Reader Respond (Final)

             Picardo(2012) proposes that the significance of "fostering global awareness and international collaboration" among high school students is getting clearer in this modern era to nurture open-minded, informative and creative students. Realizing that people "with different languages come different ways to interpret the world", he agrees with Marcel Proust, a French novelist, who states that "the real voyage of discovery consists not in seeing new lands but in seeing with new eyes". In addition, he comments that students who are aware of the world and diverse cultures are equipped with practical skills and are capable of deciding knowledgeably. It is undeniable that the goal of "fostering global awareness and international collaboration" can be easily achieved as students nowadays are exposed with information through various means such as travelling and accessing internet. According to Picardo (2012), students have more opportunities to go overseas by the age of 16 and get information easily through the internet. However, the effectiveness of such means is doubted by Picardo and it is regarded that guidance is needed through this process of discovery.

            Thus, Picardo elucidates that various "contextualized learning" methods, which can be generally classified into traditional and modern one, have been introduced in schools. Exchange programs, foreign languages studies and global partnership between schools are the examples of the former while social networks such as Twitter, Skype and Google Maps denote the latter.

            In my opinion, both traditional and modern "contextualized learning" methods can certainly broaden one's horizons about the world and help that individual to understand other's culture better. The memorable experience of welcoming students from Japan as a student ambassador of my high school two years ago deepened my insight of Japanese culture as well as my homeland's. Before the arrival of my Japanese friends, besides contacting them via Facebook, much time and effort was spent on useful websites such as YouTube and travelers’ blogs to learn basic Japanese language and understand their culture so that I could communicate with them with no offence. These efforts prepared me well with knowledge of Japan. Indeed, modern contextualized learning allowed me to "experience foreign cultures with unprecedented ease"(Picardo, 2012). I came to realize that without modern contextualized learning, the languages and cultures barriers among us might cause unwanted problems throughout their visit.

            During their stay in Malaysia, we did various activities like trying out local spicy dishes, "batik" painting and historical sites visits to widen their cultural and historical knowledge of Malaysia. As the host, I benefited as much as they did through our daily conversations and sharing. I was astonished to know how great the impact of China's culture is on Japan when I was invited to join their mini Japanese Tea Ceremony. Despite the fact that my legs were numb after kneeling down on the tatami in the seiza-style for hours, I was impressed by their attention to details and compliance with the meticulous rules of this ceremony. This contextualized learning was effective as I realised the far-reaching effect of culture to a nation. I uncovered the crucial reason that strengthened Japan’s power in the international arena, which was the disciplined and polite culture of Japanese. Also, I realised that modern contextualized learning helped us in developing ourselves to be more aware of others culture (Picardo, 2012).  I honed my soft skills, for instance, communication skills, adaptability to new culture and problem-solving skills and furthermore discovered my weaknesses, which is timidity to communicate with others. I transformed into a confident individual who could easily adapt to new situations, in which I believed I could perform better in the future.

            In a nutshell, I strongly agree that “global awareness and international collaboration during the formative years results in more rounded individuals” (Picardo, 2012) who have both hard skills and soft skills to compete with others in their future. I believe that a graduation certificate of university is the key to own a better job, but without these useful “tools”, an individual might not able to perform effectively and get along well with others in a multicultural workplace,  which will cause them to be easily eliminated very soon in the intense competition in nowadays careers.

Reference:

Jose Picardo (2012, September 25). Why students need a global awareness and understanding of other cultures. Retrieved 17 September 2014, from http://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/2012/sep/25/students-global-awareness-other-cultures

Essay Draft- 2

Introduction

In the 21th century, the continuing growth in IT has successfully encouraged global interactions and wider internet access all around the world. This has introduced many modern means for education which allow people to get global information, “challenging assimilation and assessment skills” with ease, thus making “learning becomes a truly lifelong activity—an activity in which the pace of technological change forces constant evaluation of the learning process itself” (WikiEducator, 2009). The internet access is especially important to high school students nowadays to obtain various useful online educational resources to help themselves in their studies, besides honing their soft skills such as critical thinking skill and problem solving skill. The usage of internet nurtures all-round students who are well-equipped with knowledge and valuable skills, making them to have comparative advantages to compete with others to get into better universities.

However, in Malaysia, due to the digital divide among high school students from rural and urban areas, for example, Kuala Lumpur which has the highest penetration rate(119.4)  and Sabah which has the lowest penetration rate(47.3), high school students from rural areas have less exposure to more information, causing these students from rural areas to be comparatively less competitive to get higher education. Based on the datas provided by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), only 5% of high school students in Sabah, a rural area in Malaysia, high school students pursue tertiary education (Leete, 2007). Apart from other factors such as family backgrounds, low incomes and others, the poor internet access in this area is the dominant factor that results in such low enrollment to universities among high school students in Sabah. Therefore, as high school students from rural areas are comparatively less competitive than students from urban areas to have better tertiary education as a result of disparity in the accessibility in online educational information, the Malaysian Communication and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) should speed up the actions in narrowing the digital divide among high school students by allocating more budget in increasing broadband penetration in rural areas so that fair competition among high school students to get into more prestigious universities occurs.

Poor internet connections lead to lower performances in studies

Nowadays, people are aware that knowledge is a way for an individual to move up in the social hierarchy. Realising the importance of knowledge, more and more parents in rural areas are sending their children to schools instead of asking them to work when they are young to earn for a living. This positive phenomena has increased the percentage of youngsters to enroll to high schools in Malaysia. However, the poor broadband penetrations in high schools in rural areas confine students to get more resourceful educational information outside their textbooks, which results in the limited exposure and knowledge received by them in school. Teachers in rural areas have also limited teaching materials and resources due to the difficulty in collecting useful resources online. The failure of the education institutions to provide sufficient modern facilities such as computer rooms and multimedia libraries also causes students to have limited means to be more knowledgeable and do well in public examinations which they have to compete with students from all states in Malaysia. The disparity in the accessibility of educational information causes high school students from rural areas to have comparatively lower performances in studies. Thus, they have disadvantages in competing with high school students from urban population to get into more prestigious universities. While the results of these public examinations is the determinant to get into prestigious universities, high school students are often disappointed as they cannot get into universities with their relatively bad results.

In addition, the poverty in most of the households in Sabah worsens this problem. According to Leethe (2007), the percentage of households below poverty line in Sabah, the highest among the states in Malaysia is 20%. This means that Sabah is the poorest states in Malaysia. Most of the families do not have enough income for their daily life expenditures, let alone buying computers and installing networks in their houses which might make up a great proportion of their annual incomes. Therefore, students do not have the access to the internet to do researches for their studies and get adequate resources of tertiary education at home. As a result, high school students of rural area possess a much more limited view of excellent universities in the world to further their studies an also the existing occupational roles for themselves, who then understandably restrict themselves when going on the job market and on to higher education. On the other hand, in urban areas which has better internet access, high school students can easily collect information of numerous prestigious universities from the internet, which help them to decide which university to go to after high school graduation besides preparing themselves well to fulfill the prerequisites of the targeted university at an earlier stage. As a result, high school students from urban areas are in ascendancy over the students from rural areas to get into their ideal universities.

1 Malaysia Netbooks and 1Malaysia Wireless Village programme:

To narrow the gap of internet usage between high school students from urban and rural areas, the MCMC has allocated RM1 billion under the Universal Service Provision (USP) fund to provide poor students from families with less than RM3000 monthly income in rural areas computers with internet access. This program aims to achieve broadband penetration of 75% in Malaysia by 2015 and also to encourage the usage of IT in the community to nurture a knowledgeable society. According to the article “1.2 million 1Malaysia netbooks given out – ministry” (2014), to date, the MCMC has allocated 1.68 million units of 1Malaysia netbooks to rural community.

This commission continues their effort in building a technological society by introducing the 1Malaysia Wireless Village or “free wi-fi” for the rural areas in 2011. Under the program, wireless broadband will be brought to the doorsteps of small communities in remote villages including villages in Sabah, Sarawak, Malacca and Johor. In these places, registered users can enjoy the internet access without paying any fees. MCMC southern region head Roszeta Kassim mentions that to date, there are 757 1Malaysoa Wireless Village locations in Johor and Malacca, which are the two of other states which benefit from this pragmatic program.

Evaluation of 1 Malaysia Netbooks and 1Malaysia Wireless Village programmes:

Under these 2 programmes, students from low income families are benefiting from the computer with internet connection as they are able to make full use of the internet to do researches which are related to their studies at home and at school. This allows them to improve in subjects that they are poor at, for instance English, Mathematics and Sciences which are very important in today’s world by various means such as doing exercises provided online, forum discussions and webcast free tuitions. Besides that, they are given the equal opportunities as high school students from urban area to collect information of universities from all over the world. After chosing an ideal university and understanding the prerequisites of that university, they will be motivated to study harder and perform better in nation public examinations. Given the same study environment, the high school students from cities will not have any comparative advantages anymore as the results of students from “kampung” areas are as competitive as they are.

Also, the free internet access under the 1 Malaysia Wifi Village Programme will encourage the villagers to learn to use internet. These villagers include students, teachers and parents. With these internet knowledge, teachers can search for valuable resources to share in class while parents can help their children in their studies by teaching them the appropriate way to use internet access for education purposes besides making the learning journey more interesting. With the efforts of everyone, nurturing high school students with great exposure to the world and informative is not a tough task in rural areas.

Conclusion

      In a nutshell, the MCMC should continue their effort in bridging the digital gap between high school students from urban areas and rural areas. The meaningful projects should expand wider to other poor rural areas in Malaysia so that these areas will not be isolated from the digital world. Under these programmes, the improved study environment will strengthen the students ability in doing better in studies, thus causing the fair competition to pursue tertiary education to arise among all high school students in Malaysia. With more highly educated human resources in this country, Malaysia will steadily grow and become prosperous as other developed countries.

References:

WikiEducator (28 August 2009). Retrieved October 9, 2014 from http://wikieducator.org/Need_and_Importance_of_Information_Technology_in_Education

Borneo Post Online (23 February 2014). CompareHero: breaking broadband. Retrieved October 9, 2014 from http://www.theborneopost.com/2014/02/23/comparehero-breaking-broadband/

Richard Leete (28 March 2007).  Sabah’s human development progress and challenges. Retrieved October 9, 2014 from http://dspace.africaportal.org/jspui/bitstream/123456789/20417/1/Sabahs%20Human%20Development%20Progress%20and%20Challenges.pdf?1

Malaysian Communication and Multimedia Commission (9 October 2014). 1Malaysia wireless village. Retrieved October 9, 2014 from http://usp.skmm.gov.my/Projects/Wireless-Village.aspx

Borneo Post Online (30 June 2014) 1.2 million 1Malaysia netbooks given out – ministry. Retrieved October 9, 2014 from www.theborneopost.com/2014/06/30/1-2-million-1malaysia-netbooks-given-out-ministry/

Essay Draft - 1

Introduction

In this 21th century, the continuing growth in information technology (IT) which has successfully encouraged global interactions and wider internet access all around the world has introduced many modern means for education which allows people to get global information, “challenging assimilation and assessment skills” with ease, making “learning becomes a truly lifelong activity—an activity in which the pace of technological change forces constant evaluation of the learning process itself” (WikiEducator,2009). The internet access is especially important to high school students nowadays to obtain various useful online educational resources to help themselves in their studies, besides honing their soft skills such as critical thinking skill and problem solving skill. The usage of internet nurtures all-round students who are well-equipped with knowledge and valuable skills, making them to have comparative advantages to compete with others to get into better universities. However, in Malaysia, due to the digital divide among high school students from rural and urban areas, for example, Kuala Lumpur which has the highest penetration rate(119.4) and Sabah which has the lowest penetration rate(47.3), high school students from rural areas have less exposure to more information, causing them to be comparatively less competitive to get higher education. Based on the figures presented by the United Nations Development Program[UNDP], only five percent or 107,115 Sabah, a rural area in Malaysia, secondary students pursued tertiary education (2007). Apart from other factors such as family backgrounds, incomes and others, the poor internet access in this area is the dominant factor that results in such low enrollment to universities among high school students in Sabah. Therefore, as high school students from rural areas are comparatively less competitive than students from urban areas to have better tertiary education as a result of disparity in the accessibility in online educational information, the Ministry of Education of Malaysia should speed up the actions in narrowing the digital divide among high school students by allocating  more budget in increasing broadband penetration in rural areas so that fair competition among high school students to get into more prestigious universities occurs.

Problems
As people nowadays are aware that knowledge is significant to change and improve their life and living conditions while education is the most effective to become a knowledgeable individual, more and more parents in rural areas are sending their children to schools instead of asking them to work to earn for a living. This positive phenomena has increased the percentage of youngsters to enroll to high schools in Malaysia. However, the poor broadband penetrations confines to students to get more resourceful educational information outside their textbooks, which resulting in the limited exposure and knowledge received by them in school. The lack of facilities such as computer rooms and low income in families in rural areas make this problem to become worse.

The disparity in the accessibility of educational information causes high school students from rural areas to have comparatively lower performances in studies. Thus, they have disadvantages in competing with high school students from urban population to get into more prestigious universities.

Solutions:
To narrow the gap of internet usage between high school students from urban and rural areas, the Ministry of Education should allocate more budget in increasing broadband penetration in rural areas by providing adequate facilities such as computer rooms in schools to improve internet connectivity.