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/
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