next level of support. This first level support also can be provided
by technology savvy students that can be considered as part of their
co-curricular activities and technology savvy teachers. Recognition and acknowledgement must be given
to these technology savvy teachers. The second level support should be based in
school. A technician who is competent in the technology deployed in the school
would be the ideal support related. Next is subsequent level of support.
Subsequent level of support includes all technical support beyond the school
level. It can be a technician who is based at the district or state level, a
help-desk at the Ministry of Education level and or a help-desk set up by the
vendor concerned. The main role and responsibilities of technical support are
troubleshooting of technical problems, respond to school media or technology
coordinators request for technical help maintenance of all technical equipment,
communicate with the other level of technical support and ensure conformity to
information technology (IT) policy. Smart School technology support also should
have skills and knowledge such as IT skills and knowledge, computer and
networking skills knowledge of educational and management software and other
application used in school and most importantly have right attitude.
SMART SCHOOL CLERICAL STAFF
DEVELOPMENT
The next challenge to make the smart
school implementation successful is not only students and teachers cooperation
but also the clerical staff school must gets involved. Clerical staff are the
school clerks, typists and office boy which also known as dispatch boy.
Cooperation of clerical staff very important to ensure the Smart School
management works smoothly and systematic. Clerical staff must have
qualification academic like have IT knowledge which can gives easier to them
complete all documents and works in Smart School. In addition, to give easier,
clerical staff can also be introduce to basic IT skills such as word processing
and spreadsheet applications. This because in Smart School, all tasks such as
school finances, school communications and school inventories must accomplished
with the aid of technology. So, all members of clerical staff would need to
know and understand how this office automation is done. One important thing,
clerical staffs must have right attitude. Although like not necessary but if
the clerical staff is lazy, wasting time which spend for chatting and etc, no
wonder if expert in IT also did not help the implementation smart school
successful.
ISSUES CONCERNING THE IMPLEMENTATION
OF THE SMART SCHOOL CONCEPT
The implementation of Malaysian
Smart School has a few qualities that can make it differ from others kind of
school. The One of the qualities of Smart School in Malaysia is a broad
curriculum that considers the different capabilities and needs of all students.
This means that the contents and teaching materials using during teaching and
learning process in the class are designed overall in order to help students
achieving overall and balanced development of mind. Therefore, the smart school
process are viewed as a system which had been provided with input, so the smart
school processes will work until success in producing a desired input. The
second quality that makes the smart school prepare their students for
information age is providing a school climate with conducive environment in
learning process. Then, the next quality is concept of ongoing assessment that
supports good instruction. Not only that, the strong and professional
principals and teachers also making the smart school to be in high quality and
effective to students. In order to get best achievement of students in many aspects
is actually not just a teachers’ duty, but also the support from high level of
parent and community involvement. So the other quality of smart school is by
involving parents and community in playing role to help teachers in guiding
students.
To be an effective school which can
achieve their target and goals like smart school, so the management and
administration had been functioning efficiently
in managing resources and processes required to support the teaching and
learning functions. The stakeholders included teachers, principals, Ministry of
Education officers and parents involved in the implementation of smart school
will be equipped with specific skills and requisite knowledge base to enable
them to play their roles effectively. Therefore, a smart school is shaped in
four main components which each of the element are very important in defining
the overall teaching and learning experience for smart school children. The
first component is curriculum, which the Smart School curriculum is designed according
to best practices of other successful smart school incorporating elements that
will enable the education system to achieve the goal of the national philosophy
of education. This means that the curriculum contents must be meaningful,
socially responsible, multicultural, reflective, holistic, global, open- ended,
goal- based and technological. The contents is focusing on all- rounded
development of students and at the same time have integration of knowledge,
skills, values, correct use of languages
and attitudes suitable for information Age. Before starting the lesson in the
class, the teachers play role in explicating the learning outcomes for
different levels of ability and the most important, is reflecting horizontal
integration which features multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches.
The second component in Smart School
is pedagogy which means the using of innovative skills and method by teachers
in teaching process. In Smart School, the teaching and learning strategies are
varied to ensure basic competencies. Combining the roles within classroom with
learning strategies available result in an overview of different classroom
environment which is more realistic compared than other conventional school
based on fit between the roles of teachers and students. So a teacher in Smart
School not only functioned to teach and give information about lesson, but also
is functioned in managing the classroom procedures and managing student
behavior, informally conducive environment can be created. The third component
is assessment. This is designed to give accurate feedback of student readdress,
progress, achievement and aptitude. There are many systems of assessment
carrying out in Smart School such as
holistic, element- based, criterion- referenced, learner- centered and on- line
assessment. Nevertheless, due to the different demonstration of strength,
abilities and knowledge, the assessment is conducted in different forms that
are classroom assessment; school- based assessment and lastly centralized assessment.
The implementation in Smart School cannot be perfect with only good curriculum,
effective pedagogy and systematic assessment. Therefore, there is the last
important component behind the implementation of Smart School that is Teaching-
learning materials. These materials cognitively challenging and motivating by
combining the best of network- based, teacher- based and courseware materials.
At the same time, teaching materials can fulfill curriculum need, challenge
mind thinking and encourage active participation whether using conventional and
electronic materials as long as it can make Smart School always be the best
among the other schools.
