In one of my posts, I highlighted Howard Rheingold’s post about the Amish and their relationship with technology. He suggested that instead of a mad rush to bring technology into our lives, we should have an ongoing conversation with technology. The cultural critic, Neil Postman, also has a similar view about technology. Postman in fact tries to make this conversation a little clearer by suggesting that we think about six questions that we should ask when a new technology is introduced. The six questions are:

• What is the problem to which this technology is a solution?
• Whose problem is it?
• What new problems might be created by solving the original problem?
• Which people and what institutions will be most seriously harmed by this new technology?
• What changes in language are being forced by these new technologies?
• What sort of people and institutions gain special economic and political power from this new technology?

In my view, the questions are meant to prevent us from rushing into implementing or using any new technology. In the field of education, these questions become all the more important because it is going to impact and area of human endeavor, that is, education, that is clearly supposed to be designed for the future. As an educator who had been part of Singapore’s well-known MasterPlan for IT in Education (MPITE) team, I have had an abiding interest in the use of ICT in schools. However, Rheingold’s and Postman’s suggestions for a conversation with ICT, have both given me cause to reflect on the use of ICT in education. I will be sharing my thoughts on the questions raised by Postman in relation to how ICT is supposed to be used in education. So do look out for them. In the meantime, click on the book cover to read Postman’s “Technopoly”.

I enjoy cooking. My friends know that. I find that when I am able to transform simple ingredients into delicious and nutritious meals. For me it is amazing how simple ingredients can make something great. The same can be said about education. You do not need all the big, fanciful things to make an education system great. I believe that what you need are the people who know how to combine the small things to make that great transformation.

This idea of combining and transforming small things into something great has a lot of relevance with the concept of the sekolah berstandar internasional (SBI) in Indonesia. I think too often the attampt to raise the standards of Indonesian schools to schools of world standards has focused too much on the hardware rather than the software, or more accurately perhaps, “people ware”. It is this focus on hardware that has resulted in a concern among some Indonesian commentators that the push for SBIs is leading to two-different education systems, one for the haves and the other for the have-nots. I believe this is true only if schools are seen only as being able to become SBIs with the pre-requisite hardware in terms of modern technology and buildings.

However, if the idea of the SBI is not tied to hardware but to good teaching then ANY school in Indonesia can be an SBI, a school of world standards. In my view, a school of world standards is one where quality teaching is done and not one where only quality hardware is present. I have seen in my days as a consultant for the Ministry of Education (MOE) of Singapore pushing the country’s MasterPlan for IT in Education (MPITE) program, teachers teach in mediocre ways in well-equipped and modern schools.

If Indonesians are clear that it is good teaching that makes a world class school, more emphasis should be put on the teachers and the people who assist in the education process. These includes the school administrators (at least at the school level). If teachers can be trained to teach in a way that takes out the tedium of the usual process that has been unjustifiably called “teaching”, and if they can be trained to to a more participatory approach to teaching and learning by all involved in the process, any school can be become great.

Money then does not become the most important pre-requisite for SBI status. Good training for teachers does. This is more accessible then money for many Indonesian schools including the National schools. You do not need hardware to get students interested. You do not need hardware to teach students to think. You do not need hardware to get students to be creative. You do not need hardware to teach students to be tough. You do not need hardware to get them to be imaginative. You do not need hardware to inspire students. You do not need hardware to produce leaders. If Indonesian school set their minds to producing such students, the schools will become SBIs. It is a natural by-product of good teaching. Best of all it can be done with ingredients already found in Indonesian schools, both rich and poor ones. Both private and National schools.

What needs to be done is to train the teachers well. If this is done properly, they will transform the Indonesian schools into institutions that provide world class education. It is just like cooking. The ingredients are the same. It is the cook that counts.

Recently, a news report described how Singapore’s National Institute of Education (NIE) would be collaborating with some ICT vendors on the development of a multi-million platofrm for learning. This, together with FutureSchools@Singapore, are visible examples of the Singapore government’s commitment to harnessing the power of ICT for education. They are further add-ons to the government’s MasterPlan for IT in Education (MPITE). All these initiatives have put Singapore on the map for ICT in education. However, I think all these should be contrasted with some of the experiences I have had with schools in Singapore.

For example, my experience last night with my son’s school was very educational with regards to ICT use in schools. The school had called for a meeting with parents to discuss the students’ progress in their preparation for the GCE O levels. During the course of the meeting, a parent expressed concern about not receiving official communication from the school which was supposed to be handed to the the parents through the students. I noticed the principal was avoiding my gaze at him and I suspected that he realized that I had actually strongly proposed to him some months ago that all official communication be placed on the school website and that the school uses emails to communicate with parents, as after all email lists are easy to create. I was of the view that there should be different avenues of communicating with parents and that school websites can be used to put up with very current notices in addition to email lists. The school had replied that they would be taking up my suggestion to create email lists of the parents of the students. Obviously from last night’s event, that has not been done.

I suspect that this is probably true of many schools in Singapore. It is not shocking if you find that schools in Singapore hardly use these “new” forms of communication with their stake holders. It seems that with the millions already spent on ICT in schools, a paradigm shift still needs to take place in Singapore schools.

Of course there are pockets of more enlightened ICT uses in schools in Singapore. The NIE plan mentioned above and the FutureSchools@Singapore initiative, talks about using virtual environments which costs millions of dollars. One wonders how successful these big money ventures are going to be when there is little done to work on the minds of the people who are supposed to use these “innovations”. How much thought is given to these ICT projects ability to be consumed by the teachers and students out there in the other schools in SIngapore? Are these projects easy to replicate elsewhere? Or are they just the play things of a few researchers, ICT vendors and teachers of a few schools?

While the research may benefit what we know about how ICT is used for education, shouldn’t one also be concerned especially whether they can be easily replicated? Is it realistic to test drive such expensive platforms if in order to duplicate them, it will cost millions more which are not likely to be readily available? While agreeing that we should not expect all schools to be at the same level of ICT use, shouldn’t the Ministry of Education (MOE) seriously look at how much of the ICT infrastructure that has been given to schools is used adequately and consistent with the changes happening outside the school environment before pushing for more exotic ICT hardware use? I am aware that MOE has always claimed that hardware is not the goal but just the means, of its iCT plans. However, in practice it does not seem to be consistent with what MOE is saying.

Students today, and perhaps even parents today, are using more than just emails. Among others, they use, text messaging both on phones and on the Net, Twitter, blogs and social platforms like Facebook to communicate. yet schools have not even got past the adequate use of even emails. How do schools then propose to lead the wave of change in the way their students are going to do their work in the 21st century workplace when they have not even mastered the use of emails? Yet we see millions spent on virtual reality environments which promise much, but may not be cost effective or even easy to replicate for effective use in an educational environment like schools.