i. Describe "21st-century education".

Transformation is happening in society at a rapid speed. The transformation

depicts the adoption of an innovation (Carlopio 1998), where the fundamental aim is to
advance results by varying practices. The above motto can genuinely engage with the
current education system. In today's world of technology, the past education system,
with its teacher-centred method, and passive learning, does not appear to accommodate
the learning needs of 21st-century students. Consequently, employers today are sceptical
about hiring workers who lack the pertinent knowledge and practical skills to invent,
create and help uphold an information-rich commercial and industry. According to
Wrahatnolo and Munoto (2018), "Education systems need to provide students with
hands-on learning that mirrors real-world problems and work opportunities in an
interdisciplinary way. “Therefore, the current education institutions adopt 21st-century
education in the education system from primary to a higher level of studies to produce
netizens equipped with creativity, collaboration, critical thinking and good
communication skills to face real-world outstandingly.

21st-century primarily involves technology and learning skills in the education

system. An example of technology is electronic learning using Information
Communication Technology (ICT), which consists of the internet or new technologies
such as computers, laptops, cell phones, tablets, and iPad. In short, learning facilitates
using ICT or devices. In terms of learning skills, learners urge to cooperate and
collaborate with others in a knowledge-based and connect through mobile digital
technologies. For instance, Assessment and Teaching 21 Century Skills (AT21CS)
classified 21st-century skills into four wide-ranging categories. Firstly, thinking involves
creativity, critical thinking, problem-solving, decision-making and learning. Secondly,
working methods contain communication and collaboration. Other than that, tools for
working encompass ICT and information literacy. Lastly, living skills in the world
include citizenship, life and career, and personal and social responsibility.
 Hence, 21st-century education will help the students to learn how to learn by
stirring creativity, inspiring collaboration, anticipating and fulfilling critical thinking and
imparting students’ ways to communicate and the aptitude of efficient communication.
These are skills student’s prerequisite to flourish in today's and tomorrow's dynamical
workplace. 

ii. Explain the role of the internet as a key component in 21st-century

education.

The internet's role interprets in at least three different ways. First is the internet's ability
to recommend individual learners boost freedom from the real world's physical
limitations. This is because, in terms of lessening burdens of place, space, time, and
geography, individuals can retrieve first-class learning chances and educational
anticipation despite o of environments (Eynon,2013). The internet depicts as letting
education take place at any time, any site, any pace basis. The aptitude to upkeep free
and fair-minded educational interactions and experiences show to replicate the internet's
underneath qualities as "a radically democratic zone of infinite connectivity" (Murphy
2012, pg 122). For example, online learning happens during the pandemic situation
because of internet usage. The internet plays a prominent role in continuing the teaching
and learning during the pandemic despite any place, position and time.

Secondly, the internet's competence to furtherance connectivity between students

and information has drastically changed the connection between individuals and
knowledge. It profounds that the internet backings knowledge creation and knowledge
utilisation that contrasts radically from the epistemic beliefs of formal schooling and
mass instruction (Siemens,2013). For example, there are many contents related to
learning that can find on the internet that educationalists around the world have created,
and students can view and learn from those contents. The schmoosed associations that
internet users partake with online information have provoked extensive reconsiderations
of learning quality. Several educationalists are now starting to develop thoughts of
effortless intelligence and connectivity by echoing the belief that learning through the
internet is liable for the capacity to access and use disseminated information on a just-in-
time source (Stephens,2013). From this viewpoint, learning is comprehended as relating
to particular information points and bases as and when essential. George Siemens (2013)
once said it education can be conceived in relations to the "capacity to know more" via
the internet rather than connecting to the individual accretion of preceding knowledge in
terms of "what is currently known."

Lastly, the internet is understood to have vividly modified how people learn.
Thus, the internet is preparing education for a further individually resolute process. The
internet is allied with improved social self-sufficiency and control, recommending
individuals augmented selection on the nature and shape of what they study and where,
when, and how they know it (Chu,2013). Education is, therefore, a solely manageable
feature of one's personal life, with the internet simplifying a digital manipulating of
educational assignation together with day-to-day events and other obligations
(Subrahmanyam and Šmahel 2011). Undeniably, Internet users frequently acclaim as
profiting from a more excellent aptitude to self-organise and curate educational learning
for themselves rather than depend on an education system's customs and opportunities.
An example of internet-based education has been MOOCs' growth (Massively Open
Online Courses) throughout the past five years. Now, most remarkably over significant
fruitful undertakings such as Coursera and Ed-X, MOOCs comprise the online
conveyance of courses on a free-at-the-point-of-contact base to mass audiences.
Therefore, without depending on the educational institutions, students can access
MOOCs freely at anytime and anywhere.

iii. Discuss how internet technology is used to implement 21st-century

learning in primary schools.

The growth in computer and internet technology, in specific, has, over the years,
transformed all facet of human activities include education. Incorporating these
technologies in education is progressively preparing teachers and students interactions
more reliant on these technological signs of progress. Therefore, rising teachers and
students’ interactions with computers and the internet and constructing knowledge and
skills of using these technologies a fundamental prerequisite, especially in primary
schools. Besides enabling the routine overall management of schools, ICT has a
boundless capacity practice in the actual teaching and learning process. Haddad and
Draxler (2002) acclaimed that The World Wide Web, retrieved through the internet,
computer, and mobile web browsers, deliver teachers and learners with a wide
variability of comprehensive information that enables them to access anytime and
anywhere. For example, in terms of lesson planning, teachers can access data online to
help them plan and implement lessons and enhance their class's idea and content.
Moreover, the teachers may learn new teaching skills; and bring up-to-date knowledge
of pedagogy and subject content. Specifically, during the epidemic atmosphere, teachers
learn new skills and a new teaching method: e-learning, which they give lessons through
google classroom, Whats' app and many more online media to students.

Apart from teachers, students can access beneficial information that can expand
their insight into the subject they are learning in schools. For example, after schools,
students have ample time to find and improve their knowledge about their syllabus by
accessing the internet. Especially in current pandemic situations, students are receiving
lessons and homework through the internet only, which show the utmost importance of
the internet. Furthermore, nowadays, students are very keen on social media. Hence, the
online social media forums offer teachers and learners a platform for teamwork in
teaching and learning at the local and international levels and broaden communication
and discussion between learners and between teachers and learners outside the
classroom (Holcomb and Beal,2010). Through these learning approaches and
environments, students have autonomy in learning and connecting with their teachers
wherever they want (Singh and Thurman, 2019). There are two online education
approaches, synchronous and asynchronous, to apply optional interaction timing
(Algahtani, 2011). Synchronous online learning provides explicit communication
between the teachers and students during class through video conferencing or
chatrooms. Simultaneously, asynchronous online education offers the teachers and
students the chance to cooperate before or after the online course through Whats' App to
ease the discussion. The internet imparts benefits to students to be independent in
knowledge and emerging new skills to lead to life-long learning (Dhawan, 2020).

Lastly, the internet uses to make teaching and learning more authentic and
livelier in primary classrooms. This is because kids are likely to be a curiosity at all
time. Therefore, in the teaching-learning process, PowerPoint presentation and
smartboard technologies can simplify teachers' conveyance of topic content in classroom
instructions, making learning trouble-free and tangible for the student, mostly if the
teachers practise applicable imageries, videos and documentaries during the lesson
(Hammond & Manfra, 2009). Efficacious and creative use of these tools helps preserve
students' thoughtfulness and makes the learning process more dynamic in the classroom.

iv. Discuss the challenges faced when the current learning system needs to
be implemented online – through the use of the internet and virtual
applications.

Online learning comes with massive disputes. Firstly, the students' requirement
to have technology access as the foremost pointer of online learning readiness. However,
online learning can be difficult for the restricted, poor, and demoted students who had
limited resources and availability to online education (The Regional Risk
Communication and Community Engagement (RCCE) Working Group, 2020). This
helplessness to access and be immersed in online learning roots discrepancies and
dropouts. About 52% of Malaysia students, especially in Sabah, do not have access to
the internet due to insufficient basic structure (Selvanathan, Nur Atika & Noor Alyani,
2020). It is proved that students in rural and remote areas having a tougher situation to
access the internet due to inadequate online learning basic structure and restricted
availability to the internet (Lee, 2020). Also, the insufficient availability of the internet,
the students encounter trouble corresponding with their teachers, communication with
their friends, which affected their studies. Online learning also wants learners' dedication
and self-control, particularly for helpless students who need contact to reinforce their
social skills (UNESCO IESALC, 2020).

Moreover, mainly when all educational events are bunged, online learning stages
have become widespread because of the epidemic. It acknowledges schools to
familiarise alternative blended-based education throughout the epidemic hurriedly.
However, the transformation process into online learning is time-consuming, and it is
not comfortable to establish. This is because teachers are used in their traditional
teaching method, which is face-to-face; meanwhile, online learning makes it difficult for
teachers. Maharajan et (2012) supported that teachers need more time to plan their
content effectively to teach online, which shows teachers having adapting difficulty.
Teachers are facing time-consuming but the students too because they need to learn by
themselves with little help from teachers throughout the internet.

Last but not least, numerous online education forms distinct that learning often
happens unconsciously as a competitive effort. This is because Allen (2011) explained
that the internet would make students more individualistic "personal formative cycles,
occupied in unison within individual feedback-action loops. They learn to become
industrious self-improvers, accepting and implementing external goals" (pg 378). In
contrast, they should learn harmoniously with other students in the classroom.
Therefore, the internet is involuntarily causing changes in students’ behaviour which is
more self-centred and selfish. Hence, a sense of accomplishment at the sacrifice of
others may not be directly seeming; the internet could be seen as a means of humanising,
hiding, and increasing the learning's competitive associations.

v. Conclusion

In a nutshell, 21st-century education mainly produces students with

creativity, collaboration, critical thinking and excellent communication skills to face the
real-world marvellously. However, technology and the internet have their benefits and
limitation to implement online learning. Therefore, it is the teachers' role to balance the
gains and drawbacks.

Target 4.4 in Sustainable Development Goals 4 is to increase the number of

individuals who have skills relevant to daily life. This goal can be achieved through
learning activities that adapt to the use of information technology, the internet and
communication.

Discuss the efforts made by Malaysia to achieve this target.

The world's Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are desired more than ever
before. This point was highlighted by Professor Jeffrey D. Sachs, the celebrated director
of the Sustainable Development Solutions Network, who commented during the
launching of the Sustainable Development Report 2020 (New Straits Times, July 2020).
Sustainable development has been at the core of Malaysia's progress attempt ever since
the 1970s, accentuating eliminating poverty, cultivating people's well-being, offering
universal access to education, and be concerned for the environment. The SDGs goal
number four mainly focussed on quality education to certify inclusive and unbiased
quality education and encourage lifelong learning opportunities. Therefore, Malaysia's
education government has made three types of efforts: proposes a vision for education,
promoting life-long learning, and accelerating human capital development.

Firstly, the introduction of the Malaysian Education Blueprint proposes a vision

of the education system and student aspirations that Malaysia desires and ought to have
and recommends 11 strategic and operational shifts essential to attain that vision. The
result is a Malaysia Education Blueprint that evaluates Malaysia's current education
system's performance with considerations of historical starting points against
international benchmarks. One of the 11 strategic is to leverage ICT to scale up quality
learning across Malaysia. That means the strategic help teachers prepare a lesson that
involves ICT and portrays the real-world through it. For example, the Ministry's
initiative offers internet access and a netbook called 1BestariNet (Ministry of Education,
2015). Moreover, the Education Blueprint provides supplement online content to share
best practices beginning with a video library of the best teachers serving lessons in
Science, Mathematics, Bahasa Malaysia, and English. It is also encouraging to maximise
the use of ICT for remote and self-paced learning to increase access to first-class
teaching despite place or student skill level. It is proven in current pandemic situations
where students can learn anywhere and anytime.

Next, the Malaysian government encourages life-long learning (Malaysia

Sustainable Development Goals Voluntary National Review, 2017). It is the leverage of
suitable technologies. A vital distinguishing in the general notion of lifelong learning is
that learning can occur beyond the formal setting of classrooms and libraries. For
example, students no need to wait to learn from the teachers before or after the lesson;
they learn on their own about the lesson's content. Therefore, the use of technologies is
a sample of the boundless potentials embraced in education, obvious in open and
distance learning (ODL) methods that exploit technology-based inventions such as e-
learning and mobile learning (Berita Harian, September 19, 2014). The same techniques
started for lifelong learning, whether in the course or programme conveyance or for
promotional resolutions. For example, mobile devices such as cell phones and tablets,
besides online social networking platforms like Facebook and video-sharing websites
like Youtube, have become widespread in recent years where students’ current days are
learning from those platforms. Moreover, life-long learning happens through recent
innovations like open educational resources (OER) and massive open online courses
(MOOCs) in terms of higher education level. Both have verified that technology-based
platforms can progress responsiveness and acceptance of lifelong learning programmes.

Lastly, the Malaysian government accelerating human capital development

through 11 MP Strategic Thrust 3 (Malaysia Sustainable Development Goals Voluntary
National Review, 2017). Thrust 3, which accelerates human capital development for a
progressive nation, produces human capital with the precise knowledge, skills and
attitude to thrive in a globalised economy. For example, current syllabus encourages 21st
century education which emphasise creativity, collaboration, critical thinking and
excellent communication skills to meet the real-world spectacularly. Additionally,
students' entry into Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET)
programmes has improved, consequential from unceasing attempts in advertising TVET
through various programmes and initiatives. TVET comprises and prepares demand-
driven skills development, such as entrepreneurial and ICT skills. Thus, at the end of
2018, the Ministry of Education introduced a five-year Information Communication and
Technology (ICT) Transformation Plan (2019–2023) marking to transform the overall
ICT structure and environment, which will prepare students from the early stage for a
globalised economy. For example, when students enrol in the TVET program, they will
be prepared with defined knowledge and skills to face the real future world scenario.

In a nutshell, Malaysia's Sustainable Development Goal is to produce a student

with the overall quality in proposing a vision for life, promoting life-long learning, and
accelerating human capital development by adapting the use of information technology
and the internet.
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