LESSON 3

Educational Technology in the Asia Pacific Region

To provide confidence to educators that they are taking the right steps in adopting technology in education, it is good to know that the last few years, progressive countries in the Asia pacific region have formulated state policies and strategies to infuse technology in schools. The reason for this move is not difficult to understand since there is now a pervasive awareness that a nation’s socio economic success in the 21st century is linked to how well it can compete in a global information and communication technology (ICT) region. This imperative among nations has therefore given tremendous responsibilities on educators to create an educational technology environment in schools.

And since it is understood that state policies will continue to change, it is helpful to examine prevailing ICT policies and strategies of five progressive states/city, namely New Zealand, Australia, Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong.
New Zealand 2001 ICT Goals and Strategy (Weblink for more a detailed document) http://www.tki.org.nz/ict/

Goal
Government with the education and technology sectors, community groups, and industry envisions to support to the development of the capability of schools to use information and communication technologies in teaching-and-learning and in administration.

Strategy
It foresees schools to be:
• Improving learning outcomes for students using ICT to support the curriculum.
• Using ICT to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of educational administration.
• Developing partnerships with communities to enhance access to learning through ICT.

Focus areas
• Infrastructure for increasing schools’ access to ICTs to enhance education
• Professional development so that school managers and teachers can increase their capacity to use ICT.

Initiatives
• An On-line Resource Center with a centrally managed website for the delivery of multimedia resources to schools

• A computer recycling scheme
• A planning and implementation guide for schools
• ICT professional development schools/clusters

Australia IT Initiatives
(http.//www.deet.gov.au/schools/Adelaide/text.htm)

In the Adelaide Declaration on National Goals for schools, information technology is one of the eight national goals/learning areas students should achieve. Students should be confident, creative and productive users of new technologies on society.

The plans for achieving the national goal for IT are left to individual states and territories with the Educational Network Australia (EdNA) as the coordinating and advisory body. Across the states and territories, the common features to planning, funding and implementation strategies are:

• East and local wide area networks linking schools, across the state and territory
• Substantial number of computers in schools, ensuring adequate access
• Continuing teacher training in the use of technology for instruction
• Technical support to each school
• Sufficient hardware and software
• Digital library resources
• Technology demonstrations as models for schools

Malaysia Smart School-level Technology Project (http://www.ppk.kpm.my/smartschool/)

Technology plays many roles in a Smart School from facilitating teaching-and-learning activities to assisting with school management. Fully equipping a school includes:

• Classrooms with multimedia, presentation facilities, e-mail and groupware for collaborative work
• Library media center with database for multimedia courseware and network access to the internet
• Computer laboratory for teaching, readily accessible multimedia and audiovisual equipment
• Multimedia development center with tools for creating multimedia materials. Computer studies as a subject
• Studio/theater with control room for centralized audio-visual equipment, teleconferencing studio, audio room, video and laser disc video room
• Teachers’ room with on-line access to courseware catalogues and databases, information and resource management systems and professional networking tools, such as e-mail and groupware.
• Server room equipped to handle applications, management databases and web servers
• Administration offices capable of managing databases of students and facilities, tracking student and teacher performance and resources, distributing notices and other information electronically

Singapore Masterplan for IT in Education (http://www.moe.edu.sg/iteducation/masterplan/welcome.htm)

The masterplan has four key detentions:
Curriculum and assessment
• A balance between acquisition of factual knowledge and mastery of concepts and skills
• Students in more active independent learning
• Assessment to measure abilities in applying information, thinking and communicating
Learning Resources
• Development of a wide range of educational software for instruction
• Use of relevant Internet resources for teaching-and-learning
• Convenient and timely procurement of software materials

Teacher development
• Training on purposeful use of IT for teaching
• Equipping each trainee teacher with core skills in teaching with IT
• Tie-ups with institutions of higher learning and industry partners

Physical and Technological infrastructure
• Pupil computer ratio of 2:1
• Access to IT in all learning areas in the school
• School-wide network and school linkages through wide area network (WAN), eventually connected to Singapore One (a broadband access for high-speedy delivery of multimedia services on island-wide basis

Hong Kong Education Program Highlights
(http://www.info.gov.hk/emb/eng/prog_high/schoolprog.html)

Government aims to raise the quality of school education by promoting the use of IT in teaching and learning. The IT initiatives are:
• On average, 40 computers for each primary school and 82 computers for each secondary school
• About 85,000 IT training places for teachers at four levels
• Technical support for each schools
• An information Education Resource Center for all schools and teachers
• An IT coordinator for each of 250 schools which should have sounds IT plans
• Computer rooms for use by students after normal school hours
• An IT pilot Scheme to provide schools with additional resources
• Review of school curriculum to incorporate IT element
• Development of appropriate software in collaboration with government, the private sector, tertiary institutions and schools
• Exploring the feasibility of setting up an education-specific Internet