Sharing the SMJK Experience

Braving the storm in ICT for an accelerated contribution in Education

The New Paradigms

The SMJK Schools are turning to the opportunities
presented by new School Administration paradigms and
new enabling technologies, it is driven by ever increasing
demands from the school communities for more efficient,
effective and timely administrative services.

Foreseeing the potential of the Internet in improving the performance of

education, the SMJK Council had adopted a bold vision of effecting
dramatic and sweeping changes through the implementation of various
ICT projects. This vision demanded for a breakaway from traditional
forms of thinking and doing it with goals and timeframes that will be
achieved ahead of all the other school communities in the country.

Breakaway from Traditions

That breakaway began at the best place; at the time when all ICT
infrastructures are matured. To craft a strategy for implementation,
the SMJK Council chose not only to rely on its own expertise, but to
assemble the web professionals, a group comprising the best minds
from the education and private ICT sectors, with a wealth of
knowledge and experiences behind them. These minds were tasked
with setting new approaches and goals for the SMJK Communities.

Most of the projects started with a conceptual features and operation mode, usually from the strategic
partners, the Council members chip in with a much greater focus on the goals and desired benefits for
the SMJK communities. The SMJK Council gave technology partners like Perridot Systems free rein
to propose the most innovative solutions to meet the needs of the SMJK Communities and how to
realize their vision.

The Implementation
Moving towards various project implementations, the
challenges have been by no means any simple. Unlike
projects serving a single school’s needs, the user base
and impact of the SMJK Communities span the entire 78
schools spread all over Malaysia. It includes those users
with an understanding of the ICT and web applications
that will be able to grasp the enormity of this scope of
implementation; it also includes another group who are
still struggling with the ICT phobia and with steep
learning curves to climb. The scale of implementation,
clearly unprecedented in Malaysia Schools and likely
with few parallels even in the commercial world, poses enormous challenges for the SMJK Council as
well as for the implementation team. From the process of planning for implementation, to the act of
mobilising School Administrators across the country to participate in the training boot camps and
deployment effort, it has been and continues to be a challenge for all concerned in the communities.

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Building the Community
Knowledge and Resource Sharing, Collaboration & Communication
Able to share my History paper with 3 teachers from 2 different schools, get an
opinion on my teaching lesson plans and a real life photograph taken at Admiral
Cheng Ho landing site for my student project …wow!

Building an ICT-enabled Knowledge communities

Being bold and visionary often means being on the
technological leading edge. The SMJK Education Portal is the
first nationwide to enforce the use of web technology as a tool
for Knowledge and Resource sharing, collaboration and
communication. Looking to the future, newer and maturing
technologies such as RFID smart cards and wireless networks
had been added to complement those already in place. There is,
however, a price for being an early adopter as technical
complications and mass implementation challenges can be
numerous.

The vision of a fully ICT-enabled

knowledge school community also
poses significant implementation
challenges. The implementation
teams are learning to cope with the
challenges of training and educating
a nationwide communities spanning
over 78 schools, 7,500 teachers and
administrators, 130,000 students
and a later stage, 100,000 parents. To appreciate the enormity of this challenge, one only needs to
compare this to the private sector where the largest installations in large corporations comprise at
most several thousand users online.

Continuing Improvements
The challenges are, of course, much more than
technological in nature. In fact, the human and process-
related issues often dwarf the technology-related ones.
For example, enforcing compulsory email accounts for
all the teachers were the order of the day for the
implementation team. To ensure buy-in, training
workshops and briefing sessions were conducted both in
boot camps and in schools to achieve a shared result.

The many
changes and
post-
implementation enhancement proposed by the council and
end-users were a clear testament to the collaborative approach
in building the portal, it is a growing improvement day by day.

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Rewarding Implementations
There is Nothing Wrong with Think Big and Dream Big
In that sense, the journey has clearly been as important and valuable as the
destination itself.

Sweeping Changes and the Rewards

Yet another lesson learnt and a principle
affirmed is that through the implementation of
the various ICT projects, more users in the
SMJK communities are aware of the identity
and directions of the SMJK schools. The
successful implementation of both the Web
Portal, School Management Systems and
Helpdesks; together with the much improved
communication channels make the
collaborative projects an easier task. And so, starting from the SMJK Council’s bold vision, they had
catalysed an entire world of activity, powered by
significant investments in time and money, but also
producing sweeping changes for the better for the entire
community.

Looking back, the changes have been profound indeed.

The council’s desire to break away from tradition has seen
shifts in operating paradigms and changes in mindsets. In
the process, they will see increased inter-school
cooperation. They had seen sharing of knowledge and
collaboration to achieve common goals - educating our
children and have already and will increasingly see higher levels of academic achievement.

The Rapid Changes

There have been other “side effects” too, along the way.
The schools had been forced to learn and change at a
rapid pace. They had been forced to “think big, to
dream big, to set big targets” and have learnt that they
can achieve those ambitious targets. In that sense, the
projects had clearly been as important and valuable as
the destination itself.

We hope that this success story will give some insights

into some of the lessons we have learnt, and some
deeper knowledge about the challenges we will faced.
The journey has certainly been an interesting experience for everyone. We sincerely hope that you too
will gain from our sharing of that experience.

The Acknowledgement
We would have to thank the long list of contributors whose combined effort helped shape the final
completion of the various ICT projects. We are truly indebted, for without them some of the projects
would not have been made possible. They include all members of the SMJK Council, all Principals,
School Administrators, Teachers and Students from the 78 schools, the fund sponsors, the support
team from My Directory and Perridot Systems, for responding to the SMJK Council's call in splendid
fashion.

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A Glance At The SMJK ICT Projects
In the last few years, the following ICT projects were being implemented in the SMJK schools, while
most projects were available in majority of the schools, some were implemented only in selected
schools, depending on the funding available in the individual schools.

Wireless School 2002

SMJK Dindings in Perak is the first school in Malaysia to deployed
the 3Com Access Point in 2002, linking up to their newly completed
fully wired classroom block, and the fibre optics connected backbone
in the school. Students can access the school ICT facilities like email,
content and shared files on servers from anywhere in the school, with
their WiFi equipped notebooks. The Wireless capabilities only
become a norm in school

SMJK Education Web Portal 2003

In 2003, the SMJK council had obtained a RM100,000 funding from
Hua Education Fund, a foundation headed by Tan Sri Lee Kim Yew,
for them to commission the development of their Education Web
Portal, where every SMJK Schools have their own content
management powered school site, together with hosted email services
and Online Resource Centre for all their teachers.
http://www.smjk.edu.my

Smart Card 2003

SMJK Sin Min in Kedah was the first school to introduce a smartcard
for multiple use, its functions are similar to the Touch n' Go Card
used by motorists to pay highway toll. The students are required to
"Top-up" some money before using the cards in quantum of RM5,
RM10 and RM50. The smartcard contains information such as the
students' name, photograph and other personal details like
examination marks and points for discipline. Students only need to
scan the card in seven card-readable computers around the school and
the details would appear on a computer screen, including the credit
balance.

RFID 2004
SMJK Dindings in Lumut, Perak, became the first school to
implement the e-Attendance system with their integrated School
Management System using radio frequency identification (RFID)
Mifare technology that enables it to record, access, report and manage
performance records and data of students and staff in real time. Each
student has his own RFID tag. The student is required to scan it at
readers within the school to keep track of his movement. The school and parents can confirm what
time students arrive and leave, and their attendance at each classroom session. Similar RFID systems
were also implemented in a few other schools like SMJK Jit Sin and SMJK Sam Tet.

Linux Boot Camp 2005

All the schools that eventually took part in the School Management System project were being given
special trainings for Linux Operating Systems, where every ICT teachers were trained to perform a
full system installation on a school server. Networking basics, together with installation and
troubleshooting of routers and switches were also covered, so that the teachers would be able to
support their own network in their school, and to identify problems.

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Internet Monitoring Systems 2005
With the wide deployment of Internet access in schools, the need
to safeguard the school network from abuse, while protecting the
students who use the Internet for legitimate study purposes, the
Internet Monitoring Systems provide details such as the top
Internet users on the school network and the amount of time they
spend online. Furthermore, reports show the most frequented
Web sites visited, e-mail transactions, top virus and spam mail
received, and print accounting.

School Management Systems 2006

After lobbying for 4 years, the SMJK Council finally received a
funding from the Hua Ren Education Foundation for the
implementation of Perridot Systems’ School Management
System (SMS). Under the project, 62 SMJK schools received the
funding to implement 5 of the SMS modules, with features
ranging from Curriculum Management, Timetable, ID cards,
Examination & e-Report Cards, Student Discipline, Co-
curriculum and Library Management.

Microsoft Helpdesk 2006

In 2006, the SMJK schools were given a Helpdesk system for them to manage their day-to-day
operation and internal support problems in schools, ranging from task assignment, maintenance of
equipments, PCs and networks. A centralized training were given to all participating schools.

SMJK Education Web Portal 2.0 - 2007

With the exploding growth of Web 2,0 applications, the SMJK
Council had decided to upgrade the existing Web Portal with
Web 2.0 features, to take advantages of the many benefits and to
improve further their administrative, collaboration and social
community efforts among the teachers, students and parents. The
new Web Portal will provide templates for individual schools,
together with all News RSS-enabled, with audio and video
streaming capabilities, where teaching contents can now be
provided through the Podcast services.

Google Apps for Education - 2007

The SMJK Schools also partner with Google to use Google Apps
for Education, which includes the Gmail, with features including
indexed email search, enhanced spam filtering, calendaring,
tagging capabilities for tracking emails, and a two-Gigabyte
quota per student for email storage. There are around 129,000
students, 7,500 teachers & administrators in the 78 SMJK
Schools spread throughout the whole of Malaysia, and looking at
the new intakes of 20,000 students annually, a total of 200,000
accounts, each with 2GB of mailbox, which make up a whooping
400 Terabytes of disk space for the SMJK community, when the
total numbers of users eventually sign up for the services.

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About SMJK Schools
The SMJK (Sekolah Menengah Jenis Kebangsaan) is a group of Malaysian
Chinese conforming schools classified as Government-aided schools, all are
secondary schools. There are around 78 of such schools in Malaysia, with a
population of around 129,000 students and 7,500 teachers & administrators. In
1994, these schools obtained approval from the Malaysian Ministry of Education to form a School
Council, run by a committee elected from principals from these 78 schools. Most of these schools are
the “elite” group of schools, usually with large Chinese student population. Majority of the schools
are high profile schools with good management and excellent academic results.

About Perridot Systems

Perridot Systems is an IT solution provider of Education software products & solutions. We provide
consulting and IT services to clients as partners to conceptualize and realize technology driven
business transformation initiatives. We also provide solutions for a dynamic environment where
business and technology strategies converge. Our approach focuses on new ways of business
combining IT innovation and adoption while also leveraging an organization's current IT assets. We
work with our clients to build new products or services and to implement prudent business and
technology strategies in today's dynamic digital environment.

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