♥ E-PORTFOLIO ♥

In recent years, the integrating of information and communication technology (ICT) in education is an essential component of every education system as it strives to facilitate and improve the teaching and learning environment. Therefore, the Ministry of Education has invested a huge effort in terms of funding and training to equip teachers and students with ICT skills in our Malaysian Schools.

In my opinion, the integrating of ICT in the teaching of mathematics and science in English under the Teaching and Learning of Science and Mathematics in English Programme ( Pengajaran dan Pembelajaran Sains dan Matematik dalam Bahasa Inggeris, PPSMI) is one of the issues that has been implemented by the Ministry of Education since 2003. At the same time, there are several challenges that we need to overcome in integrating ICT in PPSMI. One of the challenges is teachers are not fully utilizing these facilities in their teaching. This is because the utilization of ICT in teaching and learning environment will require teachers with the ability to shift to unfamiliar materials, new teaching and learning strategies, new techniques to assess students learning, new types of assignments, and ongoing professional development.

Furthermore most of the teachers lack of knowledge about ways to integrate ICT to enhance the curriculum due to the insufficient teacher training opportunities for ICT projects. In addition, it is difficulty in integrating and using different ICT tools in a single lesson because lack of time in the school schedule for projects involving ICT.

Besides that, the inadequate technical support for these projects such as lack of hardware, and software as well as other structural and operative infrastructural which necessary for teaching and learning programme cause this project cannot go on smoothly.

Apart from that, our government also integrating ICT in the e-learning programme for the teaching and learning in our Malaysian Schools. This programme is created by our government so that the student can get the latest information from their teacher through the internet at home which make their life to become more easier. However, the network service is expensive for some people especially those who are come from poor families. They are unable to pay the network service. Thus, these students need to go to the cyber cafe to search for the information. Indirectly, this will increase their burden and waste their time.

Another challenge that we face for this issue is the network coverage is incomplete provided at whole Malaysia. For instance, the students who live in the rural area which far from urban centers cannot get the network service.

As a conclusion, although the Malaysian government has concentrated its efforts to enhance the use of ICT in Malaysian Schools, the impact of it on the actual practice of teaching and learning has not yet been significant. It is still a challenge for the Malaysian Ministry of Education to solve the problem that have exist so that Vision 2020 can be achieve fully in the global economy of the 21st century.