Future Schools in Singapore

Just get back from Jun vacation in Singapore and eager to share with you on a piece of latest news about future school deployment in Singapore. Jane Ng, NST reporter had reported on 6 June that Beacon Primary school students traded in pencil/paper for Table PC. Beacon Primary is 1 of 5 schools that pioneer the future IT Concept School in Singapore.


Picture this: Wireless access everyway. Table PC for every students. 7 years old kids is using Microsoft Powerpoint for story writing, packed with images and voice recording for on demand access online. Peer Assessment on Chinese Oral Exam, i.e. 1 student reads/records a chinese passage and others will playback and give accessment.

These kids are also looking forward to School Virtual Learning Environment setup by EOY where they will be able to have Avatars setup representing themselves in the Virtual world. The Virtual environments (e.g Science Lab, Debate, Broadcasting) exploration will stimulate interests/funs in learning as well as spark creativity/innovation in our future generation. I believe under a proper control environment, Teacher can also provide guidance on what is right/wrong practice to these kids in virtual world. The students will not be "lost" when start stepping into the real Virtual world in the future.

Looking back at Malaysia Schools, I am not too sure how efficient the deployment is then. At most, it is enforcing some education tools usage at school, some student projects deployed online and some school teachers given notebook to teach only. It is far behind from Singapore Future School implementation by blending IT flawlessly with Learning.

So, You, Teacher, feel free to add your comment about Malaysia IT School implementation/prospect.

See this news online (not full version though): http://digital.asiaone.com/print/Digital/News/Story/A1Story20080608-69526.html
Singapore Official sites on future school updates: http://www.ida.gov.sg/InSG/Jun08/sr.html & http://www.moe.gov.sg/media/press/2008/05/next-generation-technologies-f.php