Smart School in Malaysia.

1. FACULTY OF SCIENCE
AND MATHEMATICS
INFROMATION AND COMMUNICATION
TECHNOLOGY IN SCIENCE | SSI3013
GROUP ASSIGNMENT 1
NAME
1. NUR ATHIRAH FATIN
D20151070979
2. NORMALIATI A/P ALI
D20151070977
3. ELVYLENE SIA
D20151070989
GROUP A
LECTURER DR. AZMI BIN IBRAHIM
TITTLE SMART SCHOOL IN MALAYSIA

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
1.0 INTRODUCTION........................................................................................ 3
2.0 HISTORY OF SMART SCHOOL................................................................ 3
3.0 CHALLENGES OF SMART SCHOOL....................................................... 6
4.0 CONCLUSION ............................................................................................ 8
5.0 REFERENCES............................................................................................. 9

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1.0 INTRODUCTION
Information and communication technologies (ICT) has become the most
important subject for all of us since 90s as it gives big impact to our country, Malaysia in
terms of educations, medicals, technologies and other things. ICT play big role in our
education system as its changeable ability and its capability to making relationship
among students. ICT also helps teachers a lot in delivering the content of study to help
students for better understanding.
In this case, Ministry of Education Malaysia has decided to expose students and
teachers more into ICT with the help of Smart School so that we can produce a better
nation with lots of skilled individuals for us to achieve Wawasan 2020 which now has
become Transformasi Nasional 2050 (TN50) in the next 30 years.
Now, the 21st
century which we can’t leave out the technologies or ICT to move
forward, thus Smart School was still relevant to be used in today’s education. Of course
it’s not the same kind of method or pedagogy used as before but the concept is still the
same with Smart School.
2.0 HISTORY OF SMART SCHOOL
The Malaysian Smart School is a learning institution that has been systemically
reinvented in terms of teaching-learning practices and school management in order to
prepare children for the Information Age.
The Smart School was first brought up in Malaysia in 1996 which the Ministry of
Education Malaysia wanted to focus on preparing students to enter the information age
and accordingly some changes were considered in Malaysian schools and believed that
ultimately all schools become smart. Learning material such as e-books, software,
databases and multimedia were used for this project.
There were four waves to make this project successful. In 1999, the project was
launched and it was implemented in early 2003. For about 10,000 schools were involved
with this massive computerization phase.

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• Pilot Phase (1999-2002).
• 88 schools nationwide selected.
Wave 1
• Post Pilot (2002-2005).
• Massive computerization phase to all 10, 000 schools.
Wave 2
• Making all schools smarts. (2005- 2010).
• Leveraging all ICT initiatives.
Wave 3
• Consolidate and stabilize ( 2010-2020).
• Innovative practices using ICT enculturated.
Wave 4
This project initiative was in one of the seven flagship applications that are part of
Malaysia’s Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC) project. Malaysia’s government aims to capitalize
on the presence of leading-edge technologies and the rapid development of the MSC’s
infrastructure to jump-start deployment of enabling technology to schools.
There’re five main goals of Smart School as below:
i) Provide all round development of the individual (intellectual, physical, emotional,
spiritual).
ii) Produce a thinking and technology literate workforce.
iii) Provide opportunities to enhance individual strengths and abilities.
iv) Democratize education.
v) Increase participation of stakeholders.
Figure 1 Four waves in Smart School in Malaysia

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There’re four main objectives in Smart School as below:
i) To produce a knowledge society that is critical, creative and innovative.
ii) To produce technology savvy individuals for the Information Age.
iii) To bridge the digital divide.
iv) To cultivate life-long learning based on ICT.

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3.0 CHALLENGES OF SMART SCHOOL
The implementation of smart school in Malaysia is not an easy task to do. From the
beginning, the implementation of smart schools has been associated with problems. There are
several challenges faced by our country in implementing of smart school in Malaysia.
The first challenges that were obvious of course the lack of technological infrastructure
provided and lack of support materials. There are still some of school does not have the complete
technological equipment in their school especially in rural area. Only some in urban area that can
fulfil the requirement of smart school but there are still some school in urban that do not satisfied
the requirement of smart school due to the inadequate of technological infrastructure. An
important challenge of education in secondary schools is to provide computer facilities for all
students. This means that the computer facilities is not limited to certain students but for the
whole students in the school. The limitation of technological infrastructures, such as computer
labs leads to ineffectiveness of technology supported and learning process.
Next, lack of training provided for the teachers. In this regard, reported that in most
schools, teachers do not have sufficient skills in handling the ICT applications and there were not
enough training opportunities for teachers in using ICT in a classroom environment. Due to the
lack of training and skills in usage of ICT application then leads the teachers to not use the
technological in their teaching process. Training is necessary for the teachers so that they have
some of ICT knowledge so that they can use the application of ICT to effectively deliver the
knowledge to the students. New teachers lack intensive training to use technology in education,
while experienced teacher lack of ICT knowledge that makes them not use technology in
teaching and learning process. Therefore, for the effectiveness of the plan smart schools need
trained and skilled teachers and administrators and well-designed processes to support
themselves.
Insufficient technical support or technician at computer also one of the obstacles faced
for implementing the smart school in Malaysia. Technical support or computer technician is a
must in every school. However, the problem is when there is no enough of technical support or
technician at computer in smart school. Technical support helps to repair and maintains
computer and servers. The responsibilities may extend to include building or configuring new

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hardware, installing and updating software packages, and creating and maintaining computer
networks. Technical problems were found to be a major barrier for teachers. These technical
barriers include waiting for websites to open, failing to connect to the internet, printers not
printing, malfunctioning computers, and teachers having to work on old computers. Regards to
the point, when the computers in school were damaged or the technology used having some
failure there is no technician who responsible to repair the problems. In addition, teachers in
school do not have enough knowledge or skills to fix the problem if the situation likes that occur
during the teaching and learning process. So this problem may cause the teaching process
disrupted.
Besides that, inadequate financial resources are also one of the challenges faced by our
country to implement smart school in Malaysia. Because of the high cost of technology and ICT
application, some of school cannot afford it. As we all know the cost for technology equipment is
not that cheap it may cost a lot where some of school does not have sufficient financial resources
to afford the technology equipment. This problem faced mostly school in rural area. Besides, the
Education Ministry’s budget is not adequate to cover teachers in all smart schools. Some school
have to pay the budget of the teacher training to use the ICT application instead of the Education
Ministry.
Negative attitude of teachers also leads to the problem on implementing the smart
school in Malaysia. This is because some of teachers still want to stick with the traditional
method of teaching-learning process. They refuse to use the technological in their teaching
process in classroom. They also not ready to achieve the objectives of smart school concept and
learn the ICT programmes. Basically, this problem faced by the old teachers who are not
interested in the use of the technology, they are more comfortable with traditional teaching
methods instead of using the technology to teach the students.

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4.0 CONCLUSION
Smart schools implementation is supposed to ease the teaching and learning
process and also improve our education system. The Malaysian smart school is defined as
a learning institution that has been systematically reinvented in terms of teaching-
learning and school management in order to prepare children for the Information Age. As
what we can see, the aim of this project is to practises self-paced, self-accessed and self-
directed learning in children. One of the goals of smart school is to increase participation
of stakeholder to improve our education system. Component of smart school are
involving teaching and learning, management and administration, people skill and
responsibilities, processes, technology, and policies. In order to achieve smart school all
of these components need to play their own role.
However, it is not easy to implement smart schools in Malaysia. There are many
challenges that need to be face by the students, parents, teachers and also the Ministry of
Education. In order to implement smart school, teachers need more training on ICT
programs so that they can use for teaching and learning process but some of teacher
refuse to use the technological and prefer to use traditional method of teaching-learning
process. In the other cases, teachers are interested to apply technology in teaching and
learning process but limitation of ICT facilities in the school become the challenges to
implement smart school. This problem mostly faced by the teacher in the rural schools.
All students, parents, teachers and also the Ministry of education need to play
their role effectively so that the implementations of smart school in Malaysia will be
successful. Smart school will be achievable only if the entire stakeholder can give
commitment and ready to participate fully in that changing. Smart school cannot be
achieve if you want to stick at the same phase.

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5.0 REFERENCES
Heng, T. (2012, December 3). Smart School in Malaysia. Retrieved from
https://www.slideshare.net/hengtiger/smart-school-in-malaysia-15474461
Hassan Mirzajani; Mehraneh Delaviz Bayekolaei; Meysam Rajaby Kookandeh; Seyede Safoora
Razzaghpoor Rezaee; Ali Akbar Kamalifar; Hassan Razaghi Shani (2016). Smart Schools
an Innovation in Education: Malaysian's Experience. Asian Journal of Education and
Training, 2(1): 11-15.
Nazura Yusof. (t.t). Challenges of smart school. Retrieved from
https://www.scribd.com/document/136158167/CHALLENGES-OF-SMART-
SCHOOL.
Challenge of smart school in Malaysia. (t.t). Retrieved from
https://www.scribd.com/document/132645759/Challenge-of-Smart-School-in-
Malaysia.
Stella Ooi. (2013). Smart school & progress. Retrieved from
https://www.slideshare.net/stellaooi543/smart-school-challenges-progress-29169702.
M. I. Hamzah, A. Ismail, & M. A. Embi. (2009). The impact of technology change in
malaysian smart schools on Islamic education teachers and students. Retrieven from
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/32e4/503799db5d0e2dadcdec2291357c1f18dfe7.pdf.
Simin Ghavifekr, Thanusha Kunjappan, Logeswary Ramasamy, & Anthony. A..(2016).
Teaching and learning with ICT tools: Issue and challenges from teachers’
perceptions. Journal of Educational Technology. 4(2), 41-44. Retrieved From
https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1096028.pdf.