REFLECTION OF SMART SCHOOL

The smart school is a learning institution that organizes and systematically invented in the improvement of teaching and learning as well as school management processes. This is one of the transformations in educational system that Malaysia had created in order to support and drive the new upcoming generation with higher demands to fulfill Vision 2020. This demands not only to achieve that Vision 2020 but it is also complementary with the National Philosophy of Education that objectively to develop the potential of individuals in a holistic and integrated manner with provided intellectual, spiritual, emotion and physically balanced. This Smart School is said to be catalyst in order to achieve both Vision 2020 and this National Philosophy of Education.

The national curriculum and pedagogy are given the highest importance, with the priority on the role of teachers, administrators, parents and the community enhanced in the education of the Malaysian students. ICT is critical in making the teaching and learning processes easier, more fun and effective, as well as making communication and management among the stakeholders more efficient. The Malaysian Smart School is a place where all students can learn within a conducive learning environment. It offers various curricula with on-going evaluation, handled by professional administrators and teachers

In my opinion, this invented Smart School to several schools is quite beneficial because these schools are able to be as indicators for the failure or success of the implementation of Smart School curricula and systems. The usage of ICT in the teaching and learning is one of the Smart School objectives, providing students with high-tech knowledge and enable them to gain more knowledge from all over the world.

But, there are several disadvantages of its implementation. The most distinct one is the implementation requires high cost investments. This is including the importation of ICT instruments from the developed countries to be applied in the Smart School. It was expensive in that purchase or trading of the ICT instruments because surely Malaysia as the developing country cannot be able to create its own modern teaching and learning instruments. Besides that, government must ensure that all the teachers in those Smart Schools are able to utilize the ICT instruments properly and wisely. Thus, Ministry of Education has conducting continuous courses in order to develop and improve or expose the teachers with those highly teaching-based technologies.

Even there are other problems evolved after the Smart School implementation, the Smart Schools are seem to give the better improvement in teaching and learning systems. Thus, people should compare between the impacts and disadvantages of the Smarts Schools, not just consider one part only because we are Malaysian that should be together in order to develop our country. As the conclusion, I think the Smart Schools is the better step to drive the goal of Vision 2020.