TRENDS & DEVELOPMENTS

WHAT IT IS OR DOES

PROS & CONS

Policy Facilitation

Provision of technical assist-ance and support to the MOE for development of ICT policies in education.

• Has demonstrated its value.
• Policy may set goals that are unrealistic or require more time than planned.

Option to Lease  vs. Outright Purchase

Enables acquisition of large orders of computers and soft-ware licenses through vendor-direct leases rather than pur-chase.

• Costs are paid from operations.
• Costs may be lower and evenly spread out through many years.
• Funding can be supported by Crown, MOE or private sup-porters.

Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)

Budget forecasting calculates cost based on all relevant factors such as training, main-tenance, depreciation, etc.

• TCO model enables cost com-parison.
• Accurate for planning on the short- and medium-term.

Frameworks for Interoperability

Standards for data transfer across different or diverse plat-forms and networks.

• Is critical for cost-effective ex-penditure management infor-mation system or EMIS, but much older hardware and soft-ware versions may not be addressed.
  

Active Learning Pedagogies

Emphasizes more on ‘learning-by-doing’ rather than ‘learning-by-listening’.

• Strong linkage to ICT integ-ration which supports devel-opment of higher-order think-ing skills.
• May require changes to curri-culum and assessment to be adopted system-wide.

Balanced Pedagogies

Combinations of holistic ad semantic-level approaches to literacy and numeracy.

• Well supported by research and teacher accounts.
• Requires a more sophisticated approach to curriculum reform.

Collaborative Online Projects

Projects support ‘learning-by-doing’ approach. Various stu-dent teams share information, and research results to accom-plish mutual goals.

• Limited technology require-ments.
• One among the first widely-practiced models for ICT integ-ration.

One-to-One Computing

• System-wide provision of laptops to students; or,
• Use of specific technologies (e.g., digital whiteboards, di-gital tablets, etc.) to sup-port increased real-time in-teraction in classrooms.
  

• Open-source software is lin-guistically customisable.
• Has been adopted successfully in other advanced countries.

Thin-client Networking

Covers hardware configuration in which all computing power and data reside on a server or servers connected by network to otherwise ‘dumb’ terminals.

• Substantial reduction of acqui-sition and maintenance costs.
• Supports open-source software (Linux) and refurbished hard-ware.

Wireless Connectivity

Use of technology to create wireless local area networks (WLANs) in schools.

• Flexible, with much lower ins-tallation costs.
• Adequate bandwidth for inten-sive school use required.
  

Blogs by Teachers and Students

Blogs (web logs) are used to share organisational inform-ation, promote writing skills and support small group col-laboration.

• Creates high levels of student-to-student and student-to-teacher interactions.
• Appeals to students with pre-dispositions to write.
• Ease of use. Effective means of teacher and/or student pub-lishing.
  

Primary Research Tools

Use of portable or peripheral hardware that collects data from the environmental or lab phenomena.

• Helps students acquire and build data representation skills.
• Makes abstract concepts more seemingly real and also easily grasped.
  

Anti-Plagiarism Tools

Involves software and services in response to increased po-tential for copying passages or whole documents without attri-bution.

• Choice of many options, ran-ging from Web-based tools to services that check student work for teachers.