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.

The workforce of the future depends on even greater teamwork and interdependence then perhaps the workforce of today. Working in an interdependent manner suggests that people must learn to work co-operatively. Working co-operatively means that workers may see that they to work together for the common good of all. It means that they would have to work with those they like and also those that they don’t like. What becomes more important is the group goals. Individual goals would be met through these group goals. Such workers must be prepared well before they enter the workforce. Expecting people who have been conditioned to only work for themselves all their lives to suddenly work as a team is very unrealistic. This is where schools must do their part to teach the value of working and learning together.

Schools can help in this respect by making co-operative learning one of the core strategies for learning within the school environment. Instead of the usual group work where there is little structure for individuals to play their part in the roles and tasks  given to the group, in a co-operative learning strategies, a clear structure based on the principles of positive interdependence is created to ensure the individuals in a group must all do their part to achieve the group learning goals.

There are five ways in which positive interdependence can be structured into a group. They are:

a) Positive goal interdependence;

b) Positive reward interdependence;

c) Positive resource interdependence;

d) Positive role interdependence; and

e) Positive task interdependence

By positive goal interdependence we mean that the final product must be the a joint effort that requires a degree of consensus by each individual member. No one is allowed to submit an individual learning product at the the end of the task. Only a group product is permitted and members must come to agreement what that group product would be.

Positive reward interdependence means that group members know that the reward for their work is dependent on the eprformance of the group. For example, group performance will affect individual members scores. While a portion fo the scores is credited individually, another portion of their individual score will reflect the overall performance of the group. The message is that even if they did well individually, they must ensure the whole groups performs before they all get the best rewards.

Positive role interdependence requires specific team roles to be defined for each member of the team. One can be a team manager, while another keeps track of what has been done as the recorder while another ensures meetings are focused events and so on.

Positive resource interdependence is concern with the delegation of specific and differentiated learning materials to each member of the group. This is to ensure that no one member can dominate in completing the given tasks. Each resource will be part of a complete jigsaw which everyone is responsible for. Each piece of that jigsaw has to be completed by the specific member and only after its completeion can all the pieces be put together to complete the picture.

Positive task interdependence means that each member would have to complete his given task in order for the group to complete the group task. The group task would depend on specific contributions of the group members. The final goal is unattainable if even one member does not contribute to the outcome by neglecting the task that has been given to him.

Through structuring positive interdependence in a group setting. students would be forced to work co-operatively rather than individualistically as is the norm in many classrooms today. This would help changed the classroom environment from a drive for individual success to one of group success. This working together in a  school setting will help students to become the team player at their workplace or their larger community in the years to come.

David Perkins’ concept of the Smart School if implemented has the potential to make meaningful learning truly happen. I have been advocating in this series of postings that the Smart School concept ought to be explored, especially for countries like Indonesia which has a growing privately-owned educational sector. The national educational authorities, DINAS, have largely left these schools to explore and take their own routes. This means that privately-owned schools have a great opportunity to go into uncharted waters. Even the National Schools and the so-called National Plus schools should strive to move into these uncharted waters.

Perkins’ ideas are actually important beacons for the more adventurous schools to follow. They provide principles upon which schools can use to prepare themselves to enter a brave new world.Like all trips into uncharted waters, a keen awareness of what is happening throughout the journey will help make the journey successful. This awareness is stressed in Perkins’ model of the smart school. Schools must make ready to sail with these beacons as their guiding lights.

Conversely, while uncharted waters may seem dangerous, to remain in home waters is to stick to the old, high stakes examination systems that many of these schools have been adopting. The only difference is that the examinations are now from international examination syndicates. It is just a case of old wine (or should it be rum?) in new bottles as the fundamental approach to teaching is still the traditional teaching to the examinations manner which involves a lot of rote learning and learning of mechanical routines where learning is at best superficial.

Employers all over the world have been complaining that the products of such a system do not meet the requirements of the workplace anymore where the complexity of the work environment demands people who are adapt with complexity. The fact is the whole society needs such people. Students who do deep and insightful thinking must deal with adapt at dealing with complex situations. Standard trivial pursuit questions common in high stakes examinations will not do simply because they do not challenge, excite or cause any real re-wiring of the mind of the students, or even the teachers for that matter.

It is this need to be comfortable and adapt with complexity that the Smart School also tries to address. The school is also built on the principle that students in such schools should embrace complexity. Students ought to be constantly facing complex situations and problems. Students must acquire the skills and persistence to persevere in such situations because after all in the real world, standard answers and solutions don’t work whether at the workplace or the home. Instead of giving up in the face of complexities, students in the smart school will be excited by the challenges presented by the complexities they face. They will acquire skills to deal with complexity.

Teachers too would be challenged to present a meaningful curriculum which they know is realistic and reflects the world in which their students live in.  This alone, I believe, will take so much of the drudgery out of the lives of teachers. The management of such a school will also support these teachers in being more ambitious in setting the educational goals of their charges. The learning becomes real and real learning becomes the culture of the school.

The Smart School becomes wedded to learning. The smart school, according to Perkins, must also be a learning organization where not only the students are actively learning but the management and teachers. Teachers are encouraged in pursuing their intellectual interests. This will mean that school management will be willing to allow teachers to try new ideas in the classrooms. Teachers will also show greater professional collaboration not only within the school but also with other teachers elsewhere. The school management must show that they are serious about making the school a learning organization by instituting structures that allow for collaboration and free flow of information. It demands a greater transparency so that all members of the school is more actively and personally  involved in setting directions for the school and the monitoring of the school’s performance. This becomes essential if the school seeks to be always relevant to the changing demands and goals of the larger community outside the school.

Indeed to produce a new breed of people with an ability to think deeply should become a national concern. For Indonesia, the country’s experiment in democracy requires that it produces people who are deep thinkers and not just examinations smart. Democratic institutions cannot be built upon schools that teach people to be spoon fed. Schools and teachers must realize that if they want everyone else to take them seriously, then they must be seen to be serious about the responsibility that their role calls for. While in the past the “Three Rs” were the goals, education today, which we must not forget is for tomorrow, calls for a different set of goals on top of the traditional ones. Schools cannot be bastions of the past. Schools cannot only undergo cosmetic changes. The changes must be real and fundamental and they must also excite everyone involve in it. The new world beckons the brave.